The Noble Dewey
Yes, I have to admit that I am somewhat of a Dewey fan. Why? I guess I was familiarized at an early age with Dewey and as long as I could sing the alphabet…doesn’t everybody do that while alphabetically searching?…I found it to be logical and orderly. When college struck my library searches, I found that I was a bit confused with the LC classifications. One course in cataloging did help but still, Dewey instructs me where to go.
Enter BISAC! (Book Industry Standards and Communications)
Not long ago I searched Barnes and Noble for travel guides for my trip to London. All I had to do was go to the travel section and find that BISAC was a purely topical, and easy, way of searching for my guides. But, how did I know that I was really seeing all that there was. Could I not go to another B&N and find more useful books, purely because they were in stock? I decided to search the Maricopa County Library (Perry Branch) on-line catalog to see how things looked in BISAC terms. I could see that doing a simple search for “Travel” (books) brought about 2879 matches. What was misleading was how few of these titles were actually available in the Perry Branch. This finding supports the aspect of how size and BISAC aren’t completely compatible for all libraries. Visiting the Gather No Dust blog, it was useful to see how things looked from their Perry Branch Library Tour page. I also appreciated that this blog touched upon “What works” and “What doesn’t work.”
I do believe that library branches can successfully please their patronage with a BISAC approach and atmosphere. Arizona is obviously in the fast lane for building branches. Could a large library support BISAC standards? Possibly with slow changes within newer collections, I’m thinking Graphic Novels and Teen materials. Would I feel that I am accessing all there really is available in my trip to a topical section? Probably not, especially if I’m in need of an in depth supply of research materials.
Another informative article I consulted about Dewey vs. BISAC in Maricopa was from The Wall Street Journal.
