Title
Discussion of issues relating to upcoming changes in Library policies/Library refresh.
Body
Summary:
In anticipation of the 50th Anniversary of the Deer Park Library in 2019, Library Director Rebecca Pool will give an overview of upcoming changes in Library policies/Library refresh:
1. Make changes to collection to update the library's appearance and improve circulation
A. Change from Dewey Decimal System to BISAC/word categories
-Easier to find things/make shelves more friendly to casual browsing
-Refresh the library with little extra cost
-Future collection development is much simpler. Easier to see gaps in the collection.
-Forces you to keep the collection fresh!
-Dewey has many downsides
-never meant for the public/invented when libraries had closed stacks
-harder to shelve and to find items that are improperly shelved
-doesn't keep things together when done perfectly
-changes over time and moves items around, so have to keep reclassifying the same items
-numbers mean less to people than words
-categories themselves are outdated (Ex: Computers are artificially fitted into a very narrow set of numbers in a miscellaneous section of Dewey.)
B. Fiction-shelving by genre
-Shifted to unified shelving scheme in 2011 prior to expansion
-Pros to having just fiction:
-saves spaces
-keeps author's works together when they write in multiple genres
-Reasons to shift back to genre shelving:
-Easier to browse collection and discover new authors
-Libraries with genre breakouts have retained better circulation rates.
-Patrons with a preference will be HAPPY. Some never really adapted to the unified shelving.
C. Reducing Reference (Keep Small local/job training non-circulating section)
-Sadly, the days of coming to the library to spend a Saturday doing extensive research in the Reference section has gone the way of the BETA tape.
-Reference gets little use and it is too expensive to maintain a massive, cu...
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