Location, Location, Location… of materials.
A friend of mine forwarded me a post from the Tennessee Library Listserv about the Anna Porter Public Library in Gatlinburg, TN which has rearranged their collection to according to a bookstore layout.
Anna Porter Public Library in Gatlinburg has converted its entire
collection to a “merchandised” or “bookstore” arrangement, in
preparation for the move to a new building in 2008. The new library
is designed for a “merchandised” arrangement. All materials have been
grouped into broader subjects reminiscent of the array of signs one
sees when entering Borders, say, or Barnes and Noble. Shelving will be
purchased from the supplier of shelves for bookstores rather from
traditional library vendors. The Dewey Decimal system is still used
within each broad category….-Kenton Temple, Director Anna Porter Public Library Gatlinburg
I am sure we would all love to rearrange our collections if we had to the time, energy, space or perhaps a new building to put them in like the Anna Porter Public Library has. In the past, I have visited a library where everything (Government Documents, Journals, Reference Books, the circulating collection etc.) were all integrated in one area and for some reason found that revolutionary (why is this not the standard?). These type of arrangements make intuitive sense to patrons as one-stop shopping for the materials they need. Why must a patron, who might be researching literature, bounce from the reference section, to the indexes (often located somewhere else) to the stacks (often located on a different floor) to find materials?
Is it too late for libraries to arrange materials in this manner? Are we locked into our organization layout by space limitations or simply librarian tradition? I think librarians rely heavily on their online catalogs, pathfinder handouts, and bibliographic instruction to overcome the complexity of the library for patrons without overtly questioning the reasons these tools are needed in the first place. I wonder if it ever would be possible for the library to be more like a “plug and play” research station and be usable for patrons as soon as they step through the library door in a coherent and understandable manner? How much of our library complexity is manufactured and has become institutionalized and therefore unthinkable/unapproachable to change? And if this is the case, why should we fault patrons for not using the library as the first-stop for their research resources?
Tags: coherence, context, layout
No comments yet.