Where Does Dewey Fit In?

One of the ongoing jobs of a public or school librarian is that of cataloging. Where there are print materials meant for circulation, there is a stack of books and periodicals each waiting to be christened with a call number and take its place on the appropriate library shelf. In years past, when Dewey was king of library cataloging, there was little if any discussion or much thought going into the process of cataloging each book. It was a simple if not tedious process of assigning a predetermined call number according to Dewey's system to each resource. Like everything else in our world today, cataloging has become a little more complicated.
Some school librarians are questioning whether or not it would better serve the students to catalog books, not according to Dewey as was done in the past, but more in the fashion of book stores where materials are clustered together with similar topics for easier access. So one shelf would house "Mysteries" while another "Historical Fictions" and so on. While it may be true that this system would likely help students in the short term to locate the materials that they want or need, I don't feel we should totally discount educating students on Dewey's catagories. When these students move on to middle school, high school, college, and beyond, they will have to locate resources that no doubt have been cataloged and shelved according to the Dewey system. Without the proper early introduction to Dewey and practice locating materials in this way, these same students will be lost when later attempting to find books. Wouldn't it better serve our students if we took the time to teach them about Dewey and his ten catagories? Library lessons can be planned that are fun and helpful in its teaching. For instance, classes could participate in a Dewey Scavenger Hunt where each member of a team picks a card with a call number on it and has to locate the book that corresponds to it. First team to collect all the correct books is the winner. With lessons such as this, it won't be long before the students are skipping the catalog step and heading right for the shelves to choose their books to take out. With a little practice, Dewey isn't that hard to figure out.
No one knows what the future holds for libraries. But for now, I think we should hold onto a system that's been around for a while. It's not time to do away with Dewey.