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Monday, January 26, 2009

Tuesday Thinger: Open Shelves Classification

Welcome to another week of Tuesday Thingers! We always love to hear from regular participants as well as new people.

A special thanks goes out to Katherine, who sent me an email and brought this week's question to my attention. Library Thing is attempting to gain help from librarians and readers alike to redo the old Dewey Decimal system of book classification, creating a newer system called Open Shelves Classification or OSC (click on the link to read a little about the vision on the LT Blog).

If I read correctly, the librarians have already helped to create the main categories, and they are now looking for readers to help classify books.

How we can help: As you add a book or review to your library, scroll down to the bottom of the page where you can see the grid of classifications, select the classification for that book and confirm that you have read it. They have also created a group for the OSC project.

Today's question: Prior to today, were you aware of Open Shelves Classification? Have you helped to classify any books yet? Is this something you are interested in? Did you know that if you classify any books, it will also show you who else has classified the book?

Update: I just checked, and the grid has disappeared. Most of the questions can still be answered, and if you are interested in the function, make sure you watch for the grid to re-appear!

My Answer: This week was the first week I was aware of OSC. I have now classified about 7 or 8 books that are currently on my bookshelf or will be shortly.

I am interested in seeing what happens with this project as I never completely understood how the Dewey system was organized. That said, I would love to see some type of system to help organize fiction into different categories. I'd love to be able to walk into a library and go to a section that had a large selection of historical fiction or mystery books for me to browse without having to search in a computer. Yikes - it has been so long since I've been to a library, maybe I'm saying something stupid here. . .

I was so excited to add the classification of The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff under Fiction and to find that one other person had also classified it there. :) I keep adding classifications so I can see if anyone else has added them yet.

Looking forward to reading everyone's answers!!

~ Wendi

If you are new to Tuesday Thingers: Welcome! The meme was originally created as a way to network with other bloggers and to learn about Library Thing! I'd like to encourage you to join us. If you don't know what Library Thing is - you are in a great place to learn about new things, and if you are an old pro, stick around and share your wealth of information! Visit Library Thing here. To join in, copy the picture and question into your post and link back here so people can read other responses. Make sure you leave a comment here with a link to your post so we can stop by! If you don't have a blog, feel free to leave a comment here!

12 Comments:

caite said...

Oh, am I first? I want to be first!
So here is my entry this week, right here.

Lenore Appelhans said...

My post is up!

jlshall said...

More great questions. And my not so great answer is here. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Anonymous said...

Wendi, I've seen the groups for OSC, but haven't looked into the details. I'm going to spend some time reading up on this, and will be back to answer later in the week. My Tuesday Thinger may be a Thursday Thinger! :)

This is a great question about something that extends beyond LT; I want to learn more about it!

FleurFisher said...

Good question - I had to think about this one. My answer's here.

Lisa said...

Another great question - and another feature that will annoy my librarian friends! My answer is here.

Anonymous said...

This is an interesting question. Thanks, Wendi! Here's my answer.

Bonnie said...

Wendi and all LT'ers: I can't find any pages with classifications grids. They all say under Open Shelves Classification:"The first test round has been closed". I even tried linking through "find a random work page" in the 1/20 blog article and it takes me to a random page without a grid and the same comment that it has been closed. Any thoughts? I'm going to skip answering the question this week as I don't understand how this works.

Alea said...

I needed a work break so here's my answer early today!

http://aleapopculture.blogspot.com/2009/01/tuesday-thingers_27.html

FleurFisher said...

Thank you for taking on Tuesday Thingers and doing such a great job. I have left you an award here.

Anonymous said...

I've never heard of the Open Shelves Classification. (I was out of town with no internet connection on Tuesday, so I didn't get to participate in TT this week.)

Florinda said...

Tuesday Thingers on Friday - and once again, I learned something :-).

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