The Fight of the Century: Dewey vs. Genre Classification Systems

Laudato, Maricar

Buchter, H. (2013). Dewey vs. genre throwdown. Knowledge Quest, 42(2), 50-57.

Summary

In this article, Holli Buchter outlines the overhaul of the Red Hawk elementary school library’s classification system from the Dewey Decimal System to an organization system based on genre named after her, the BCS (Buchter Classification System). In this system, fiction books are organized by genre, nonfiction books are organized by subject, and all “call numbers” on the spine are word based—there are no numbers. The result—it was a success with the entire community and circulation statistics across fiction and nonfiction titles went way up, especially when compared to neighboring schools that still utilized the DDC.

Evaluation

 

I’ve been talking about overhauling our classification system from Dewey to a subject specific one as well, but it terrifies me because I love being organized. A project of such magnitude would involve getting used to a large measure of chaos, especially in the beginning. I’m hoping to see if there are any local high school libraries who have done this already so that there is some type of model that our school library can refer to. It’s going to take a lot of teeth-pulling, however, to get a project like this approved!