Thursday, June 25, 2009

Problematic Cataloguing

At the synagogue library, my co-intern and I have been going through *all* the books and re-cataloguing them. For the most part, we're following (fairly closely) what WorldCat tells us the Dewey Number is, but sometimes we're making up our own numbers. More on that in a moment. One of the reasons we're doing this is because whoever catalogued these things before did it in an incredibly illogical and incorrect way. Some things are in completely wrong parts of the numbers (in the 200s when they should be in the 800s, for example), but thus far, the vast majority of books are at least a little bit out of place. The ones we've been dealing with the most lately are the vast number of books on Judaism, Talmud, and so forth that have somehow been given call numbers which are for Christian and Christianity-related materials. We're unclear on how on earth the previous librarian(s) made this bizarre error, or whether it was an error at all. Perhaps the people just made things up.

Which would not, in fact, be *wholly* unreasonable. After all, too many of the books in that library are meant, according to WorldCat, to be call number 296. Which is hardly surprising: 296 is the catch-all call number for Judaism. If it's not the bible, or a book related to the bible, or the psalms or some such thing, there is no call number covering that. Those are numbers 220 through 224. After that, everything is Christian or Christianity-related until call number 288 (which is, incidentally, an "unassigned" number). Given this problematic fact, and the fact that we do not want a 296 section which covers twelve darn shelves, we too have been making alternate choices about where we want to put things. But our choices are logical: we don't avoid putting things on Jewish Mysticism in the 296s by giving them the "Christianity & Christian theology" call number, we use an unassigned number to create a Jewish Mysticism section. By the same token, we don't put a book on Yiddish literature in the section for Jesus and his family, we put them into the "Other Germanic Literature" section. Sometimes, when we want to keep things together because they are part of a greater topic - such as our "Life Cycles" section, which includes materials on birth, death, marriage, b'nai mitzvah, etc. - we choose a call number and *create* that section.

The point is, we're trying to maneuver around the Dewey Decimal system. The problem with that of course is that we shouldn't *have* to. But the Dewey Decimal system is, in many ways, horribly outdated. It was created in 1876, and though it has gone through many, many revisions (including one five years ago), it is still ridiculously unfair to many topics. How is it possible, for example, that there are 64 call numbers assigned to Christian topics (though that's not always obvious by the vague description for call numbers) and only one for Judaism (plus 5 for holy books, I grant you)? Incidentally, Israel does not have its own call number. Guyana does; Paraguay and Uruguay have one; Israel does not. Even more horrifying is the complete dismissal of Islam: there is only one call number for Islam, none for Islamic holy books, and in fact Islam does not have its own call number, but rather shares number 297 with Babism and Bahai. How is that possible? There is an entire call number for "Games of Change", but Islam cannot have its own number?

Perhaps, as my co-intern suggested, Library of Congress call numbers are better. It is true that they are more specific and provide greater variety of call numbers through the use of letters and longer call numbers. However, that specificity is also, in some ways, problematic. Perhaps university students have the patience to search for very precise call numbers with two letters and four numbers before the decimal and another six after the decimal, but your average person does not. In fact, many of the students I interact with here at the university library do not have the patience or the attention to detail necessary to find things with all of those letters and numbers. It can be very confusing for them and they get frustrated. I cannot begin to say how many times I have been told by a student that the book is not there, only to find it on the next shelf over from where they were looking because the call number was too long and confusing. So clearly the Library of Congress numbers, though more accurate, and not terribly user-friendly.

I am looking forward to taking cataloguing next semester and learning more about this problem. I'm increasingly inclined to just try making my own Dewey-esque system. Perhaps when I'm older and have been in the industry a long time, I'll lose my mind and decide to get a PhD and I will use the problems of the Dewey Decimal system as my topic. In the meantime, I'm just going to have to deal with the irritations of a system too old and too unchanged, for all its 22 updates.

6 comments:

  1. I like LC and am ambivelant towards Dewey, but a lot of that is just because it's what I'm used to at this point. Dewey numbers can actually get crazy long and complicated too, but I don't think most libraries get that detailed.

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  2. The one thing I'd be worried about is what would happen if someone walked into another library and tried to find those books under your numbers, which wouldn't exist anywhere. Maybe have some sort of sign about that sort of thing?

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  3. I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Dewey decimal system. I love the ridiculous specificity of the LLC system. My college had several separate subject libraries, so I would say that it's easier to browse like that.

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  4. Rose: I absolutely acknowledge that problem. I think it would have to be an issue of "Welcome to the X public library. We have our own cataloging system. Please use the computers or helpful signs to find what you're looking for!" I also suspect most people don't necessarily know what Dewey numbers are for what. And I'm not strictly speaking talking about reinventing the wheel, rather about making sure the wheel gives a better ride.

    Rebecca: I think that that's the thing about LC, though. LC is great for university libraries and subject libraries, but it's tough to use it in public libraries. A student may be willing and able to go through the complex system: it may in fact be the best system for browsing complex topics. But your average person going to a public library may not be interested in doing that.

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  5. It's not that people don't know or care that DDC is horribly outdated, sexist, Christian-centric, etc., etc. Books have been written on the subject. (If you're interested I'll give you citations.) The problem is that doing any sort of major revamp of DDC means that somebody will then need to go back and reprocess all of the billions of books in the world that are currently shelved using DDC, and this would cost, roughly speaking, a bazillion dollars. Or else you'd get the situation that frequently happens now when DDC changes, where libraries leave the old stuff where it was and shelve the new stuff under the new numbers, leading to things being scattered all over the place. This is survivable when DDC is just tweaked around the edges, but it would result in a giant mess if, say, the 200s were entirely redone.

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  6. Go ahead, reinvent the wheel. Ought to be done. It will cost a bazillion dollars, but if we keep putting the problem off, it will cost TWENTY bazillion dollars when we do fix it, and that's not even taking inflation into account.

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