Open Shelves Classification Update: What We Are Working On
Our first priority is to set the top level categories for the OSC.
Many ideas have been discussed in the thread on this topic, now it is time to test if these categories actually represent the holdings of public libraries.
We need volunteers to take the working list of top level categories listed in the wiki (http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.p...) and look at online catalogs for public libraries. Most online catalogs will allow you to search by Dewey Call Number, so Laena is going through and finding the correlating Dewey Numbers for each of the top level categories. She should be done this later today and will post the information to the wiki. Please search by Dewey Numbers correlated to our top level categories and then report on the wiki how many books turn up for each category. You will need to figure out how to search using wildcards in your catalog so that you turn up books will longer Dewey Numbers as well.Once we have this information, we can then evaluate if the working list of top level categories needs to be edited.
posted by david at 1:49 PM
2 Comments:
I don't know if this is a real concern or not, but I thought I'd mention it... just searching by simple Dewey in the call number search (i.e. 398.2) may not find all of the items classed in that area.
Why? Many public libraries use call number prefixes (i.e. J 398 for Juvenile, Y 398 for Youth, R 398 for Reference, etc.) and often the only call number search available is a call number browse. I know that this is the case at both my current and former places of work.
Why reinvent the wheel ? Dewey can be modified. You could even use the top level..science, etc. to pub materials in large categories. This is a waste of time.
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