According to the New York Times, the Perry Branch Library in Gilbert, Arizona, has decided to abandon the use of the Dewey Decimal System. Books are shelved by subject matter and searchable by subject terms and authors in a database, but no call number is assigned.
I don't think I would mind this experiment so much, except that this branch is located on the grounds of the local high school. What kind of information literacy skills are the students going to have when they leave this system to go to college? The casual browsing the director alludes to certainly isn't the only type of need these students will have as they work to complete their assignments for grades 9-12. Incoming college freshmen from the Perry Branch Library would be lost here at Wesleyan, and heaven help them if they ever have to find a book someplace like the main stacks at the U of I.
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