Adult Fiction

The fiction section comprises of three languages. Yes they are nice enough to separate them. Browsing the English section (apparently that's meant to be my native language) gets you evil glares. I'm not joking. I can't read enough of the 3rd language to have ventured into that small section.

By far the largest selection of books are all in a foreign language (to me, native language to the locals) lets call it Llan. I'm just taking a guess but I'm assuming at least 70% of those books are translated. There is no way to tell but omg some of the translated books suck. Do not read badly translated (ie literally translated) books, especially fantasy. Some phrasing used in English fantasy sound really stilted and weird in Llan. In my opinion a well translated book really shouldn't read differently than a book originally written in that language. Llan has different dialects/vocabulary, a bit like British English and American English. This is the reason why I wish they would mark which books are local, the phrasing is different, the words can be different. Sometimes I can even tell you where an author comes from based on their writing. I'm calling that a Llan fluency milestone.

Anyway other than the not marking of books by local authors I really don't like the lack of signage of the new layout. Sure I'll get used to it, but I don't think I should have to. I think any user, new or old, should be able to easily find their way in a library. This means signing well. If due to random reasons you can't group A-Z all in continuous rows, please put up signs hanging from the ceiling to notify my which letters are where. It really is that easy to make me happy (this is the info that is needed on the floor plan btw!). On the ends of the rows please have signs that show you want letters go where.  like <- Al-Ba  Aa-Al -> . Now I know which side to go to to find books written by Ackroyd. It really is that simple.

Non-fiction

I positively hate the non-fiction section at my library. I love Dewey Decimal (and other like based systems). We were taught how to use it in elementary school. We were shown how books were grouped, and how each grouping had a number assigned. We were given a research project to do about a famous person (I think we got to choose out of a list). Part of that project was to work out which Dewey numbers would be interesting for us. If you had Hitler - you'd have a Dewey number for biographies, WWII, geography-Germany etc for each section. If you had Van Gogh: biographies, art, geography-Netherlands etc. We never had to memorize which numbers were which, it was all about knowing how to use them (and look them up). Navigating my way in Dewey is intuitive to me.

My local library used to have a similar system. They recently got rid of it and replaced it with a picture system. It categorizes in a similar way (although I find the overlapping themes weird) but navigating the bookshelves is a bitch.

This system has 13 main categories each with their own color. Within each category there are sub-categories (Like Art:painting,photography etc). These all have a separate symbol. Each symbol has the color of the main category it is attached to. There are about 48 in total. That is a lot. Each subcategory has it's own themes, and each theme has subthemes.

I'll use the book The Hitler of history by John Lukacs as an example. It has a Dewey number of 943.086 L or something like that. In my library it has a location of History [jade]-> 20th-21st century[high-rise buildings] -> WWII -> Hitler.

I personally find it easier to find the location of 943 in a library where the numbers go from 0-999 then find history in a library where the colors go from - oh wait they don't.

While I do think there are some positives of going with a color/symbol system I wish they had just combined it with the already existing number system (I think some libraries have, mine didn't. I bet the librarians are maths-hater at mine). You could also do some cool stuff like coloring the floor, nice signage. Without that non-numbers suck!

This is how navigation works in my library:

There is a list of the categories and sub-categories showing the symbols. Nice right? Well no, the order of the list is not the order they are found in (I initially thought they were. that would make sense right? but no, after walking around in circles confused I found out they are randomly located)

There are large boxes that are printed (on possibly all 4 sides but I'm not too sure) with the colored symbols. These are placed (not hung) on top of the tall racks. It hurts my neck to try and see them. Plus - you can't ever see all the colors at once. I have walked around the non-fiction section testing this (probably much to the amusement of other users). Just remember there are 48 boxes! and we have 5 rows of double-shelving...

Did they paint the shelving in the respective colors? no (ok I get that could cause problems when your collection expands).
Did they tape thick lines along the floor so you could look down the aisles to see red? no
Did they put signs on the ends of the rows with the symbols showing which ones were found down there? no (I am going to write and suggest this one).

You must stretch your neck (if you're short like me) and look up and try and make sense of the jumble of boxes.

Then you get to looking for the correct theme. These are occasionally taped to the shelving. They get points for using large letters. Unfortunately (and the library just redid all the shelving less than two months ago!) these labels aren't always in the correct place. They are also not sticking out so you have to walk down the aisle and read them all to find the right one(after all there is no order to them, not even alphabetic). The sub-theme is only found on the spine-labels on the books. I'm not so fussed about that - except sometimes they are stuck onto the back. You can't even also figure out if you're then looking in the right area because how do you know which two sub-themes your desired sub-theme is wedged between.

I miss my Dewey numbers. I thought maybe I'd get used to this new system. I find it worse every time I use it. And I didn't even get into how they categorize stuff (depression is found under health not psychology. ADHD is found under education. I think it would make more sense to put depression and ADHD under psychology. Otherwise it's just filled with I don't know what).

And just to illustrate my point a bit. I was looking in the language section today and noticed that 4 of the 5 English dictionaries were stuck between the French courses and the French dictionaries. They should have been with the single English dictionary next to the English courses and not next to other dictionaries. Oops - and I foresee a few more of those mistakes in the next year or so.