Look out.
Ronda Storms, former Hillsborough County commissioner and current state senator (R-Fire and Brimstone) has her eye on your library. Again.
What now? A plan to rid us of books unwholesome, or at least containing the word "evolution"?
Another attack on library displays about gay pride, the first of which led to a ban on anyone in county government pretty much even thinking the words "gay pride"?
No, this time Sen. Storms has set her sights on something more insidious lurking in the stacks of our state.
You guessed it. The Dewey Decimal System.
...
Storms calls the Dewey Decimal System frustrating, outdated and ridiculous. She would like something more akin to what they use at bookstores.
But librarians will tell you they don't see streams of patrons unable to negotiate the system leaving empty-armed in tearful frustration. The hordes of kids who packed my local branch over winter break seemed to be finding books (and magazines and computers) just fine.
"It's a particularly useful system for public and school libraries because it's fairly easy to work with," says Barbara Pickell, director of the Clearwater library system. She gives Dewey good marks for "browseability" and says it's more accurate than the system bookstores use.
Even a particularly numerically challenged person (okay, me) managed to find the shelf spot for Ecology of a Cracker Childhood in minutes and without librarian aid. I just looked it up and, you know, followed the numbers. Fiction, by the way, is generally organized alphabetically by author.
Source: St. Petersburg Times (Sue Carlton)
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