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Man måste ställa upp : Hylluppställning på svenska högskole- och specialbibliotek som klassificerar i DDC / Shelving Dewey : Shelving strategies among Swedish university and special libraries using the DDC

The aim of this master's thesis is to examine how shelving is organized among Swedish libraries that have switched from the Swedish classification system SAB to using the DDC, and what problems arise in this process. The method used is interviewing librarians at Swedish university and special libraries. The Swedish national library announced their swap to the DDC in 2008, and several libraries followed suit. The reported advantages with a switch were mainly that using an international classification system meant that Swedish libraries would no longer have to undertake a time consuming classification work, since most of the foreign literature already is Dewey classified. Disadvantages were that the DDC is not adapted to Swedish circumstances. Research on open shelving show that obtaining a browsable book collection requires a broad shelf classification. If libraries motivate their shelving solution by wanting browsable collections, efforts will be made to keep shelf classification broad enough. Certain categories have by tradition been shelved separately in Swedish libraries, and this study seeks to find out if a classification shift changes this custom, and if so, whether or not this is only attributable to the change of classification. Findings show that libraries motivated their swapping of classification mostly by the perceived flaws of the SAB system, and not by the promise of saving time, nor by the benefits of the DDC system. Most librarians seemed to lack sufficient knowledge of the DDC, which may be a reason why librarians claimed that the workload necessary to re-shelve the stock was the biggest drawback with switching to the DDC. Most libraries desired browsable shelves, and therefore used shelf lists to better be able to adapt the classification system to the stock. The custom of shelving certain categories separately survived the classification swap for some categories, but not for others. In the latter case this can be ascribed to a dwindling use of these specific categories by the patrons.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-175668
Date January 2012
CreatorsEhn, Einar Gustav
PublisherUppsala universitet, Institutionen för ABM
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageSwedish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
RelationUppsatser inom biblioteks- & informationsvetenskap, 1650-4267 ; 564

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