Freeing Dewey

We have completed our conversion–all of our books in the adult collection are Dewey Free that’s some 29,000 volumes. Pic of the last book to be converted

and of the project co-coordinators.

Hope this blog has been a useful tool for following our progress. Thank you for all your feedback!

Since beginning this project, we have been aware that somewhere down the line we would have to redesign our temporary signs.  This past week, we finally selected our color scheme and design for our endcap signs.  We opted to use 12 colors. Each subject collection will be assigned a color based on its location in the layout, and will share that color with at least four other collections. Assigning a different color to each collection has proved to be ineffective as we have over 60 collections that means over 60 colors. I’m sure you can image the colorful chaos.

We decided to use these colors:

Example of a sign:

We also made some progress on our digital layout map.
LAYOUT MAP

We have been creating maps in Illustrator and updating them as necessary.  However, we want something a bit more fluid in an electronic version that can be placed on our library PCs,  so when someone looks for a book they can simple click on the layout map in order to find the given subject collection.

We are investagating micromaps.com for that purpose.

As of May 3rd 2009 the following collections have been converted (grouped by location):

• Garden, Cooking, Wedding, Etiquette, Entertaining, Collectibles, Crafts, Home, Architecture, Art, Photography, Fashion, Music, Performing Arts, Computer
• Graphic Novels, Language Arts, Literary Criticism, Plays, Poetry
• Languages, True Crime
• Health, Fitness, Beauty, Psychology, Philosophy, Self-Help, Religion, Pets, Math, Science, Wildlife, Business, Personal Finance, Law, Parenting, Education, College, Test Prep, Career, Games, Sports
• True Crime, Genealogy

As of May 3rd 2009 the following collections are partially completed and/or have not been touched:

• Humor, Essays?
• Travel, US History, World History, Social Science, Political Science

Dewey de Frankfort may be located throughout the library.

Here are examples of our promotional materials.

1. The Button is available to patrons at the Reference Desk.

2. Staff, who elected to purchase Dewey de Frankfort T-Shirts, may be found anywhere at anytime.

3. Reference staff’s name tags display Dewey de Frankfort.

| View Show | Create Your Own

So you can get a better  idea of what the library looks like with this project underway!

Pictures of a few shifting days and signage for as the famous proverb suggests: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Dewey de Frankfort.

The essential purpose of this site will be to record the entire process of “freeing dewey” from the shelves at the Frankfort Public Library District. Thus, this blog is an attempt to vocally and visually present all parts of the process.  Scanned images, as well as, written concepts will be posted on this site as they are undertaken by the Project Coordinators – Melissa Rice, Head of Adult Services, and Joanna Kolendo, Reference Librarian – and other staff members.

We have been on our journey to Dewey-Free for several years.  From 2005-2007, we worked with Library Planning Associates, Inc. to examine our long-term service goals and space needs.  In 2007, we participated in a community survey and were 1 of 4 MLS libraries to participate in The Customer-Focused Library project.  These 3 projects clearly show that we need to make our patrons’ library experience efficient, service-focused, and inquisitive.

At the 12th Annual PLA conference, which took place March 25-29 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the staff of the Maricopa County Library District, discussed their new Dewey-Free Perry Branch.  Since then, the Frankfort Public Library has seriously discussed, not necessarily saying no to Dewey, but rather, slowly freeing him, something that we, as well as other libraries, have begun to do years ago with our biography and fiction collections.

On April 16, 2008, our Director, Detlev Pansch (now at Barrington Area Library), called a meeting to discuss this potential project.  As a group, we decided unanimously to forge ahead and begin this project.