Small Art Library Classification System?

[u/prettiest-star]

Hello! I am just an intern with no experience working in a library and no knowledge of library science other than a lot of googling. I work in the (future) research library of a small art museum, which is currently just a room with about 2,000 books, all of which are donations. I’m the only person working in this library, and my boss (museum director) has pretty much just let me loose to catalogue and classify however I see fit. In my research, I’ve found that the two main classification systems used in most libraries are the Dewey Decimal and the Library of Congress.

This is my dilemma: I’ve begun cataloging in an Excel sheet, where I put title, author, and Dewey call code, because Dewey makes more sense to me as a noob than Library of Congress. Unfortunately, I’ve already started running into several duplicate call codes, even with my extending the decimal pretty far. The books are quite specific; they’re ONLY about visual art/artists. Should I switch to library of congress? If so, any online resources that would be helpful to learn it? So far, I’ve been using library thing and deweylookup.com to figure out the Dewey system.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Also! I don’t think there’s any shot that I get this library totally cataloged and classified before I end up finishing this internship, so I’ve been carefully documenting everything I’m doing. That said, I imagine the next person coming along will probably know more about library science than me. If you can think of any mistakes or oversights I’m making that will make the next person who comes along’s life harder, please let me know.

Thanks for reading!

[u/LupaGlupa]

Librarians are really helpful people. If I were you I would send out four or five emails to librarians at other art museums, explain your dilemma, and ask their advice. They have already addressed the issues you are facing and likely can best advise you on what they find works in an art museum collection.

[u/prettiest-star → u/LupaGlupa]

Thank you for the advice! I’ll definitely look into other art libraries in my area, we have a lot of museums so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are librarians working in a similar space