Farewell to Dewey?

The internet is buzzing today about one library's decision to do away with Dewey. [There is some debate about whether or not this statement is really true.]

Most people aren't too happy about it, judging by the reaction on LM_NET and in the library blogs.

I've always wanted to create subject-specific mini-collections that are highly browsable, like in a bookstore. Lump all the sports books together and then arrange by sport and then author's last name. I know this is really similar to Dewey, but not quite--it's not as specific. So books about baseball, books about specific baseball players, and books about the Black Sox scandal will all be in the same place, and intermingled. No need for highly-specific Dewey numbers.

And tagging will allow users to identify books using their language, not ours.

This is still a fairly nebulous and potentially problematic idea, but I definitely subscribe to the bookstore model. Like Linda Braun says, people go to bookstores to a reason--and by the same token, don't go to libraries for the same reason.

Library management

I love a noisy library. Unfortunately, not all of my colleagues feel the same. Nothing gets my blood boiling more than a teacher trying to manage my library. But I know that I am not like most school librarians in this regard, and so it's not really fair of me to get frustrated with my colleagues. I also worry that some teachers might think I am not doing my job when they walk into a library full of loud, boisterous students.

I think this is one of the challenges I face as a school librarian trained in grad school as a public YA librarian. I wonder if this happens often in private schools, since many of us are uncertified MLSes. (How do you make MLS plural? Bahama Mama, thoughts?)