Hi Jennifer,
I teach on ground with online support. I personally don't think
cataloging should be taught only online, so I am sorry you have to do
that. Interaction with the professor is crucial for learning cataloging
and classification practices. Online that is just so difficult for the
student. All that said (sorry for the personal interlude there), Here
are a few thoughts on doing Dewey. ;-)
Dewey is harder to do than LCC because Dewey is copyrighted and OCLC is
very protective of their property. You can freely make copies of the LC
books because it is a gov't. publication.
One choice would be to use the abridged version, but you are really
limited if you use that. Another would be to require your students to
find local libraries that use Dewey books, and give them a letter of
introduction, so they can try to get permission to use it. My lecture
goes through all the parts and pieces of the books, from the arrangement
of the volumes to the different types of notes (scope, class here, etc.)
It is pretty detailed. Most public libraries I have used have the books
either at the reference desk, or in Tech. Services. With the letter of
introduction, I think most would allow students to use the books
(probably in library only) even if they are not generally available to
the public.
Gear your lecture to include examples in your lecture from the books
(e.g. pick a class here note in the schedules) and include the reference
for the students to examine for themselves.
My class completes exercises in class for two weeks before I give them a
homework assignment. To do that completely online, you could build a
step by step tutorials for all the unique aspects of number building.
Tutorials would include the tables, manual instructions, use of index,
and schedules. Each exercise you create would mirror the process of the
tutorial, but the student would be building a new number not used yet.
You might have to build different tutorial programs of Dewey work for
different editions (e.g., one for 21, another for 22), just in case the
student can only access one of the other. Otherwise you would have to
make sure your examples, tutorials, and exercises can work in either
edition.
My students must complete the WebDewey tutorial, so they understand
maneuvering the program, but their homework forces them to build numbers
only in WebDewey, not the books. In six years of teaching Dewey this
way, I find by the time the students must work in WebDewey, they
understand the classification system and can use the program to build
numbers.
I hope this sparks ideas for you. I know some of this is not fleshed
out, sorry but this is all I have time for now.
Dawn Loomis
Cataloger, Librarian I
Pasadena Public Library
Pasadena, CA 91101
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