Your local bookstore, er, i mean, library.
The American Library Association’s TechSource blog had this post a few weeks ago, about libraries in Arizona rearranging their physical locations and online public access catalogs to be more like the Barnes and Noble around the corner. The books, in both their physical locations and in their corresponding surrogate records in the OPAC, were categorized using BISAC codes (a standard the book industry uses), not the traditional Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress schemes. So far, the general public seems pretty happy with it… the only complaints coming from other librarians who have heard about the story (as this link to a news story from the blog post will tell you).
This trend has been a long time coming in public libraries, I know…. And I do remember being at Powell’s Books two years ago on vacation, walking around, browsing, and feeling constantly engaged and interested in every section, and wondering “how come libraries don’t look like this??” Of course, the reason is Dewey and LCSH can offer a much more in-depth results in doing serious research (though I’ve definitely fell victim more than once to the “onesie syndrome” Schneider mentions in the blog), but, as the quote from Jessamyn West from the news story above notes, most people aren’t looking to do serious research, but rather just get a general idea of what something is about. If this trend in Arizona is indicative of where public libraries are headed, I’m not really opposed- if it gets more people in the library, and more comfortable finding books on their own, then so be it. I think this quote from blogger Michael Casey in the news story hits the nail on the head for me:
“Librarians like to think that we’re indispensable,” he said. “While I think that is true to a point, I don’t think we should continue to propagate the idea that we’re indispensable by keeping a complicated cataloging system.”