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If you have visited the youth services department recently, you have probably noticed that there are a lot of empty shelves and there are new spine labels on the books. Well, the youth services staff is reorganizing and re-cataloging the nonfiction collection by subject instead of by the Dewey Decimal System. The collection is now under construction!

If you familiar with the organization of our picture book collection, you will find that the nonfiction will now be similarly organized. This is how the new system will work. Each nonfiction book in our collection will be placed into one of sixteen main categories represented by a letter of the alphabet. Within the main categories, books will then be placed within a subcategory and some will have a third grouping. For example, a nonfiction book titled “Bees: A Honeyed History” will be placed in the main category D for creatures, a subcategory of BUGS and then further grouped by BEES followed by the author’s name. The call number would be D BUGS BEES SOCH instead of X599.79 S678.The label on the spine will appear as shown here:

You may ask us "Why are you doing this?" Well, the youth services department believes that reorganizing the nonfiction books in this way will make the collection easier to browse by subject as well as having a label that is simple to read. Our goal is to make our youth services collections user friendly for our young patrons.

Another reason for saying goodbye to the Dewey Decimal System is because the system is dated and many libraries have been moving away from it, especially in youth collections. Melvil Dewey created the classification system in 1873 and it was published in 1876! He could not have possibly foreseen our modern technology. For example, if you browse the 600s of the collection, you will find cars, farming, mars missions, drones, engineering, cooking and pets. The Dewey system also contains many issues with racism, sexism, and homophobia. For instance, in the Dewey system, Black American history (in the 320s) is separated from American history (in 973). This is also the case for women’s history like the suffrage movement in America (in 324) instead of inclusion in American history. For more information on the issues surrounding the Dewey Decimal System, you can visit the following website at https://www.slj.com/story/move-over-melvil-momentum-grows-to-eliminate-bias-and-racism-in-the-145-year-old-dewey-decimal-system .

You may also ask "are we the first library to do this?" No, we are not the first public library to do this. Several libraries, big and small, as well as school libraries, around the United States have adopted a similar subject-based organizational system. However, yes, we will be the first library in Milwaukee County to do this! We are very excited to have our nonfiction collection reorganized and re-cataloged! Visit the library to see our progress and if you have any questions just ask us. We are always happy to help!

Here is a simple chart of the organization of the nonfiction collection.