Comments on: Who Really Likes Dewey, Anyway?

By: NotMarianTheLibrarian

NotMarianTheLibrarian — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:41:32 +0000

Werfel, I like your “leadering”! I always think of it in terms of my “avoiding stepping in the management.” The best supervisors I ever had were incredibly low-key and believed in the abilities of their employees. Alas, those are few and far between – idiots/morons/dopes who rose above their level of incompetence are the norm.

By: Werfel

Werfel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:10:37 +0000

Looks like PostModern Librarian was right. Going to the shelves and finding the book is the problem, not Dewey.

I’d bet that most of these libraries going without Dewey either have a new director or a director determined to make a name for him or herself at all costs. Said director goes to a conference or a meeting or reads an article and has an “idea”, comes back determined to do some “leadering”. As a staff person – either you get “on board” or else. Very little discussion follows, the decision is made. It’s not really about serving the public, that’s just the excuse to implement radical change. Of course the director won’t have to actually implement the change – that will be some poor minions job.

By: Dewey Rocks

Dewey Rocks — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:36:41 +0000

Simple, flexible, familiar, logical. If more librarians actually worked with the books in the collections they might appreciate Dewey a little more. Changing is for folks who know nothing about opportunity costs – if you have time to reconsider your system and the resources to change it, you need to redirect your energies to something useful or give the money back to the taxpayers and quit being a vampire…..Stress level rising! Librarianship so difficult! Underpaid! Nonfulfilling! By definition, you are all surplus labor. The Chinese were onto something when they made all the professionals go dig ditches for a few years. I taunt heckle all of the stressed librarians out there, find a real job and quit trying to become a victim!

By: Post Postmodern Librarian

Post Postmodern Librarian — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:35:38 +0000

ok so the only thing we got is the students have to a: figure out if what type of search they are doing but Amazon just spits it out for them. b: students are forced to actually learn the subjects of their field of study. I am waiting for 3 more.

By: NotMarianTheLibrarian

NotMarianTheLibrarian — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:26:01 +0000

If libraries cannot adapt to expectations of users, there is no hope for us. The Amazon model is, in my opinion, where we need to go. Do we exist for ourselves or our users? I think the latter. Lots of students, having been shown how to navigate the God-awful OPAC, find locating the books a breeze, despite the Dewey numbers.

I see the value in controlled vocabulary. Maybe 1 in 50 students can. I see it over and over again – students would rather sort through 100 iffy citations than learn how to do their research more effectively and sort through 15 extremely relevant citations. My skin thickened a long time ago – if they want to slave away at research, that’s their problem and it’s their time. I spend my time teaching them tricks to reduce their 100+ hits to a more reasonable number – limit to scholarly (gotta explain that to lots of them), limit to full text, limit to English, etc.

By: Techserving You

Techserving You — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:46:32 +0000

Well, I think that the vast majority of libraries – even very wealthy ones – still do not have OPACs that have an option to enter search terms in just one field, as amazon does. Instead, patrons/students have to select Title, Author (which are self-explanatory, of course, but not usually helpful if you don’t already know exactly what book you want) Keyword, or Subject (and sometimes other options) before searching. Keyword and subject are actually not self-explanatory. What field would the keywords be in? How am I supposed to know that the subject is a controlled vocabulary? Some students find those options – particularly subject, when they enter something that is so ‘wrong’ that the OPAC doesn’t prompt them with the ‘right’ subject – to be very confusing. Yet, you have to use those options to do any sort of research where you don’t know what the library has on your topic. (Basic bibliographic instruction should help but the students usually zone out.)

By: Post Postmodern Librarian

Post Postmodern Librarian — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:27:36 +0000

Ok honestly can someone give me 5 differences between a recently designed OPAC and Amazon. Or is it just that the students/people are just lazy. I think what is confusing people is actually having to get the book. With Amazon you say yes pay your bill and it hopefully shows up at your door. With a library you actually get a call number and walk over there to get it. I am willing to bet if a person was given an Amazon warehouse guide or however they track the orders, they would be just as frustrated. Maybe we should redesign the libraries and include a fitness center

By: Dr. Pepper

Dr. Pepper — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:51:20 +0000

Random thought….
So…

if bibliodata (cataloguing) is offered by the vendor…no need for cataloguers.

if the reference desk is now the ‘IT help desk with some reference assistant’ and we don’t need reference librarians…

if acquisitions is now a business process….

What do we need librarians for?

Just a rhetorical question – I don’t have an answer

By: Dr. Pepper

Dr. Pepper — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:49:02 +0000

LOL @notMarionTheLibrarian. Sometimes when I write in a different script (Greek or cyrilic) I get those crazy accented characters if the system can’t support it :-) It might be Greek ;-)

By: NotMarianTheLibrarian

NotMarianTheLibrarian — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:13:23 +0000

Oh Techserving You! I like our catalogers but not enough for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! The outsourcing option would give them a severe fit of the vapors.

And Bulat? I have no idea how to respond to your comment. It isn’t even Greek to me.