Starting in April:
Ferndale’s Youth Librarians have redesigned and reorganized the nonfiction section in the Kids’ Corner.
Instead of using the number-based Dewey Decimal System, our nonfiction books will be organized by WORDS and PICTURES to make it easier for kids to find what they’re looking for. All you’ll need to know is the alphabet!
Within the alphabetical structure, we’ve put kids' nonfiction books into categories, like Animals and Prehistory, and then organized the books within those categories.
For example, if you want to find books about T-Rex:
Start by looking through the shelves labeled: X. Prehistory
Then locate books in the Dinosaurs
Rather than numbers and decimal points, items will have accessible labels containing words and images that specifies the subject matter of each nonfiction item.
Noteworthy: This is only being applied to Youth Nonfiction! All other sections of the library will remain unchanged, with both Adult and YA Nonfiction sticking to the Dewey Decimal System.
More about METIS
Ferndale Youth Librarians started this reorganizing project in 2023, inspired by the Miquon School Library in Conshohocken, PA, which had the goal of putting children "in the center of their own search" with an intuitive system that better reflects their experience, using whole language and visual cues instead of numbers. Overall, this project required Youth Librarians to reorganize the entire section--first through extensive spreadsheets, then diligently designing for accessibility, and finally through physical relabeling and shifting of more than 7,200 items!
Now, with Ferndale-METIS, there are 26 categories that use the letters of the alphabet. Each category is divided into sub-categories, which are also divided alphabetically. The spines of each item will now show three visual elements that help identify the subject of each item: Category (for, ex. E. for Space & Time ) -> Sub-Category (ex. Planets) -> Specific Subject (ex. Mars).
You can read more about METIS here.
