Hi All!
I know that pretty much everyone here highly recommends the Dewy Decimal system of cataloguing but I'm looking to hear from church librarians who have small libraries and organize bookstore-style via categories.
Our library is very small - we do not have a library budget and don't anticipate receiving one. It's an existing library that has been neglected. I'm just wanted to organize it a bit and implement a simple manual self-checkout system (via an old fashioned notebook or binder system).
Starting from scratch, purchasing supplies for call numbers etc for our books seems like a much larger task than simply organizing by categories.
Thanks in advance for any feedback and testimonies that you would like to share!
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Replies
Marie Mays - Thank you for sharing. We use a similar system and are also Catholic so we wrestled with Saints vs Biographies, as well. Maybe someday we'll get around to moving books we originaly put in "Biography" that are on newly minted Saints into "Saints" but we really wanted to subdivide Biographies and split out the saints because it's a big section and one of our most popular subjects. Here's what we decided to put under Saints:
Thank you for sharing. In my research on Saints there are two dlassifications or categories: Martyrs:those who died for their faith after being persecuted; and Confessors: Those who lived holy lives in obedience to God's will and are now in heaven for eternity. This includes the titles of Venerable, Blessed, and Saint. That's seems to be a good place to simplify by subject matter. Biographies I am guessing is for anyone else. Popes we are keeping as a separate subject matter. I did go to our local Catholic Store to see how they handled Saints but they had no biographies. They put Saints into these classifications: General: by name and General: by author. That is also a simple solution. Thank you so much for your feedback and discussion. We are still inventorying our books and have grouped them by general subjects until we can complete this task and take a hard look at our next steps.
Hello,
We have been working on our small library that is housed in a small Conference/meeting room for a year and a half. It has about a thousand books. All of them are donated. We are using Sears Subject headings. We initially gathered and grouped together by the general subject titiles unique to our catholic faith. Since we are a Catholic Church the area's we have found challenging is Biographies vs. Saints. In our area, two other small Catholic Church libraries are having the same dilema. We all found that keeping the subject titles simple and using Libib Pro or Library Things apps helps with subject and inventory location as well as the benefit to create a Accession file that can be downloaded. Both apps are very good tools to use and recommend them. Scanning into these apps was very easy using your phone and populating onto a laptop. The USBN numbers are good for books dated after 1970 and 2007. There is a manual entry for older books. Current books in lending were more popular. We rejected the Dewey Decimal System as too secular for our distinct subject titles and use it as a source for subject reference. We use color stickers for most subject headings. Libib Pro can create spine QR stickers to put on book spines. But we found that colored stickers by subject titles sufficient for our small collection. You can glance at the colors and labels on the shelves to easily locate the books. On the Libib Pro App there is a lending component, as well as a publishing through your church website. It is still a work in progress but we feel we are on the right path. Keeping our library small, current and flexible is our goal to encourage discipleship, support our prayer ministies and bible study. I hope your library becomes successful to your faith community.
We have grouped our books by losely by following catagories Adult Fiction: Bibical fiction, Amish, Historical (anything before WWII), Contemporty fiction, Mystery/Suspense, EnTimes/SciFi, Action/Sports, Westerns (most of ours are romance but most anything that takes place W of Mississippi). Being unsure if would like/keep doing the books this way we didn't change labels but drew a line on the back near ISBN/barcode with a permanent marker - blue historical, red mystery/suspense and so forth. Also put the Mystery, SciFi and Action books near the door thus doubling the number of men that came in. They liked not having to look through shelves of romance to find something to read.
In Non-Fiction Bible -books & comentaries about the Bible or books in the Bible in general, books about God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, Prayer, Christian living, Family (marriage, kids, teens, anything else relating to family), Missions, Biographies, We had some cookbooks and craft books but since they were never checked out passed them on .
I know of a couple public school libraries that have mixed up fiction and non-fiction and have put the books in clear boxes/bins by subject say Firefighters or Dogs and the bins are turned on shelf so can see the front covers
Revisiting this old thread hoping for some input on what I think I would like to do with our chuch library. We are trying to revitalize a small, underused library and this is my plan for organizing in the bookstore style, having determined that Dewey decimal is not a great fit for us:
6 Main categories/zones (color coded with little circle stickers on the spine to make sure they are in their zone)
An example of a spine label would be like this:
Category
Subcategory
Author (first 3)
Main categories/zones will be color-coded and then subcategories will be shown on shelf labels. I would greatly appreciate any comments! Am I missing any categories or something else obvious? I am trying to implement a system of organization that will be easy for all ages in our congregation to follow and utilize (we don't have "library hours," so it's individual browsing and self-checkout). I would appreciate your feedback before I dive in.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and share your experience!
How many categories did you use? What about spine labels so the book goes back on the right shelf? I am beginning to think bookstore cataloging is good!
Thanks everyone. I am learning quite a bit. I like the keep it simple method!
I am a retired professional librarian so I am comfortable with Dewey. This discussion about Dewey has taken place in public libraries especially small libraries. But I don't like it and here's why and it's the same problem bookstores have. It is very imprecise. If you are busy and someone just says where are your biographies you can just wave your arm or your hand and say over there somewhere you can't say exactly where so you would have to consult a shelf list to know if anything was missing. Do we on the other hand, can be as broad or narrow as you need depending on the number of books you have in that subject area for fewer books your number just doesn't move a lot say 920 is for biography and then you would use the subjects name and file them alphabetically. However there is no rule or law you can catalog them anywhere you want!
I Would also add that the bookstore type cataloging is for browsing not for people who use a catalog.
We use Dewey. We put all the biographies in one place with B and the first three letters of the person's last name that is featured in the book. We do the same with putting all parenting books in one place with 649. All marriage books go with 306. All fiction for adults go in one place with F. Shelving has signs that are easily seen. This is our way of blending Dewey with Bookstore styles. It works great for us. We us Atriuum. We have a QR code in various places so people can use their phones to search our catalog.
I work in 2 church libraries. One uses bookstore style and the other Dewey (both about 3000 - 4000 items). I have come to detest Dewey for Christian books. The classifications are often just plain wrong. I use OCLC Classify on the web to try to clean up all the errors in how others have classified these books and that helps but, our patrons have a much easier time finding books using the bookstore system. I copied our bookstore system from another church library and think it flows logically as you browse the shelves. We wrote up good descriptions of each heading and some rules for debatable books to help us be consistent. I would be happy to share that with you, if you contact me (it's too long for posting here = 48 headings). I hope to someday move the Dewey library to a bookstore system, God willing.
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