Automating the Small Corporate Library: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ask for Help

Introduction

As a solo librarian it can be a challenge to manage and maintain the many services and daily tasks required to address the information needs of patrons. Reference services, literature searches, journal routing, to say nothing of collection development tasks and negotiations with various vendors all serve to keep each day in the life of the solo librarian full and very busy. Some days it seems almost impossible to contemplate even one more task, one more reference question, or one more thing to do, no matter how small.

Imagine, then, being faced with nothing less than the complete reorganization of an entire collection, including developing a classification scheme from scratch and, to top it all off, automating the entire system?

In the summer of 2004 I was faced with just such a project. This article tells the story of how this project was accomplished with one full time employee, one four month contract, and the encouragement and support of the library community as a whole, as expressed through associations, listservs, and friendly visits to other libraries.

Background

Like many corporate information centers, our library houses both print and electronic books, journals and other information resources. The collection is small but diverse, encompassing everything from standard medical and science reference materials to company proprietary material and everything in between. Our patrons are well-educated medical, science and business professionals who have at least one post-secondary degree. There are also some co-op students and several employees for whom English is a second language. Generally, employees have used the information center largely for current awareness and occasionally research. Reference requests were often made electronically so it was rare to see employees come down and browse the collection. When they did, they were often hampered in their attempts to locate a particular item. In the early days of our library, books were semi-centralized; a few were in the library, but most were in people’s offices for easy access. With no formal circulation procedures, it was incredibly difficult to locate items when other patrons needed them, or to determine gaps in the collection and to budget for collection management purposes.

Getting Started – Obtaining appropriate resources

The need for a solution was obvious, and the decision was to purchase library automation software. After about a year of evaluation and proposals, we purchased and installed DBTextworks for Libraries. By this time a collection management policy had been created and it was determined that the majority of the book collection would be centralized in the library to provide greater control and access to the materials. With both of these elements in place, the next step was to find an appropriate way to organize our information.

By nature, solo librarians often face the lack of people resources to take care of large time-consuming projects such as library automation. I was a staff of one with more than a full routine of daily activities. While I figured we had approximately two thousand items to catalogue, I knew that this would take months to accomplish if I had to do it on my own, so I began to explore the possibilities of enlisting help. I had heard through an instructor that the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at UBC was part of the Arts Co-op program. I needed someone with library experience so I submitted a proposal to the company to contract the services of a library student. The company agreed and in May 2004 Donna Waye was hired to help me.

Knowing that help was on the way and that the software was in place, ready to be used, was exciting – like Christmas! – and I was very eager to get the project underway. But where to start? Being a solo-librarian can be invigorating and fun, but it can also feel stressful and isolating. When you spend so much time on your own it’s easy to question yourself about whether you are “doing it right,” which can really put the brakes on a project of this nature without some feedback. When this happens, it is useful to remember that help is just a phone call or an email away. Listservs such as SLA’s SOLOLIB-L are useful ways to communicate with other librarians and request their advice and benefit from their experiences. I sent out an email, asking other solo librarians how they had classified their collection and did they have any advice or resources that might help me in making this decision. Many of those who responded stated that they had used either the Library of Congress Classification scheme and adapted it to suit their needs. A few answered that their collections were so small or so specialized that they had created their own. It was a relief to learn that these librarians had used both approaches because I felt these were my two strongest options but up until then had been second-guessing my decision.

I also found additional information from various library associations and websites. When I contacted the SLA, I was directed to several excellent resources, including Special Libraries: A Cataloguing Guide, by Sheila S. Intner and Jean Weihs. Now, with automation software installed, a desk full of books and articles and a new helper, the project was truly about to begin.

Or was it?

Hitting the Wall Part 1

In addition to training for the new software, and the creation of a classification scheme, I also needed to comply with my company project management expectations, which required creating detailed project plans and reports. When Donna arrived, we began to discuss these project objectives and how we would accomplish them. First on the list was the need to make a final decision about which type of classification scheme would be most appropriate for the library. At this point I still hadn’t completely decided whether I would adapt LC or create something new. Dipping into the pile of reading on my desk did nothing to assuage my fears. The more I read the more doubt I had and the more overwhelmed I felt. It was easy to fall back into the habits of a solo librarian and feel that the decision was all on my shoulders when, in fact, I did have someone else to share this burden with, namely my co-op student. Donna listened to my fears and frustrations then calmly and rationally suggested that I was getting too caught up in classification theory. Instead, she advised me to turn my attention to the books themselves, to get into the stacks and begin re-organizing the collection into broad subject groups.

Donna had accurately assessed the problem. Sitting in the stacks, looking at the collection and physically moving items into logical groups, not only helped me clear my mind, it also helped me to begin to make practical connections between the materials and the people who would be using them. The collection is so small, and I am so familiar with it, that in an afternoon I was able to separate the collection into five major subject categories and a number of sub-categories that I thought would make sense to the employees. But what classification scheme to use? That certainly was the question. We recognized that there were pros and cons with using either an established system or starting from scratch. First, the specialized nature of the collection meant that the majority of the materials would fall into a select few class headings of any established classification system. In addition, these class headings were not particularly intuitive with respect to the material they were to describe. For example, Library of Congress Classification Outline designates “K” as the subclass for items relating to Law, or “Q” for Science.

By using an established system both Donna and I felt that we would end up with a scheme that wasn’t properly representative of the diversity of the library’s holdings, not to mention it wouldn’t have a lot of meaning for a patron coming down to the library and browsing the stacks for material. Patrons were accustomed to accessing the materials in a very informal and somewhat unstructured kind of way. We both agreed that to suddenly impose a classification that was overly structured and seemingly arbitrary with respect to broad class designations would only serve to confuse patrons and ultimately clutter a system that essentially worked – it just needed a bit of structure and form.

The needs of the patrons and their user habits were ultimately what guided us in our decision. No matter what system we chose there was always going to be a certain amount of training and learning required on the part of the patrons who accessed the collection; but there was no need to completely turn things on their ear and have them get used to a system that went against years of expectation. We both agreed that, to a certain extent, the needs of the users would (and should) dictate the type of system used, and to that end we agreed to be daring, to be bold, and to create our own classification system. This system would be as simple as possible and also incorporate a more ‘natural language’ approach in its choice of class headings – rather than seemingly arbitrary alpha or alphanumeric designations, like K or Q, we wanted headings that would be intuitive and easily understandable to anyone who browsed the collection. We therefore chose broad class headings that were two to three letters long, e.g. “REF” for Reference and “BUS” for Business. Ultimately we had six main classes under which all the collection fell. Having decided on an original classification system, the job now was to determine its structure. How would we represent the sub-classes of material, the different formats, the journals versus books, so that each item in the collection had its own unique identifier?

Hitting the Wall Part 2

Dawn assigned me (Donna) the task of determining the overall organization of our burgeoning in-house system. My first step was to revisit literature we had previously collected in order to first learn the specifics of how classifications systems were structured because even though we weren’t using an established system I felt I needed to know how they were developed in order to properly construct my own scheme. I also wanted to know about the parts of classification numbers – how did a number like Z665 L657 1990 actually correspond to the book it was referring to. I had only ever before approached classification from the point of view of the user. I never knew how librarians came up with the numbers they did and why they were the right numbers. I just knew how to find the book in the stacks that corresponded to a classification number, not what that number meant.

As it turns out, the creation of a classification number was sometimes a tricky affair. I quickly became lost in numbers that could stretch for miles, it seemed – classes and sub-classes and sub-sub-classes all separated by decimals or some form of alpha/numeric combinations that, in the end, told me nothing about what kind of information that number was supposed to represent. Things became even worse when I foolishly read a chapter section devoted to Cutter numbers. Cutter numbers, those small and quiet little digits tucked neatly away in most classification numbers, were far from the innocent markers they appeared to be. Apparently Charles Ammi Cutter was a closet sadist – not to mention somewhat of a practical joker – when he devised the tortuous methods by which cataloguers were instructed to create the string of letters and numbers that bear his name. My feelings on the matter were that I hadn’t used calculus since high school and wasn’t about to start in library school.

My goals in creating the scheme were the fundamental principles common to any classification scheme: have a system which grouped together materials of a similar subject, have it be expandable without necessitating a complete reworking of the system, and have each item within the collection be uniquely identified. It seemed like a simple, straightforward idea but I kept running into dead ends. I found myself writing out different combinations of letters and numbers to try and give a form to our classification scheme but they all became too complicated, too quickly. I could see the shape of it in my mind but couldn’t seem to get from there to the end product. I kept second-guessing my ideas, worrying that whatever I came up with would ultimately not work. My main fear was getting halfway through the cataloguing process and finding out that the scheme wasn’t comprehensive enough, or that the classification numbers themselves weren’t such that all items were uniquely identified.

Needless to say, I quickly became discouraged. I felt unable to make a decision on the direction we would take with our classification scheme, much like Dawn had been stalled in the decision of what type of scheme we would use. In a scene not unlike the previous one where Dawn had spilled out all her frustrations to me, I dumped my concerns and self-doubt on her one quiet morning. She listened attentively, nodded encouragement, made numerous comforting noises, and then when I ran out of breath, said two words which would prove to be the answer to all my questions:

Road trip.

In order to get to the next step of actually constructing a classification scheme, we felt that much could be learned from seeing for ourselves what other libraries had done with their collections. We chose three locations: the Eric Hamber library, the B.C. Cancer Agency and the Pacific Aids Resource Centre (PARC). At our first two stops – Eric Hamber and the B.C. Cancer Agency – we looked closely at the classification numbers used for the collection and noted they were fairly compact, combining an overall class designation (alpha), a numeric subclass, the first three letters of the author’s last name (or, if the title was the responsibility of a group or corporation, or if the publication was edited, the first three letters of the title), the year of publication and copy and/or volume designations as required. We also looked at the overall layout of the books in the libraries, and details such as shelf markers or sheets affixed to the sides of the stacks indicating the categories within.

Our last stop was the PARC library, a small resource centre that had developed its own classification system. Because of the similarity in size and situation between our library and that of PARC, we were both really looking forward to this visit. When we arrived, the assistant on duty quite generously offered to copy the classification scheme for us. We spent some time going over it and looking around the centre, comparing what was on the shelves to where they fit into the scheme. Their classification numbers were similar in format to what was used at Eric Hamber and the B.C. Cancer Agency – short and compact, comprised of the class designation, subclass, author or title, year and copy and/or volume information.

We left PARC extremely upbeat and excited. Seeing how another library had taken on the task of creating a classification scheme that quite effectively organized and managed all their materials was that last little jolt of confidence we needed. While it does seem to be common sense, it’s one thing to approach classification as a library user and quite another when you’re coming at it from the other side. As a user you take it for granted that books will be grouped together appropriately and that you will be able to find what you’re looking for both in an online catalogue and in the stacks. The intellectual understanding was there but getting out and viewing other collections really helped cement our course of action for what we wanted to achieve with our collection.

The next day I sat down with my notes from our visits and put together a classification system for the library. To form the subclasses from the broad classes we already agreed upon, I chose a numeric designator, 3-4 digits long (e.g. 100 as a General category). After the class/subclass elements we assigned a three-letter designation, which was either the first 3 letters of an author’s last name or, in the case of edited books or corporate authorship, the first three letters of the title. Then we incorporated the year of publication (if available) and a volume or copy designation, where applicable. We also incorporated a colour code to go with the main classes. We agreed and chose such colours as teal for business, blue for law and the always classic red, for reference. When we print out our spine labels we attached the appropriate colour-coded dot so that the book’s category is very easy to see. This helps users find materials more quickly and also helps for re-shelving materials.

As might be expected, this system was tweaked as the cataloguing process began and continued throughout the summer – subclasses were created as needed and others were removed or combined – but it proved to be very flexible and remained sound as, one by one, both Dawn and I began to catalogue the books and populate the DB/Textworks database.

Conclusion

Large projects like library automation can seem very daunting even in a small library like ours, particularly for a solo librarian with minimal on-site help. However, by having the courage to reach out to other librarians through library associations, listservs and sometimes just a fresh perspective, what once seemed daunting becomes “do-able.” This challenging and rewarding project has brought more patrons into the library because they are able to locate materials more efficiently. As one might expect, the amount of time library staff spends looking for items and identifying gaps in the collection has been considerably reduced. The project would not have been accomplished without the help and support we had from various libraries, and librarians whose opinions and instruction were highly valued resources along the way.

We hope that this paper will encourage others to use a librarian’s best resource - another librarian. We would like to close this article with a top-five list of lessons learned on the project in the hopes that it will help others who follow in our footsteps.

Top Five Lessons Learned

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Get out and look at similar library collections.
You know your library and how the collection is being used. Trust your instincts as to how it should be organized.
Spend time looking at and physically grouping the collection.
Discuss your frustrations with others working on the project or with people who have had a similar experience – they can offer extremely important advice that may trigger an epiphany.

Dawn Bassett is currently working towards an MLIS from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at The University of British Columbia and works as a solo librarian for a local pharmaceutical company.

Donna Waye is a second year student in the Joint MLIS/MAS program of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at the University of British Columbia.

Search Site Map Disclaimer SLA Headquarters