In many areas of life, we only gain an appreciation for an individual’s skills and knowledge when we are put in their shoes and have to do their tasks for a time. Looking from afar, I assumed that library cataloguers had a very simple job: They sat at a computer, opened a book and copied the words that were on the page inside the cover, much like doing a simple bibliography. I was ignorant as to the intricacies of cataloguing and the exacting standards that it adheres to. I knew nothing of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), nor had I considered the challenges of cataloguing non-book material. I didn’t understand the workings and logic of the Dewey Decimal System, nor the structure of the Library of Congress Classification system. AACR, MARC, NAPs, SAPs, ISBD, ISBN, ISSN, DDC, LCC, OCLC were all nonsensical letter combinations that represented a language that I did not speak.

Previously, I had never considered what preparation occurred before my selection appeared on the computer’s results screen at the library. That has all changed in the last three months, and my appreciation for cataloguing librarians and their knowledge and skill has increased immeasurably. I have come to discover that a good cataloguer possesses a great memory, an unwavering attention to detail, a detective’s spirit, and a considerable knowledge of print and non-print resources and their attributes. Putting myself in the cataloguer’s shoes and walking a while in them, I came to appreciate these characteristics and discovered that, while it is exacting and sometimes difficult work, it does comes with guidelines and tools to help you accomplish the task, and a measure of flexibility that requires intelligence and sound decision making.

While not having the opportunity to put detailed cataloguing into practice in my current position, I now feel that this language of cataloguing is no longer a mystery to me. I may not understand the intricacies of the dialect, but I can speak a bit of the language and understand a little more.

Becoming a new Teacher-Librarian in the next school year, I know that many of the skills developed in trying my hand at cataloguing will play a positive role in being a good Teacher-Librarian. I have developed an appreciation for my district cataloguers and an understanding of what they do, discovered the ability to copy-catalogue from our district program where I can add housekeeping details to a record, and have gained a more complete grasp of the classification with which my library is organized. I have also acquired a much broader understanding of subject headings. One of the most useful skills that I have improved upon, however, relates to searching on the Internet. In this course, my skill at doing efficient and relevant searches, finding resources and records and discovering how to use the powerful database searches has vastly improved. Accessing databases and narrowing down search parameters is a skill that has already proven to be useful. After learning about journal databases through the university librarian, and spending a lot of time searching various academic databases, I was able to find a large number of interesting articles related to libraries, cataloguing and education. The skills involved in ‘non-Google’ searching have been invaluable. As a result, I decided to begin a tutorial for my staff and students on the topic of databases: what they are and how to access them. This tutorial uses voicethread.com and will be included in the website I have been building for assignment #3.

Teacher-librarians have a unique role. We are the managers of three different domains: a large physical space, a wide range of resources and a large number of people who use the space, materials, and our expertise. The weekly readings and activities have touched on all of these aspects.

Our physical space is what welcomes patrons to our library. It gives a hospitable feeling, an impression of order and cleanliness, provides visible cues as to how and where to find materials and clearly marked areas to both find and use these resources. Everything needs to be clearly thought out by the librarian to improve accessibility, comfort, and practicality to meet the needs of our students.

Our management of the resources is an area where expertise is developed over time. Lesson 7 summarized it well: “They (T-Ls) have the knowledge to identify the best resources in their collections and adapt them to the unit plans and research of teachers and students in their schools. What materials we choose for the library and how we process and catalogue them makes a big difference how they will be accessed. How the materials are arranged on shelving and good signage also makes a big impact on how resources are found. Circulation procedures are a critical aspect of managing the physical collection. We need to clearly reflect on our procedures and adapt them to meet both the needs of the school and of the Teacher-librarian’s ability to maintain the smooth flow of materials to those who need them.

Finally, how we manage the people that use our school library is the most critical of all. We set the tone in our library. We need to be friendly, knowledgeable and eager to help. We need to have political skills in advocating for the needs of our students and staff and the leadership abilities to teach a wide variety of topics to a huge range of student abilities and interests.

Learning to run a school library will be a fulfilling challenge. I will have to build my confidence as I work with students and staff and get to know and build my collection. Fortunately, the skills and knowledge gained in this course will help me as I begin my journey.

Acquisition procedures require certain steps and rules to follow for each school district with good financial management and record keeping.  Cataloguing routines are very strict and inflexible.  They must conform to certain standards set out by governing bodies including local rules.  Circulation, however, is the most flexible and set in place by each teacher-librarian.

Over the next year, I should develop a written library policy.  It should outline the following objectives:

•    purpose and goals of the library resource centre
•    details and reoutines required to achieve these goals
•    Circulation procedures – limits, exceptions, overdue policy.

Principles of a Circulation system:

•    know where everything is  – where it is in the library or who has it out.
•    Allow for maximum usage for the longest time frame possible
•    Allow for books and non-book material
•    Provide consistent procedure for overdues and fines
•    Accommodates special requests – override limits, holds,etc.  (allows for some flexibility)
Each library has to set up their procedures and adjust them as they see what works and what doesn’t.  If something isn’t working smoothly, be open to change.  Ask people who are affected by it for advice.  Teachers and students may come up with some good ideas.

Here is description of the tasks that are part of the postcataloguing routine or what comes after the book is in the catalogue. These are the things that I will undertake as part of my new job as Teacher-Librarian.

Processing – this would include taping, reinforcing, putting collection stickers on them if they are part of the holiday or Young Adult collection, putting the author initial on the front for ease of shelving.  We also have little colored dots we add to the materials we’ve pulled for the French Kindergarten students to circulate.  These are kept in a couple of bins on wheels.  Processing would also include copy cataloguing.  I can add an identical item if it already exists in the system.  I then have to scan a new barcode, print a spine label and insert the price and the location into the computer and then save it.  We put clear library tape (archival quality) over our spine labels and barcodes to protect them.

Shelving – To me, shelving is like laundry and cooking.  No one notices if you do it, but everyone notices if you don’t.  It is an ongoing task that never ends, except maybe on June 30th.  Shelf arrangements impact this routine a lot.  They need to be logical and the T-L needs to be willing to change things around to make them work better.  You also have to consider signage and accessibility.  Don’t put picture books too low, and don’t put Teen books together with the early reader novels.  In my school, I developed a system called ‘Adopt-a-shelf”.  I have parent volunteers adopt one shelf to maintain during the school year.  They pop in to the library whenever they have a minute and put books away that belong on their shelf and tidy it up.  In the process, they shelf read.  Some parents who started out adopting a shelf have now become regular volunteers and I call them my shelving fairies.  I arrive after lunch and ‘poof’ all the books are off the trolleys and put away.  Magic.  I rarely have to shelve a book, nor does our main librarian.

Shelf-reading – The process of checking library shelves book by book to make sure they are in order.  Lost materials can be found, candidates for weeding pulled and order can be kept.  This should be done regularly.  At my school, it is, because of the ‘Adopt-a-Shelf’ volunteers.

Mending and Repair – this is also an ongoing activity.  It’s important to do, as resources are expensive to replace.  If a book comes back really damaged, I have the child pay for it.  If it is due to poor binding, I usually have to toss it, and get another copy.  Some of the Scholastic materials are poorly bound, but they’re not too costly to replace. Sometimes, the cost of the library tape and my time makes it more economical to purchase a new copy.  Rebinding is seldom done now.

Inventory – This seems to be a daunting task.  It is one that I have never been part of.  I would need a lot of time and a portable scanner.  I know we have a lot of missing books, but I’m not sure how many would be found by doing inventory.  I should ask my district librarian for advice on this.

Weeding and Discarding – ‘Deselecting’ materials gets rid of worn out, dated, unappealing, duplicated, and in our case ‘smelly’ books.  I’m sure there are studies that show a well weeded library actually has bigger circulation and happier patrons. The year I started teaching at my school, the library was being weeded and it looked and felt so much better afterwards.

Withdrawing records – The advice is to not delete the record of an item if it is just lost.  However, if it remains missing for 2 years, go ahead and delete it.  All records of it’s existence will be removed from your library database.  However, if other schools still have copies, it will remain in the system, just not at your school.

All of these are important parts of post cataloguing.  I think the weeding area is really critical and too often not done.  It makes a big difference to how the materials get used and ensures an active, appealing and relevant library.

Chapter 16 of Intner and Weihs (pg. 275-280):  Key points

This chapter discussed different components of managing a cataloguing department of a library.  It talked about both tasks to do and needed skills.  I tried to convert the information to make it relevant to the job of  Teacher-librarian, where we are, indeed, the department manager.  Here are the skills I need to develop:
• Communication skills: knowing what to do is not enough.  Knowing how to get others to help requires good communication. I need to explain to my volunteers and student helpers the process and my expectations and standards for the different tasks I will have them do.
• Political skills: advocating for what I need in the library and computer lab, explaining the benefits of the tools and how to use them, asking for funding and justifying the use of that money, making the volunteers feel good about their contribution to the school, building support for the ongoing needs of the library and lab.
• Financial skills: Knowing what budget money is available, spending it wisely, and keeping track of the spending and the balance.  Organizing the paperwork for book fairs and for submitting receipts.  Learning how to complete the on-line accounts for my new district credit card.
• Leadership skills: Apart from the leadership involved in teaching 420 students and interacting with 45 staff, I need to be a decision maker and a goal setter.  I need to anticipate needs, see what improvements need to be made, set goals to meet those needs and make decisions to accomplish tasks.  One area I need to improve upon is to make quicker decisions so that things don’t pile up so high on my desk.

This lesson talks about the Digital Resource collection in a library and how it is organized, catalogued and classified. By digital resources, this lesson is refering to Internet resources that are purchased for the library. They are not physical and do not require a call number, but they do have classification numbers assigned by the Library of Congress. While they are in the catalogue, they have to be searched by title and serial title which limits the ability for finding digital resources on the Internet.

Any internet resource is classified by Computer file or Electronic Resource.

One benefit of Electronic information in schools is that it tens to not be outdated. However, we must have the knowledge to know how to access the most up-to-date and trustworthy information for our students.

I looked at the Prince of Wales library web site. It is quite amazing. I read over their research help page and how to do searches with interest. This is an area I’d like to work on for my final project. I had seen the Elementary Yukon site before as well. It is really a good one and these two sites can serve as a model for some of the information I’d like to include on my website.

This lesson discussed search techniques and how search engines used to rely completely on boolean method which had to be learned and taught. Now, most engines use regular language, but that poses some problems too. I read with interest that “Google’s database is only indexing 10% of the new sites appearing every day.” In my opinion, this is a strong reason why we should be teaching search skills to students that involve other search engines and especially databases.

One problem that arises when trying to catalogue or organize digital resources it that no specific data was required on a web page for identification, contrary to specific rules set in place for books. We know that the books have to have identifiers such as Title, Author, Publisher . . . all the elements of the ISBD. Books, DVDs, CDs and Videos also have a DDC or LCC call number. Web sites do not have any bibliographic standards in place for posting a page on the Internet.

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is promoting online metadata standards. This initiative is designed to make resources and information on the Internet easier to find. It sounds to me like they are creating a set of ‘tags’ like a MARC record designed for digital resources. there are 15 core elements and 70 identifiable elements that can be used. The lesson lists the 15 core elements, many of these are the same as for books. One would need specialized training in this area to catalogue digital resources. These skills would likely not be part of a teacher-librarian’s field of expertise especially since it requires HTML (Hypertext markup language) tagging or XML (EXtensible Markup Language).

This is definitely a new are of learning for me. I liked the summary of these two languages. “..it is most likely that XML will be used to describe the data, while HTML will be used to format and display the same data.”

Lesson 9 also introduces the concept of the ‘Semantic Web”. This is an initiative that helps organize digital information as will be used to describe, automate, integrate and reuse data across various applications.  I don’t pretend to understand what this entails and how it works, but at least I have been introduced to the terms.

The two main components of subject cataloguing are

Subject heading work : assigning headings from a standard list and creating cross references

Classification :  assigning numbers from a standard list and completing the shelf call number for the item.

•User focused headings are important.  Subject headings should use common, recognizable terms
• Use the controlled vocabulary given in the Sears list and LC Subject headings references.
• Terms are updated regularly to reflect changes in society and knowledge.  However, they are not updated in the official headings until they are sure the new terms will ‘stick’.  Examples of this would be ‘blogging, podcasts’ and often other terms related to the quickly changing technology.
• Authority control means the unity and uniformity present in subject headings.  Terms are consistent and do not change with the whim of the cataloguer.  This ensures that all materials on a certain subject will be able to be found in the same place.
• Subject headings are assigned to all resources in the library, even if it’s only one subject.
• Some materials are classified by form, but then have sub-classifications.  Eg. Poetry-Bears.

The lesson explains in details the different components of the Sears List of Subject headings, which I won’t go into here as it is quite detailed.

•School libraries tend to use the Abridged Sears to make topics simpler and clearer for patrons.
•Topical subdivisions are common and useful for limiting scope or expanding on a subject.  There are some common and standard types of subdivisions – often related to form, dates, geographic location or specific animals.
• Canadian subjects – use the Canadian Companion version of the Sears List.  However, the American spelling is mostly used to ensure consistency in finding resources.  They are often linked to the Canadian spelling: color (colour).

Fleharty, Carrie, and Sheila Smith. “User-Friendly Libraries.” Library Media Connection 26.1 (2007):
22-23. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. 3 July 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/
login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=26059440&site=ehost-live>.

Resources consisting of perfectly arranged catalogues with exacting bibliographic data and precise subject headings neatly arranged in meticulous Dewey Decimal order do NOT make a good library.-N.Marion

The title of this article really caught my eye.  “User-Friendly” is a term we often come across when learning about computer software, not libraries.  However, isn’t that our ultimate goal? To create a library that is easy for the user, not to mention a warm and friendly place to be?  As a new Teacher-Librarian, I was interested to see if this article would give me good pointers on how to create such a library in my school.  One of the schools I taught at had a librarian that would not let the children look at any books during rainy day lunches in the library.  They had 40 minutes in there during inclement weather and could only color, draw or write, but don’t read!  She didn’t want them pulling books off her neatly arranged shelves.  I was horrified and vowed never to be like that if I ever worked in a library.

The opening paragraph of this article almost replicates my experience, with a child being yelled at to not mess up the books.  The child never wanted to come back to the library and who could blame her?

Patrons need to feel welcome, and we have an obligation to make our library user-friendly. The authors state “libraries are in business to be used.” They then outline a number of ways to make a library space more welcoming and easier to use.

Furniture Matters:
• Placement of the circulation desk is important.  You want it visible upon entrance to the library and easily accessible.
• Table arrangements should be useful land, ideally, flexible.  You must try to provide a large group area as well as small group or independent work spaces.
• Look into different kinds of seating if your budget allows for it.

Signage
• Signs help patrons locate materials on their own and can make it a more attractive space. Use arrows to indicate location as well as they can draw the eye to the sign.
• Signs don’t have to be made with words. Consider putting a visual representation on the top shelf in some sections.  For example put a stuffed dinosaur on the top shelf of the dinosaur section, or a space ship above the space section.
• Don’t forget to consider the other languages.  In our library, we should make sure to have French signage as well.

Display
• Display books, artifacts, promotional materials and student work.
• Use a variety of different surfaces for display – walls, small tables, book trucks.  I’m even thinking about a wagon, or empty sand box, or beach towel that could make a great visual display.

Putting Technology in its place
•  Place computers where you can see the screen and where you can fit in between chairs to help students.  Consider how the cables will be positioned.

Storage
• An alternative to expensive cabinetry to house big books would be a small fake wall with a closet rod.  Hang big books by strong clips from clothes hangers.

Little things make a big difference
• Keep the library clean and orderly.  Align book spines to the front of the shelves.  They get lost if pushed too far back.
• Include quiet spots to curl up with a good book
• Know and understand your patrons.  Personal touches and recommendations make a difference

Access
•  Keep the library open (as much as possible).  This is the best way to promote easy access to the library resources.
• Be the librarian that invests time and effort to collaborate with students and staff and to purchase materials that you know will be useful and therefore accessed by the patrons.
• Know what your teachers are teaching so that you can gather resources for them or show them what’s available.
• Send out new book lists, cool web sites to help promote the library.
• Smile, listen, use positive facial expressions and body language.  Offer help without being asked.  In short, be the accessible and user-friendly librarian.

While this article is filled with common sense advice, it bears repeating.  Our libraries are made up of much more than books.  They have people, furniture, cabinets, signs, and in my case even a tarantula!  All of these things have to work together to create an environment that is warm, welcoming, useful and easy to access.  The teacher-librarian is the key component in creating this kind of environment.  First, with his or her personality, and second, with the physical environment.  Without these factors, even the best-catalogued material will lay stagnant, lonely, and dusty on the shelves.

Article  2 – “The Future of Cataloging”

When looking for interesting articles for this activity, I came across a fascinating presentation by Tim Spalding, the creator of LibraryThing.  It is called the Future of Cataloging and can be found at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4genpc-DZs4&feature=related

While this is not a written article, published in a respectable, peer reviewed journal, it is certainly of great interest and information for librarians today, especially those of us who are interested in new and emerging technologies.  I have chosen to do one of my article reviews based on these two videos (18 minutes in total).

LibraryThing is a social network for bibliophiles.  You catalogue your books on the site and the books you have connect you with other people.  There are 28 million books catalogued with 450,000 registered users (as of July 2008).   Users of this site often start out using it as a personal cataloging of their own materials, but then it leads to social networking and then leads to ‘social cataloging’.

One of the wonderful things about this site is that the ‘catalogers’ have all read the books and can create accurate tags and descriptions that aren’t just based on the back of the book or the flap copy.  They aren’t restricted by rules and standards of Marc 21 or AACR2.  Members volunteer to take the time to input their information into LibraryThing to give others access to this information.  Regular users take time to combine and link related works.  Authors are linked with their pseudonyms.  New tags are created that don’t exist in the LCCN, but according to Spalding, are just as real and relevant to users.  One example he gave is the subject tag ‘paranormal romance’ which doesn’t exist in the library of congress, but has been used almost 8000 times by about 500 users. They have something called tag mashes, which, when tags are combined, will find materials that users have tagged with both of these terms. In LibraryThing, users also contribute comments and reviews about material they have in their personal libraries.

Relevancy is built into LibraryThing.  When you search a tag or subject area, the items that have been tagged with that word by the most users are listed first, unlike the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) when all items have the same relevancy in a category.

LibraryThing is based on freely sharing information.  It is based upon a free operating system, free programming language, and a free database system.

The speaker spends time comparing traditional cataloguing with emerging new, living cataloging that is being demonstrated, used and authored every day by readers.  He is not against traditional cataloguing or standards in any way, however he does find it limiting if it is the only source of referencing books.

I found this presentation to give a very new and interesting perspective that balances out the exacting tasks of cataloguing that I have been learning about in LIBE 465.

I believe there is a place for communal cataloguing in our future, but I also believe that the standards established in the AACR2 and Marc 21 play an important role.  One needs to figure out how to use both of these tools to have a complete and rich view of available resources and which one fulfills our needs at the moment.

Article 3 – “Chief Thingamabrarian”

Rethlefsen, Melissa L. “Chief Thingamabrarian: LJ talks to mastermind of the LibraryThing web site,  bookhound Tim Spalding.”Library Journal 15.1 (2007). 2 July 2, 2009 <http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6403633.html>

As I became interested in the topic of LibraryThing and Tim Spalding, I searched blogs and online sources that referred to them.  There were many, but I found some information that completes the above presentation.  So, I have also drawn in information I got from an interview with Tim Spalding which can be found at libraryjournal.com

This article summarizes LibraryThing in the following way,

“LibraryThing offers avid collectors and casual readers alike a way to keep track of personal book collections easily and find and connect with others whose libraries are similar, as well as get recommendations for books to read based on a personal library or a single book.”

It relys on data from the Library of Congress and Amazon and over 30 other library catalogs, but it also depends on user-generated content.  Tags play a large role in the make-up of LibraryThing, but they also use Library of Congress (LC ) standard subject headings to enhance records and they believe that the two can exist side by side (folksonomy and taxonomy). He speaks in more detail about the way the tagging works in the system and how it creates a hierarchy, but allows ‘odd’ tags so that individuals can be specific in their personal collections – perhaps about where it is in their house, or whom they’ve loaned it to.

Some small libraries use LibraryThing as their main catalogue.  Tim Spalding does acknowledge that it is not yet ready to be widely used in public libraries.  One reason is that there need to be improvements in the non-book cataloguing such as DVDs and CDs.

Two things they were working on at the time of this article was ‘library widgets’ that can be added to library web pages to give their catalog book recommendations, ratings, reviews and tags.  Another project is the ‘LibraryThing Tag Consortium’ (they are looking for a better name) that will harness the power of LibraryThings’ nearly ten million tags and be able to be sold to OPACs as a very useful addition to their systems.

I am becoming quite interested in these companions to cataloguing that are emerging in the library and technology world and look forward to seeing how they will be integrated or implemented in the future.

Here is the summary of key points in this lesson that were meaningful to me.

Introduction to the Library Catalogue

•    Teacher librarians are considered specialists.  “They have the knowledge to identify the best resources in their collections and adapt them to the unit plans and research of teachers and students in their schools.”  We bring together the information to make it useful for our ‘patrons’.

•    The library catalogue is essentially a list.  But it is highly organized and functional.  It provides a record of what’s there and it provides access to those resources.

•    “The catalogue in a school library has a new and valuable purpose.. to assist students in developing and mastering information literacy skills.”

•    It’s really important that the catalogue be user-friendly so that students can access it themselves and know how to find resources quickly and easily.

•    Catalogues should not require time-consuming and costly maintenance from the T-L.  Our budgets are better spent on materials rather than processing.

•    The essential functions of a library catalogue are Identifying (inventory), Locating, and Collocating.

In the article, it said that school libraries have been automated since 2001.  That is NOT TRUE.  North Vancouver is still in the process of automating, and many elementary schools are still using the card catalogue and manual sign-out procedures.  My husband’s school with a population of over 600 K-7 students in deep cove is not being automated until January 2010.

What is cataloguing?

•    It is an exacting task (don’t I know it!) requiring the knowledge of precise rules and accepted formats.  It is the process of creating a record describing an item.

•    It has 3 components:  Precataloguing (how do I proceed?  Can I copy-catalogue it? Do I have to send it in?), Cataloguing (Creating the record from scratch or duplicating an existing record) and post cataloguing (stamping, taping, labeling as well as maintaining the record).

Precataloguing Process

•    Each school district has different procedures with this.  In North Vancouver, the schools that are automated have access to existing records already in the school catalogues.  We scan the ISBN of the item, and if it exists in any school, we can add a copy, scan a new barcode and then print off a spine label.  The process is quite quick and simple once you’ve done it a few times.  If we have a resource that no other school has in their system, it is sent to Central Cataloguing where we have a professional cataloguer to do the job.  He knows all the standards that our district has put in place and it really works well for consistency in cataloguing.

Additional Reading:  Chapter 2 of Intner and Weihs.  Decisions.

This chapter goes into quite a bit of depth about all of the decisions that have to be made in order to have something go from being purchased to being ready for circulation. It stresses the importance of following the exacting rules of cataloguing, especially when it comes to the bibliographic description, so that it can be readily found, and also so that it can be collocated with other related materials.

The first cataloging decision relates to description of the material. The chapter explains the various levels of Description in a record with the 1st level of cataloguing being the most basic, to the 3rd level being the most detailed. Most school libraries produce somewhere between level one and two.

The second decision is how to choose the right subject headings.  These cannot just be made up out of the air.  There are standard lists that have all the subject descriptors from which to choose.  The two resources are the Sears list of Subject Headings (Sears) and the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and their Canadian counterparts.  Sears has broader, simpler subject headings that are widely used in schools.  Some specialized library collections use other resources for their subject headings.

The third decision relates to which system of classification to use.  Most elementary and secondary schools in BC use the Dewey Decimal system of classification.  Most universities libraries use the Library of Congress system.  This main decision has already been made in our library, however, there are still decisions to make regarding the item’s call number.  Local policies dictate the format of the spine label and call numbers.

The fourth decision is about how you are going to organize and shelve the materials in the library and whether you should interfile materials.  The authors state that materials circulate more when they are grouped together in their subject area, regardless of their form.

** I think that the decision about where to place materials is critical in the elementary library.  When we interfiled our paperbacks and hard cover picture books together, the circulation went way up.  We also started putting series in baskets to make them easier for students to find and that has worked very well.  The next area that really needs attention is the teacher resource section.  It is poorly located and not well used at all.  This definitely needs to be re-done and I’m starting to think about how to go about that.

Lesson 6 focuses on how to construct a Dewey Decimal number for an item at hand.  The basic answer is:

1.  Consult the relative index of the DDC book  

2.  Choose the one you think will fit

3. Cross reference your choice using the ‘schedules’ to see if it is correct/appropriate.

You have to know the difference between the index, schedules, and how to use the tables.  I don’t know any of these things yet, as I have never seen a copy of the full DDC.  I have an old abridged version, but I haven’t really studied it yet.

The lesson also explains that you can ‘build’ your numbers by joining 2 different subjects together and separate the letters with the decimal.  This is especially useful when dealing with dictionaries or encyclopedias that deal with specific subject areas.  You wouldn’t want to lump all the dictionaries together when their subjects are so varied, so you could catalogue it primarily in its subject area and then add the suffix that indicates that it’s a dictionary or biography, etc. There are also tables that have subdivisions from which you can build your final Dewey classification number.  School libraries use these in a limited way, as they usually use a simpler form with fewer numbers after the decimal.

While most materials are classified by ‘subject’ in the DDC, there are many materials that can be classified by ‘form’ rather than content.  Examples of these are encyclopedias, biographies, poetry, music.  These can either be put in the form and then classified by kind, or by the subject.

In this lesson, there is a lot of information about different tables, that are not widely used in school libraries, but it’s good for us to know that these exist and that they are used to build numbers for the library.

One thing I found interesting is that the DDC is always changing as knowledge changes and expands.  For example, in the recent edition, there are new numbers added for topics such as ‘virtual reality’, ‘digital production’, ‘markup language’ (eg.html) and ‘digital media’.  These topics certainly did not exist when Dewey put together his system.  Fortunately, the way the Dewey Decimal system works, there is always room for expansion of subjects – although you may end up with lots of numbers after the decimal.  Sometimes, a whole category is reassigned to a different base number to provide room for additional expansion.

The extra reading was from Intner and Weihl’s book on pg 278:  Ten Hints for Good Cataloging Management.  I have the edition of the book where this is a complete list and I found it very informative and encouraging.   I do not have to create original cataloging at my school (I can do copy-cataloging from our ‘union’ catalogue).  Even still, I really appreciated a number of points made that are still very relevant to me.