Site of the Month- Do We Browse? Dewey Ever Dewey Browse

Do We Browse? Dewey Ever Dewey Browse: www.deweybrowse.org

Gail Shea Grainger calls herself the "Media Generalist" of the Chesterfield School in Chesterfield, NH. Two years ago, looking for something she couldn't find online, she created a catalog of Web sites by Dewey number. Although simple and plain by design, Dewey Browse keeps growing.

Sites from circumstance: The sites included on Dewey Browse—as in most Web directories compiled by school and public librarians—are driven by the research needs of the people served by the librarian compiling the list. For example, Grainger says, "I have a class coming in tomorrow to research insects, so I will be working on that tonight." Her husband, John, in the library at nearby Keene (NH) High School, sends her good sites when he finds them, and she receives plenty of suggestions via e-mail.

Like a set of catalog drawers: Dewey Browse is arranged into 12 subject areas, rather like an old-fashioned set of catalog drawers. There are the 10 Dewey categories from 000 to 900, plus biographies (92) and a final "drawer" of "Teacher's Resources." Like a typical library organized by Dewey numbers, some sections of the catalog are larger than others. The 100s are relatively few (with, of course, several sites on the Salem witch trials, just as in many library 100s shelves), as are the language sites in the 400s. The 500s through 700s, typically, have many entries (Grainger creates subsections for big project topics, like astronomy, birds, paper airplanes, and the Olympics). The longest section—with subsections for many cultures and civilizations, such as ancient civilizations, Russia, or China—is the 900s.

A busy librarian: Besides her job, Grainger is currently president of the New Hampshire Educational Media Association. She pledges, however, to keep adding sites and subsections, to install a search engine, and to improve the site's metatags, which will make the Dewey Browse site easier to find when students, teachers, and librarians go searching for resources. She's also constantly checking her links, a job that gets more difficult as her collection grows; she was surprised recently when an educators' technology site became a porn site.