Dartington Library – Ditching Dewey

Introduction

I took the role of Librarian and Learning Resources Coordinator at Dartington Hall Trust because not only was it an ambition of mine to one day work for Schumacher College, which is based at Dartington, but it was also a chance to work with an interesting and unique collection which was raw and develop it.  I have three areas of work that are concerning me which I will outline here:

• Digitising the library catalogue;
• Classification of the collections; and,
• Dartington archive.

Digitising the library catalogue

I already knew that the library only had a card catalogue.  As I was appointed as the first professional librarian since 2010 when the Dartington College of Arts was merged with Falmouth University I should not have been that surprised.  Since 2010, volunteers and admin staff have been keeping the remaining library functioning.

I am therefore seeking the best Library Management System (LMS) for the library and have visited other libraries to find out which one would work best and offer good value for money.  My previous work experience at Bicton College, Cornwall College and Exeter College was primarily with ISOxford Heritage LMS.  However, I wanted to explore other options for this library.  So far, I have also considered AccessIT and Koha both of which have advantages and disadvantages. 

Classification of the collections

The library had developed its very own Classification System. A library assistant, who had worked in the Schumacher library in the early 2000s had devised the system when the library was a much smaller collection.  Since 2011, a volunteer librarian at Dartington developed the system into the one I see today that the collections were broadly arranged around the curriculum areas and if you look at the subject areas there were 8 categories not unlike the standard classification systems followed by other libraries. Many of the Post-Graduate courses taught at Dartington are cross-discipline and so using broad categories has led to a fractured collection as sections have grown with items in the environment section in many topics being housed together e.g., agriculture, horticulture and food were all under the same section arranged alphabetically by author surname.

Schumacher College Classification System
Devised by Gideon Kossoff
E	Environment
HH	Holistic Health
L	Learning and Education
N	New Economics
P	Psychology
R	Religion
S	Science
W	Wider Literature

Example of Environment subdivision

E	Environment subdivisions
	EA – Growing – Agriculture, Horticulture and Food Science – includes food politics, soil, human nutrition, food preserving, pests and diseases, permaculture, gardening, farming, GM
	EB – Local and British Landscape – includes field guides and walking guides
	EC – Practical Conservation – Wildlife management, environmental restoration, pollution, non-urban design, landscape design, forestry social capital, population issues, agricultural biotech, water conservation
	ED – Eco-design – includes craft building, design, heritage and tourism
	EG – Global Transition – includes transition town movement, future projections, disaster scenarios, post-peak oil, environmental movements, sustainability, occupy, climate change, social ecology, oceans
	EE – Energy – includes renewable energy
	EM – Meteorology and Geology
	EU – Urbanisation – includes housing, architecture, ecovillages and communities, cities and planning, land ownership, the commons, smallholdings, working together

Example of Science subdivision

S	Science subdivisions
	SB – Biology includes evolution, brain science, genetics, animal studies, genetic engineering, botany, socio-biology, artificial intelligence
	SG – General Science – includes classical physics and chemistry, history of science and technology, philosophy of science, cosmology.
	SM – Mathematics
	SP – Radical Science – includes phenomenology of science, Bortoft, Goethe, Sheldrake, Peat, Quantum Physics, Intuitive knowing in science
	SS – Ecology and Living Systems – includes Gaia, fractals, biomimicry, Lovelock, Capra, Goodwin, complex living systems

Difficulties are now arising with the Wider Literature category which was expanding rapidly. In part, this is due to the expansion of the Higher Education course offer from Ecology and Sustainability into Arts and Performance.

As part of the digitisation process of the library I also needed to rationalise the arrangement of the collection.  I’m very familiar with Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) and was therefore keen to use this tried and tested system even though there are some shortfalls as with any Classification system.  So, I started to explore some of the alternatives to Dewey to see if I could find a compromise that would suit the specialist Dartington Library.  The collection has a good emphasis on the environment and sustainability as well as indigenous subjects and a diverse faith collection.

I happened to be on holiday in York and whilst visiting the National Railway Museum I could not resist visiting the library.  I was very interested in their Classification System – Modified Ottley, which is a specialist railway system to deal with the large number of items in particular areas of study.

I then started to research other classification systems and began to also look at the advantages and disadvantages of the Dewey system.

I had, up to that point, thought that DDC was a reasonable one but what I hadn’t known was much about Melvil Dewey himself.  Some websites such as the OCLC somewhat gloss over the history – which is somewhat interesting in itself – describing his legacy as ‘complex’(OCLC, 2023). When I explored the topic further, what I found was a revelation to me.  Melvil Dewey had an interesting history, and he was eventually ostracized by the American Library Association despite being its founder member due to his objectionable views and actions (Ford,2018).  He was found to be a racist, antisemite and was found to have sexually harassed many women when he was in a position of power.  This revelation turned everything I had thought about the DDC on its head and raised serious questions.  Other libraries had taken the lead and many school and youth libraries had started to reclassify and were questioning the system (Joseph, 2021). Could I even use the DDC system for Dartington Library?  I realised then that there was a reason why some areas of the system were arranged the way they are – for example the religion section allows most of the 200s to concentrate on Christianity and only the 290s for other faiths (Gooding-Call, 2021). OCLC have obviously worked hard to modify DDC to meet the need of new subjects but how much has been done to decolonise and erase the harm done by Melvil Dewey? Have you had discussions in your library about Dewey and how have you overcome the dilemma.  What would your advice be to me?

I felt like I needed to distance Dartington from this legacy.  But what were the alternatives?

I found some interesting articles on the Mayonnaise Classification system as adopted by the Brautigan library (Woodcock,2022) where the system literally used mayonnaise jars to separate categories on the shelves. I needed to consider other non-sauce-based systems. Joking aside, this system was created for a specialist library where the Library of Congress System was not working beneficially for users.

The other well used and recognised systems used throughout the world were the Library of Congress Classification System (LCC) which is used by many academic universities in the UK including Oxford University. The Universal Decimal Classification System (UDC) which although stemmed from the DDC system there were some interesting ways that expanded that system which I liked, and which distanced itself from Dewey enough that it could be a possibility.   Described as the “world’s foremost multilingual classification scheme for all fields of knowledge and a sophisticated indexing and retrieval tool” by the UDC (2023). It has a hierarchical arrangement and combines numerals and common punctuation marks.  It certainly looks to be fairer for religious systems with numbers 21/29 used.

21        Prehistoric and primitive religions

22        Religions originating in the Far East

23        Religions originating in Indian Sub-continent.  Hindu religion.

24        Buddhis

25        Religions of antiquity.

26        Judaism

27        Christianity

28        Islam

29        Modern spiritual movements

The UDC is used extensively in India which interested me as Dartington has links with India.  It has seen a decline in usage in recent years mostly because it is a little more complex alongside a decline in professional staff in academic libraries has meant that the libraries have lapsed into more use of DDC than the UDC (Slavik, 2008).

I would be interested to hear from you especially if you use the UDC system in your library or perhaps another system.

Dartington Archive

I have also inherited oversight of a large archive for the Dartington Trust housed at SW Heritage in Exeter.  It was only after I had started in the role that I realised that Dartington had a large archive and a great deal of interest from researchers seeking to use the archive. I’m learning a lot about archives and at this point in my career it is so refreshing to find that information work can lead us to new adventures and interest. I was also naively looking to see if a Library Management System (LMS) could be used for both the library catalogue and for the archive catalogue currently using CALM records system. It seems that this is not possible due to the different way in which the records are collected and accessed.  Archive records are collated in a ‘family tree’ hierarchical arrangement to make looking for associated records easier. I’m very grateful for the support and encouragement from other professionals and volunteers such as Kevin Mount at Dartington, Irene Andrews and Cade Simpson at SW Heritage and Carole Green at Falmouth University Archives.  Dartington also has some archives at Falmouth University following the merger of the Dartington College of Arts with Falmouth University in 2010.

Conclusion

The scale of the task ahead is both challenging and exciting.

After working in Further Education settings for nearly 30 years I took the plunge and moved to Dartington Hall Trust in April 2023.  It has been a refreshing change to find out about the archives and history of Dartington as well as support for the Higher Education students studying at Schumacher College and Dartington School of Arts. I am so grateful to those volunteers and staff members as we have such an interesting and specialist collection in the library now which is down to the Dartington community.  My job is to improve the system so that students and staff can more easily find materials in the library.  Although a online library catalogue would inevitably improve searchability I also want the collection to be rational and relevant for users browsing the shelves which is why the classification order is an important element for me.  It is the arrangement on the shelves that can lead to discoveries with research with a largely print-based collection which is also unique.

I hope that soon I will be able to arrange a SW CILIP members visit to Dartington and have therefore whetted your appetite with a few photos of the Estate and the libraries and I’m sure that we will be able to have some interesting discussions about Classification Systems.

Simonetta Taylor

Librarian and Learning Resource Coordinator

Dartington Hall Trust, Totnes, Devon

Simonetta.taylor@schumachercollege.org.uk

References

Ford, A. (2018, June 1). Bringing Harassment Out of the History Books: Addressing the troubling aspects of Melvil Dewey’s legacy. American Libraries. Retrieved July 1, 2023, from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2018/06/01/melvil-dewey-bringing-harassment-out-of-the-history-books/

Gooding-Call, A. (2021, September 21). Racism in the Dewey Decimal System. Book Riot. Retrieved July 1, 2023, from https://bookriot.com/racism-in-the-dewey-decimal-system/

Joseph, C. (2021, August 18). Move Over, Melvil! Momentum Grows to Eliminate Bias and Racism in the 145-year-old Dewey Decimal System. School Library Journal. Retrieved July 1, 2023, from https://www.slj.com/story/move-over-melvil-momentum-grows-to-eliminate-bias-and-racism-in-the-145-year-old-dewey-decimal-system

OCLC. (2023). How one library pioneer profoundly influenced modern librarianship. OCLC Dewey Services. Retrieved July 1, 2023, from https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey/resources/biography.html

Slavic, A. (2008) “Use of the universal decimal classification: A world-wide survey,” Journal of Documentation, 64(2), pp. 211–228. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810858029.

UDC. (2023) About Universal Decimal Classification (UDC): What is UDC? UDC Consortium. Retrieved July 1, 2023, from https://www.proquest.com/docview/217979311

Woodcock, C. (2022, February 2). We Need to Radically Rethink the Library of Congress Classification. Literary Hub. Retrieved July 1, 2023, from https://lithub.com/we-need-to-radically-rethink-the-library-of-congress-classification/