Defending Dewey...

...against Chris Anderson's attack.

One question I think you could ask is whether the taxonomy/ontology of library catalogs somehow prevent patron access to the Long Tail of the library collection. My answer would be an emphatic "no."

"I tremble to think where the Dewey Decimal System will place the book you're reading right now" (p. 161). Of course, I had to look it up. Most libraries who use the DDC have this book in 658.8, which is the broad category for Marketing. I also looked at user tags in Amazon. The most popular tag for the book is...marketing. There are multiple bookmarks for the Long Tail in Delicious...most include "marketing" as a tag. I also looked up the Library of Congress (LC) classification number; it's HF5415.127. In either the DDC or LC classification, the subject headings for the book are: 1) Market segmentation; 2) Internet marketing; 3) Marketing -- Technological Innovations.

I get the whole "Shopping in the Miscellaneous Aisle" concept. I hear Anderson's frustration with the Blockbuster vs. Amazon model, and the constrictions of physical shelves. I generally bypass the genre-guessing at Blockbuster and ask the kid behind the counter where I can find what I'm looking for. Even better, I go to my library, which has an excellent anime collection (for free).

I would argue that, with the information available in a Google search increasing exponentially as I type this post, finding relevant results are more difficult than Anderson wants us to believe. Assuming that I don't know the title or the author of this book, and I use market segmentation as my keywords for a Google search, I get 6,170,000 results. I can select "Books" to narrow my results, and then I'm down to 3,590. If I perform a subject search in the Library of Congress catalog for "market segmentation," I get 115 results, but I do have the opportunity to scroll down the list and narrow my results by geographic location or other variables. I select the 115 results and find Chris Anderson's book at #15 and #16 on the list (original and revised editions).

How many people are going to search for this book using these keywords? I'm not sure. Probably not that many. Most people are going to have something like, "it's that guy from Wired," or "it's a book about internet shopping" or maybe they will even have part of his name or part of the title. Interestingly, the library catalog allows both author name and title searches. Patrons searching by Dewey number are few and far between.

I like to think that the library catalog helps us quickly locate "Long Tail" items for our patrons. Participation in InterLibrary Loan consortia and increasing digitization of collections allows librarians to move beyond the physical constraints of their small libraries. WorldCat finds the book right away, whether I type "marketing segmentation" (#1 on the list), or Chris Anderson, or long tail. I don't have to know the Dewey number, and I don't need special punctuation.

The library catalog helps filter out the "noise" that shows up in internet searching. Open source software promises to find new ways to connect library catalogs and expand access to existing collections. I believe that library catalogs, as they continue to evolve, will provide patrons with the best methods or fulfilling the two Long Tail imperatives that Anderson describes: "1. Make everything available. 2. Help me find it" (p. 218).