Organization

The Happily Ever After Collection contains a marvelous selection of picture books, which we hope our patrons will find useful and inspiring.  In order to facilitate the discovery and use of these books, we have striven to organize both the physical collection and its digital representation in our catalog in a way that will be understandable and useful to the educators, storytellers, and writers we serve.   

Physical Collection

Imagining Literacy’s resources are organized using Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), which is the system most commonly used by school and public libraries in our community.  Deciding how to organize the Happily Ever After Collection within the Dewey framework was no small task.  The DDC assigns Fairy tales, folk tales, and nursery rhymes the general call number 398.2.  There are many ways to add Cutter numbers to further organize works within the section, but we wanted to ensure that we selected a method that would be meaningful and useful to our patrons.

To determine how to best assign Cutter numbers, we first had to determine our needs.  Since patrons come to Imagining Literacy to both find specific resources and browse, we wanted call numbers that were short and simple enough for users and staff to easily find but that also grouped like items with like items. Additionally, we wanted a system that reflected the multi-cultural nature of our user population.  Research led us to the system used at the Lawrence Public Library in Kanas, which we feel will meet our criteria.

The books in Happily Ever After Collection are divided first by continent of origin, then country and/or cultural group of origin, and then by either the original collector of the stories or the main character (Arthur, Robin Hood). For the sake of readability, we decided to designate the continent using the Dewey assigned number and the country and collector using text on the spine labels.

Using this method Susan Jeffers Cinderella is labeled:

398.2094

France

Perrault

Jerri Oughton’s How the Stars Fell into the Sky: A Navajo Legend is labeled:

398.2097

US NATIV

NAVAJO

Although title is not included on the spine label, books are further organized on the shelves alphabetically by title. 

Digital Representation

The metadata for the Happily Ever After Collection is organized using the MARC 21 format.  Most of Imagining Literacy’s MARC records are obtained from OCLC and are easily adapted to work with our online catalog.

Imagining Literacy draws from many of the fields contained in our MARC records to create a user-friendly and accessible catalog, but one of the most important fields is 083 (Additional DDC Number), which allows us to include our specially designed Dewey call number in each item’s record.  The data in this field is used to create virtual shelves in our online catalog that mirror our physical shelves, giving our patrons the ability to browse remotely.

Data taken from our MARC records is also used to create the records displayed for each item in our online catalog.  Catalog records include: Title, Author Name, Illustrator Name, Publisher, Publication Date, Edition, ISBN, Language, Original Collector or Creator, Summary, Physical Description, Call Number, Reading Level, Library of Congress Subject Headings, and Children’s Subject Headings.

Our online catalog not only pulls from our MARC records to create item records, but pulls from third parties as well.  When available, published reviews, information about the author and illustrator, and video links to author readings are also included in online catalog entries.

References

Lechliter, Camille M.  “Re-doing Dewey’s Fairy Tales.” Kansas Library Conference, 2 April 2009. Wichita, Kansas. n.p., n.d., Web. 19 Nov. 2012. http://www.kslibassoc.org/pdf/re-doingdewey.pdf

“Children’s Subject Headings (CSH) List.”  The Library of Congress. 4 Jan. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. http://www.loc.gov/aba/cyac/childsubjhead.html

“MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data.” Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office. Sept. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2012 http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdhome.html

Mitchell, Joan S. and Diane Vizine-Goetz. “Dewey Decimal Classification.” Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3^rd ed. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Dublin, Ohio. 2010. 1507-1517. Web.