moving on from dewey

Moving on from Dewey

10 Steps to Library Transformation

Friday March 14, 2014

Worried?

“Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job depends on it.” Henry Ford

“Be Ready to Revise Any System…”

Dewey Decimal Classification System

• Designed as a 19th century inventory system for closed stacks retrieval

• Not designed to be easy for customers in self-service public libraries

Dewey and “The Success of the Job”

• Is Dewey – our most fundamental organizational principle – holding us back from necessary and successful transformation?

• Has Dewey become an impediment to the “success of the job”?

Our Journey of Transformation

• Began with replacing Dewey

• C3 - Customer Centered Classification

• Unleashed further innovations and library transformation

Another Ford

Ford Nation

“Library cuts will happen in a heartbeat.”

Who Are We?

• 330,000

• GTA(Greater Toronto Area) 5.5 million

• Most diverse city in Canada

• Lots of immigrants

• High growth

VITAL STATISTICS 2013

Population 330,000

Customer Visits 2.4 million

Circulation 4.65 million

Collection Size 780,000

Collection Turnover 6.0

Circulation including e-circ 4.8 million

A TEN STEP-JOURNEY TO LIBRARY TRANSFORMATION

Walking Into the Future

ONE

Knowing When It’s Over

STEP ONE: Knowing When It’s Over….

• Time to break up?

Any Competition?


• Library experiments with merchandizing concepts and subject categories

582 .16097

KER

690 .893 COR

712.6 ERL

714 ROB

635 .986 FLO

Fixing Up the Backyard?


http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Pond-Basics-Step-Step-Guide-Peter-Robinson/9780806922874-item.html?ikwid=water+garden&ikwsec=Books


• If we wanted to go down the path of merchandizing, we needed to consider a break up with Dewey.

• Was it going to be messy?

• How would we figure out what to move on to?

TWO Learn from the Competition

STEP TWO: Learning from the Competition

• Bookstores didn’t use Dewey

• Book industry classifications and good signage

• Made finding intuitive • How could we compete

with the the bookstores in terms of ambiance, comfort and ease of finding?

STEP TWO: Learning from the Competition

• Go outside the box of our traditional assumptions

• Find inspiration in what other sectors are doing.

• While the public library is not a business, we have to think like a business and operate in a business-like fashion.

THREE Think Like a Customer

STEP THREE: Think Like a Customer

• Look at our library through a different lens, taking the customer’s perspective and asking some hard questions.

• Did Dewey really work for library customers in the 21st century?

• How many of them actually understood Dewey? And why should they have to?

• Did our customers, in order to find things, want to be “educated” by librarians about Dewey?

• Did our customers have increasing expectations of convenience and speed and instant gratification?

• Did they find Dewey a help or a hindrance?

• Had Dewey become a barrier to a successful and satisfying library experience?


• What kind of system would make our renovated library branch easier and more convenient to use?

• What about redesigning our system around customers’ approach to content?

• How about seeing things from the customers’ perspective and adapting our system to them, rather than expecting them to adapt to us and Dewey?

• How could we promote ease of findabilty for specific items?

• When a customer was looking for a specific item, what kind of system would make it easy to pinpoint the shelf location of that item?


• Word-based?

• Word-Dewey hybrid?

• Notion of combining customer-friendly subject categories – for ease of browsing – with concise four-digit call numbers for ease of finding at a granular level

“Its faster to find what I'm looking for.” “It’s better organized now than before.” “The sections are well-labeled and obvious - you know

exactly where to look.“ “…it works. It does what its suppose to.“ “Books are in nice categories” “Didn’t even notice the new system until it was pointed out.”

Customer Feedback

FOUR Engage in Risky Behavior

FOUR: ENGAGE IN SERIOUSLY RISKY BEHAVIOUR

Risk Analysis • An innovative game-changing

concept – something that could potentially transform our services.

• Narrow brief window of opportunity

• A short time frame (weeks, not months) to make it happen

• A potential project of truly daunting scale – the invention of a full classification system from scratch, and the conversion of over 30,000 nonfiction items from Dewey to C3 in time for opening

582 .16097 KER

690 .893 COR

712.6 ERL

714 ROB

635 .986 FLO

2200 BEC

2100 FLO 2020

ERL 2100 FLO

2100 ROB

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Pond-Basics-Step-Step-Guide-Peter-Robinson/9780806922874-item.html?ikwid=water+garden&ikwsec=Books

FIVE Think Lean

FIVE: THINKING LEAN

• Like a lean startup – we thought big and started small

• We had a “Big Idea” (replacing Dewey)

• Started small, focusing on just one branch, and, initially, on just its adult nonfiction collection

SIX Engage Staff in

Innovation

Dewey meets Merchandizing

Animal or Family Member?

Animal or Family Member?

OR

LF 1910 MYR

636 .800 929 MYR

DEWEY C3

• “It makes my job easier. It is easy to find books since there aren’t so many numbers. It looks nicer. Eddie, Page

• I dream in Dewey. However, I can see that C3 is more efficient from the staff’s perspective. Pat, Circ Supervisor

• In the beginning I didn’t like it. It didn’t feel like a library without Dewey. Now that I’m familiar with it I see how user friendly it is. Peggy, LSA

Staff Feedback

SEVEN Let Go of Perfectionism

SEVEN: LET GO OF PERFECTIONISM OR IT’LL NEVER HAPPEN

• Was C3 perfect when it was launched?

• Did we have time to make it perfect?

• No, quick release was the only option.

• With no time for testing or focus groups, we simply put C3 out there, testing it live, learning, iterating, improving and refining.

EIGHT Expect the Unexpected

(and roll with it)

EIGHT: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED AND ROLL WITH IT

• It was only post-implementation that we began to understand the implications of C3 for our material handling processes, for sorting and shelving, and for overall workflow

EIGHT: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED AND ROLL WITH IT

• Improved collection turnover rates

• More efficient material flow meant that shelving backlogs were reduced, so that instead of items sitting on carts in the backlog, they were more quickly returned to the shelf, accessible and ready for the next customer to check out.

NINE Nourish the Culture of

Innovation

NINE: NOURISH THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

• Post-C3, the challenge lies in sustaining and nourishing a culture of innovation, and in finding ways to nurture new ideas and fresh thinking.

• We’re still on the learning curve of this one, but we’re experimenting with a few things to foster creativity and stimulate the cycle of idea generation and development

Creative Library

Charter of Failure...

“We recognize the right of all staff

to fail in the name of innovation

with our full support and without

penalty…”

TEN Springboard to

Further Innovation

10: SPRINGBOARD TO TRANSFORMATION – KEEP IT SPARKLING

• Five years on, we are witnessing the power of a systemic innovation like C3 to leverage further innovation in branch design, service models and the customer experience. Some of our transformations:

Learning Place

the old way

competition? what competition?

start

with

the

end in

mind

what’s

the

plan?

the learning place

results

CULTURE

SHIFT

EMP WER STAFF

DO YOU MAKE THINGS

EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS

OR FOR

YOURSELF ?

SERVICE SEAMLESS

say about you? what do

your

rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules










rule

s

=

C R E A T E T H E

E X P E R I E N C E +

EXCEED THEIR

EXPECTATIONS

B U I L D T H E

RELATIONSHIPS +

E X C E L L E N T

S E R V I C E

DEBBIE WALKER

DIANE MACKLIN

&

thanks!

moving on from dewey

Leadership & Management