The Perry Branch Library in Gilbert, Arizona has taken the intelligent, forward-thinking step of dropping the Dewey Decimal System. I strongly support this decision, since the Dewey Decimal System was built for a different era. In that era, the only way to ensure finding things was easy was to organize them in an extremely precise system. Then, along came computers, and with them, search. Automated search opened up new doors. Now, only the computer need know where every individual item is. Therefore, you could theoretically scatter books all over the library and the computer would still work as long as each book’s location was in the system. While that would be a radical step, the reorganization of libraries is definitely in order. If someone knows the title or author or even subject matter of the book they want, then they will go directly to the computer and search for it, thus rendering the classification system irrelevant. However, if they want to browse it makes sense for items to be organized in sections that make sense from a human perspective. What that means is that all cook books would be together, rather than having an Eastern foods book on the other side of the library from holiday foods. Essentially, the transition is from a system-centric scheme to a person-centric scheme. Let’s see other libraries follow in the innovative steps of Perry Branch.
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