Wednesday, July 09, 2008

You Can be the Future (of Cataloging)!

Tim's announced the Open Shelves Classification project, a collaborative effort designed to build a "free, 'humble,' modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System." So now's the time to jump on board and get involved in what promises to be a really fascinating debate. I like the idea and intend to chime in where I can, but I'll be involved with the project only to some minimal extent (as I said yesterday, I've got enough dead libraries to worry about, and I don't think anybody's up for using Jefferson's classification scheme).

I highly encourage anyone interested in cataloging and organization (probably particularly those associated with public libraries, but certainly not them exclusively) to speak up and join the discussion. To paraphrase: the stakes are too high for you to stay quiet.