Creating the Learning Commons
Course
Connecting Users with Information [9:30]
https://players.brightcove.net/2566261579001/HyuWsfFhb_default/index.html?videoId=4584650960001
About
The third step to creating the learning commons is to focus our day-to-day activities on connecting users with information and determing a way to present it to them, at their level, and on their terms.Transcript
The Dewey Decimal System is a wonderful classification system, but a very flawed access system, especially for our youngest users. Before I start talking about this, our first step was weeding our books, that means to be everybody's first step every year. These are my big two things for us all to keep in mind. Weeding is not about librarians, it's not about you and it's not about me. It's about our users and what they need to succeed today, so not what they needed ten years ago. And I know it's hard to get over that, that there are books that are only ten years old, that our students don't need anymore. So think about that, I know it's tough when we remember ordering in loving these certain books and they were really popular, but nobody's touched them anymore. So we need to think about what students and teachers need to succeed today.
The other thing to keep in mind when weeding, is an out-of-date print collection is a symbol of an out-of-date space. So, I'm always reminding myself of that, it helps me to read my books. After weeding, we went through our collection and we pulled titles that had frustrated and confused us and our users. Things like travel books in the 914s and country books in the rest of the 900s. There's the 958 to 959 shelf for example. It's Middle East and Asia country books, books about wars, memoirs, primary sources. All sorts of things mixed together on one shelf, but no travel books. So we started putting the books on the shelves, so that it would make sense to our users. For instance, we put all of the country books in alphabetical order. As we put the books in order, we wanted, we realized, we'd have to recatalog every single book. We decided to go with simplicity. We replaced the spine label with a new label that simply says "countries," and we file alphabetically by country name now.
We love it. We talk to teachers and students about this. Everyone loves it. No complaints at all. As we continued to go through this process, we chose headings based on books our high school students frequently asked us for. We had a lot of requests for decade books. Students were coming up to us and saying, "I'm looking for a book on the 1920s". When we asked them a follow up question like, "Are you looking for books on flappers or jazz music or fashion of the 20s?" They usually wanted to be able to browse all of them together. But we all know those books aren't shelved together. So we decided, in our library, that we'd pull books from all over the collection and put them together on the shelves in a way that would make sense to our students. The 1920s books all on one shelf, the 30s on the next shelf, and just like the country books, we knew we were going to have to recatalog almost every book on the shelf. I remember saying to my assistant, "We need to figure out a Dewey number that will get the 1920s before the 1930s. Most of these books were catalogued in 973.9 and then cuttered by the editor of the book, or the title of the book. It was never the 1920s.
I said, "We need a number that says ‘decades 1920s." So why assign a code when we could put exactly that. Our simplified system may not work for a large library, it definitely wouldn't work for a big huge library. But it works for us. We have around 12,000 books in our collection now. In the catalog, we kept it super simple. All of the books on the decade shelves have the call number "Decades." The surprising thing for us that we were not expecting at all, is students never use the catalog to find non-fiction books. They see the signs from across the library and they go right to the decade shelf. They don't have to stop and look it up first, we cut the whole step out of that process.
We tortured ourselves over what to put on the spine of the Shakespeare books. This was another frequently asked for resource. Some of our spine labels, we didn't even use words. They all used to be a 22.3 SHA. Now they have a picture of Shakespeare as the spine label, and a matching picture on the sign above the shelves. Students see this display from all over the library. Access to these frequently requested materials is immediate and seamless for our students. We have other sections with high interest books like how to survive, fun books, poetry, music, and sports.
For about a quarter of the non-fiction, we kept it in Dewey order, but we put subject signs and shelf labels up, so it's easy to browse. I know I have it good. I think our administration would have supported anything I suggested. When they saw me weeding and reclassifying, they thought we were getting rid of all the books and they were excited about the possibilities. We had these big discussions about what would that mean for our space, budgets, technology, access. But I still love reading print books and I know our students do, too, and I'm sure you see that every day.
Since I started sharing these ideas, I've talked to a lot of librarians about their collections. A lot of high schools have made poetry sections alphabetical by poet, not organized by origin of the poet. Elementary schools are doing incredible things. I have a librarian friend who has a Star Wars shelf. I love a Star Wars shelf. Another who has a holidays section where she includes fiction and non-fiction and has them sorted by holiday. Another has a dinosaurs section, alphabetical by dinosaur names. There's artists by artists names and animals by animal names. Some libraries are including subject signs over their shelves instead of Dewey System signs. Librarians are hanging a picture of a gorilla over the animal section, instead of the 599 indicator.
Our non-fiction book collection has become student-friendly. It fosters independence and it definitely promotes discovery. And circulation has more than tripled in the three years since we started this new system. I know that this is sometimes a divisive topic. But keep in mind, the 2009 Library Journal Study about why patrons have trouble finding non-fiction. Here are just a few quotes: 50% say call numbers are too complicated; 69% have trouble understanding the catalog; 34%, shelving categories don't pull together books they want to browse; 63%, want to go straight to the right shelf without having to look anything up; 66% feel intimidated by a system they don't understand, 7% rarely have trouble finding non-fiction. These are adults in a public library, not our youngest users. We all understand that the Dewey Decimal System is not a life skill. Evaluating a website for credibility, that's a life skill. We need to make decisions based on what's best for our students, not what's best for our librarians.
So, once again, imagine what it's like to walk into your learning commons for the very first time. Is the book collection uncluttered and neat? Are the books inviting, approachable for students? Do the books and displays inspire curiosity and discovery? Do the shelves have enough empty space for displays? Can students find books on their own? Take some time to think of small ways you could connect your users with information in new ways.
Activities
Lesson 3 is about connecting users with information. To explore this topic, Pam Harland describes the everyday process of students' finding books they need, with an emphasis on popular nonfiction topics for class assignments, like decades and countries. As Harland describes in the workshop, her school's library uses a hybrid of Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and genrefication for organization of books. This system is "student-friendly," and "fosters independence, and…promotes discovery."
Review the concluding statements from this workshop:
"So once again, imagine what it's like to walk into your learning commons for the very first time. Is the book collection uncluttered and neat? Are the books inviting, approachable for students? Do the books and displays inspire curiosity and discovery? Do the shelves have enough empty space for displays? Can students find books on their own? Take some time to think of small ways you could connect your users with information in new ways" (Lesson 3, 8:58).
Respond to these questions with a chart or list to organize your ideas.
Next, consider the organization of your school library's nonfiction section and how it meets the needs of your students. Harland offers the example of students' requesting a variety of topics on the 1920s, with browsability as a driving factor in co-locating this set of topics. Another common example in elementary libraries is shifting pets and wild animals to the same shelf, so that students looking for animals can find them all together. If your library currently uses the DDC, identify a nonfiction section or sections that might be ready for a new, more user-centered approach to organization. Suggest a new shelving system for this set of topics and provide the rationale. Use the graphic organizer found in the Resources below if it's helpful in thinking through the process.
Suggested User-Centered Update |
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Entry ID: 2122728
Additional Resources
About the Author
Select Citation Style:
MLA Citation
Harland, Pam. "Creating the Learning Commons. Connecting Users with Information [9:30]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1987400?learningModuleId=1987406&topicCenterId=2247903.
Chicago Citation
Harland, Pam. "Creating the Learning Commons. Connecting Users with Information [9:30]." School Library Connection video. November 2015. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1987400?learningModuleId=1987406&topicCenterId=2247903.
APA Citation
Harland, P. (2015, November). Creating the learning commons. Connecting users with information [9:30] [Video]. School Library Connection. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1987400?learningModuleId=1987406&topicCenterId=2247903
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1987400?learningModuleId=1987406&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 1987400