If you have checked out a book recently, you’ll notice some changes to the Eastlake library. The system used to sort books has changed. Like many libraries across the world the Dewey Decimal system was the choice, the gold standard of libraries. However, this system drawn up by Melville Dewey was not the perfect system you would expect.
Dewey was a racist, antisemite, and misogynist in his day, being kicked out of the American Library Association (ALA) for sexually harassing four female members. But his bias was also shown in his decimal system. He grouped works by people of color in colonialization, women’s works were grouped into a separate category of jobs. Additionally, any non-Christian religious holidays were grouped in mythology and only a small section of the religious section. Dewey also was not a fan of the LGBTQ+ community and grouped their works with perversion and neurological disorders.
The push to change the system has been around for years beginning with the desegregation of the system. A Howard librarian Dorothy Porter noticed the segregation when she noticed that every book by a black author was grouped in 325 (colonialization) or 326 (slavery). Works like this were switched to where they would belong but as humans progressed the faults of the system were seen more. Dewey was limited by his unfair bias as well as his technology. Any new ideas we come up with as a civilization must find a spot in a section not designed for it. Most of the newer technology is put into miscellaneous because it does not have a spot designed for it.
Schools across the US have started to switch off the system because of how confusing Dewey’s system is. Eastlake has become one of many now deciding to change to a less outdated system. The genre system at Eastlake is now designed to resemble a bookstore and a more welcoming environment for checkouts. The goal is to make it less complicated and support a new system to help students develop a newfound interest in the nonfiction part of Eastlake. This change has worked, increasing checkouts by 200% and making the library less complicated.
