How do you solve a problem like Dewey?
by Jenny Chang, Lisa Seddon, and Sarah Wethered
Three secondary teacher-librarians in New Westminster, British Columbia express their discomfort with classifying resources in their respective school libraries using the Dewey Decimal System. They explore alternatives and settle on the Brian Deer Classification System (BDC). The writers state that, “we should be focusing on acts of reconciliation, and by decolonizing our library catalogue by making the switch the BCD, we are doing just that.” They share their process and the steps they went through to complete this project as well as reflections and helpful considerations for readers.
Jenny Chang: Jenny is one of the teacher-librarians at New Westminster Secondary School and is an instructor for the Teacher-Librarian course at Queens’ University. Jenny received the 2021 BC New Teacher-Librarians of the Year award.
Lisa Seddon: Lisa is a teacher-librarian at Queensborough Middle School and New Westminster Secondary School in New Westminster. Prior to becoming a teacher-librarian, she taught drama and social studies in Virginia and Texas. Lisa has served on the executive committee of the BC Teacher-Librarians Association since 2019, and is the current vice-president. Lisa is the 2024 BC Teacher-Librarian of the Year.
Sarah Wethered: Sarah is one of the teacher-librarians at New Westminster Secondary School, and is an instructor for the Teacher-Librarian course at Queens’ University. She is a member of the BC Teacher-Librarians Association executive committee, and currently serves as its treasurer. Sarah has recently joined the executive of the Canadian School Libraries also as treasurer. She is the 2020 recipient of the Angela Thacker Memorial Award from Canadian School Libraries.
Jenny, Lisa, and Sarah - thanks so much for creating and sharing this article. Joseph gave me a heads-up that I might like the way it began, and I definitely did!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the detailed information about Dewey. I knew of generalities but not specifics. Can we separate the person from the person's work? Why does it seem easier to do for some than for others? Why do I still hear Michael Jackson songs on the radio, but not R. Kelly? Why did I remove books by Bill Cosby but not J K Rowling?
I appreciated the review on pages 4-5 of the alternatives that have been discussed (BISAC, METIS, and UDC). The steps you took were also helpful to see. May I ask: if the BDC is community-specific, ("Each library grounds their catalogue based on the Indigenous territory that it is situated on, and all knowledge radiates from it. Each library has the flexibility to have a slightly different classification and to tailor their classification system to their own personal context.") then how do big library systems catalog and locate items shared in a single system? Also, I make no secret that I do not have a MLIS degree or have the same cataloging training as library technicians. Is this work that someone without this background can accurately do? Can/would the fiction sections that use the author's last name as the sorting mechanism still remain?
Much of TMC8 will refer back to the new CSL document, Foundations. Foundations has a statement related to library classification systems. If the three of you could wave a magic wand, what changes would you like to see in Foundations that relate to this topic?
Looking forward to more dialogue,
Diana
Coming from a single unified catalog across a school district (and 3 overlapping traditional territories plus a large number of transplants from another 10ish under the Carrier-Sekani grouping) we have been struggling with how to pivot away from DDC. We are currently sitting at around 1 million items and 400K titles within the library system and one library tech and me to do the work of any pivot away. For now we are looking at how we can push back against the traditional rules of DDC within our practice.
ReplyDeleteSo Indigenous topics are not put in 970 anymore unless they are historical. Governance goes in Governance, etc. This, along with our local subject headings has been our way of trying to make do with the people power we have, but be a step towards reconciliation we can take.
I'm also interested in how you fit certain things into the classification.
Looking at the headings:
Reference Materials
Local History
History
International
Education
Economic Development
Housing and Community Development
Criminal Justice System
Constitution (Canada) and First Nations
Self Government
Rights and Title
Natural Resources
Community Resources
Health
World View
Fine Arts
Languages
Literature
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Where did you put things like technology or sports? Did you split biography between local and non-local history?
Another thing we have discussed with our Indigenous Ed department is looking at BDC for just Indigenous materials and whether this would be enough.