2009-09-03
New shelving
During this spring, many university and college libraries have decided to follow the Royal Library and use the international classification system Dewey. Even so Blekinge Institute of Technology Library.
Most of the international books we purchase today already have a Dewey classification and we can just use it on the shelves aswell. This means that you may look for a numerical code for finding new books on the shelf.
All books with Deweycodes are presently on the same shelf, but as we move to the new numberbased system more and more shelves will be "Deweyshelves" with numbers.
We anticipate that it will take 5-10 years before we have moved from the Swedish SAB-system to Dewey and have all the old books reclassified and retagged (we have over 30 000 printed titles).
As for the Swedish material, eg what the BTH publishes, it will be more visible in the international library catalogs when it receives a Dewey classification. Here at BTH, we will begin to classify our publications according to Dewey as soon as we can.
Anna Stockman is the project manager for the Dewey transition at BTH library.
Facts:
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is the world's most widespread classification system for libraries. It is used in over 135 countries and has been translated into over 30 languages.
Dewey has ten main classes, each of which is divided into ten sub-classes, each class has an additional ten sub-classes, etc.
The system was created by American Melvil Dewey in the mid-1870s, and has since been published in 22 editions.
Source: The Swedish Royal Library
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