As a cataloger, I have always been a big fan of "Killing Dewey", which doesn't mean that Dewey be eliminated from the library world, because that is both unnecessary and impossible. However, based on the local context, individual libraries should explore other possibilities other than Dewey Decimal Classification (or maybe Library of Congress Classification) or maybe find new ways to use these legacy standards. There was a great article published in the Library Journal in 2009 talking about some of the approaches US libraries had taken to deal with DDC and accompanying discussions. In some of the cases mentioned in the article, DDC was not killed, rather, it was reinforced or mixed with bookstore classification to become more user-friendly.
However, after that, the discussion of replacing/augmenting DDC has not been as active as I expected. Not until recently, did I read another article on the Digital Shift about how an elementary school library gave up Dewey Decimal Classification this summer. The big change in the library was because the librarians realized that "classification is really just a series of compromises that inevitably results in a less than perfect solution". As a result, the library adopted a much broader classification scheme, moreover, the new classification system "group books by how subjects are taught". Kudos to these librarians!
That is definitely one of the examples about "how library catalog can support learning" after this week's 511 class, in which Professor Lankes talked about theories of knowledge creation. I do think philosophical rethinking of classification as what he did is interesting. Though some level of reductionism and objectivism is inevitable and necessary for anyone to understand the world, approaching toward constructionism is good for both the libraries and the members. (Sorry for all these "-ism" words.)
Being flexible and user-friendly (or even user-generated) is always a solution here. Arranging resources by the actual use of these resources, rather than by the classification system is an idea worthy exploring. Just like the "virtue shelves" idea proposed in Professor Lankes' book, maybe a library can form subject groups (like tourism, cooking in public libraries, and anthropology, history in academic libraries), and letting these library members/experts to organize all the resources relevant to this area.
On the other hand, some of the great ideas mentioned in "Everything is Miscellaneous" written by David Weinberger may work here. With more and more virtual resources are subscribed or bought by libraries (Bookless library!), the order for libraries to organize physical resources (aka, library classification) will no longer be relevant in the future. It's not hard to notice the huge differences between the physical library shelves and online catalogs.
I was trying hard not to cross the line of cataloging and classification when I wrote this post. However, I was reminded of the "putting lipstick on pigs" discussion several years ago about whether OPAC 2.0 was necessary. In this term, I do feel that some of the "OPAC 2.0" solutions are awesome. (In case you don't know about the whole "OPAC 2.0" thing, you can see this presentation given by Mr. Dave Pattern. But on the other hand, even if you have never heard about "Library 2.0", I think it's totally fine, because people no longer talk about it. And people are talking about "discovery platform" rather than "OPAC X.0", which for me is basically the same thing.) But I totally agree that pigs with lipstick are still pigs. Like library website ("No one started their information search on a library Web site" as stated by the famous "Library Perception 2010" report), we should try to deliver our metadata in other platform that people actually are using. (Every time I thought about this issue, I was reminded of this blog post written by David Lee King.)
One revolutionary movement in the classification area is the linked data movement. With more and more institutions publishing their subject headings/classification systems as linked data (like Library of Congress' Subject Heading and classification, OCLC's FAST and even Dewey Decimal Classification!), these former library-centered data can be used by a bigger community, especially by the Internet community to truly organize not only resources owned by the libraries, but actually all the resources in the world.
This vision is awesome, though much more works need to be done before we arrive there. One thing that I recommend everyone to pay attention to is the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group. This program suggests that libraries can play a really important role in tomorrow's Internet world. Libraries are no longer the only knowledge center in the world, but we can use our expertise and metadata to become one node in the new knowledge landscape, which is an important one and can make major contributions to everyone.
To borrow the famous sentence: library classification will be dead, long live information organization!
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