Church Library

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am now the captain of a team that is organizing the library at church. See how organized it is?

We began with a massive culling session a few months ago; now comes the really messy part. Someone spent long hours setting up a cataloging system in there, but it doesn't make any sense. I need some input from my friend who is getting her MLS. How is it possible, oh great librarian friend, for a Dewey Decimal classification to result in a hodgepodge of subjects mixed randomly together through the library? Is it sheer confusion on the part of the cataloger? I have to think so, because I have never seen a Dewey system like this one! At first, I thought it might be because of the narrowness of the decimal range; the entire library, after all, falls within the 200 category (Religion).

But check out how it should work:
200 RELIGION
210 Philosophy and Theory of Religion
220 The Bible
230 Christianity and Christian theology
240 Christian practice and observance
250 Christian pastoral practice and religious orders
260 Church organization, social work, and worship
270 History of Christianity
280 Christian denominations
290 Other Religions

(I like the way "other religions" get only one-tenth of the decimal space available under "Religion". Hee hee. No wonder universities use Library of Congress classifications!)Any orderly system of classification should not produce a library like ours, in which Theology of Redemption sits right next to How to be Married and Enjoy It, which in turn bumps up against Commentary on the Apocrypha, then Preachers Gone Wild. Ok, not really, but you get the general idea.What to do, what to do? Well, what you see in the picture, which is remove everything and reclassify it by subject, casting Dewey to the winds.