Why do we care about that Dewey Decimal System?

So today I am cataloging some new non-fiction books that just arrived for one of our high schools, and I am getting to do one of those completely invisible tasks that I think, I hope, actually makes a difference.  A small one maybe, but hopefully one that helps with what I believe is one of the most important roles of a library and the expert librarians that work there.  Help people find the resources that will help them take the next step in their lives and learning.  We do that in big and small ways in school libraries, in how we teach students to evaluate and make sense of information, in how we collaborate with teachers to design lessons that ask our students to think deeply and problem-solve, in how we provide books that students not only can read, but want to read, and even in how we use that funny Dewey Decimal System.

Here is an example of the latter... the small task of deciding the best Dewey number to give a book and why it matters.  Notice, I did not say the RIGHT call number.  I said the BEST call number.   Assigning the Dewey numbers is not always a clear-cut, exact science.  It also requires that I consider the audience, the specific community of students and teachers that will be using the library and how they search for information. 

A little behind-the-scenes for any of you not familiar with how library books get all those library labels put on them... Our library books arrive mostly "shelf-ready" from the vendors we buy the books from.  That means they already have the call number assigned, the book jackets, labels, stamps, etc.  This works out just fine most of the time, and saves us a lot of time.  However, the non-fiction call numbers they choose are not always the call numbers we would choose, so I go through each one of those myself.

Okay, on to the book in question: Women of Colonial America: 13 Stories of Courage and Survival in the New World by Brandon Marie Miller.  The library book vendor we purchased the book from gave it a call number of 920, which is where all collective biographies (books with more than one biography such as African American inventors) go.  Yep, technically that is fine.  Once books arrive here, our library catalog system has a program that also suggests call numbers.  That system gave the book a call number of 305.4, which is for books on Women.  Yep, that works too.  So which one should I choose?  

Neither!  First, I happen to know that books in 920 (collective biography) just do not get checked out much in our schools, so that's not ideal.  305.4 is in the 300s which are all Social Sciences books.  That is pretty broad with books on a wide range of subjects related to people such as bullying, civil rights, crime, and so on.  I'm concerned that this book will get lost in the 300s.  I do know that our high schools have multiple U.S. History courses, though, so instead of either of those recommended numbers, I opt for the historical aspect of the book and put it in 973.2 (United States History, during the Colonial period.)   That decision making process took me less than a minute to figure out, and no one will ever have a clue that this decision was ever even considered.  

So what's the big deal?  Well, my hope, and the reason I do this, is to remove even the smallest obstacle to a student finding a book that will help them.  What does it save them?  Maybe the few extra steps of having to look in two different sections of the library for a book doesn't sound like much.  Maybe you think that if they search the library catalog correctly, they would find it.  But most of our students don't get a chance to learn from a certified school librarian until they hit high school, and even then, there are over a thousand students for one school librarian.  Since I don't know how experienced any one of those students are with using a library, I want to make it as easy as possible for them to find what they are looking for.  

In that small, invisible way, I am trying to make sure they can find the books that will help them take the next step in their learning.