Kinda. There are planned hybrid libraries out there where a portion of the collection will be contained in stored bins, and requests for those books and periodicals will be fulfilled by a robotic retrieval system. One local (to Kansas City) university library will be utilizing ASRS after its next expansion.
I do agree, however, that it’d be unlikely in the forseeable future that a whole library would be converted to such a system.
Damn. MikeS already pointed this out. Missed it by thaaaaat–oh, hell, by a fucking bunch. 
I asked my mother, who works as a cataloguer for the Springfield public library. Some of the points she made:
"Dewey is easily adaptable from using short numbers where the collection is small to extended ones where it is large. (It is logical and hierarchical which means the numbers can be shortened or lengthened without too much trouble or meaning-change other than specificity.) The LC classification was built to fit the LC collection and is really not logical like Dewey.
"Maybe there is some “cachet” or distinction in using the scheme used by THE research library of the United States. I can’t say it is really any more intellectual than Dewey; in fact it is incomprehensible. But many college and university libraries got the notion LC was the scheme for “higher” education. The librarian who taught cataloging for many years at the [University of Illinois] thought a switch from one to the other was a waste of money, energy and time. Beginning from scratch is not quite the same and changing over. The main U of I library at C-U is Dewey still, I’m pretty sure although the Law School there uses LC for its collection and there may be some others there that do as well.
"For other than the largest libraries the Dewey no. can be relatively short and so easier to remember or deal with making it easier for elementary students and the “uneducated” public.
“probably more people are familiar with Dewey and don’t have to learn a new system where it is used. There are pros and cons for both.”
And how is a computer going to help you find a book in any library without providing you with the classification number?
“Look for a blue book about 5 inches wide, probably near some red books upstairs.”
Is it really fair to call this a trend when it’s been going on for over 25 years and have been common and expected for well over a decade?
Pick a word other than trend if it makes you happier-- I’m not sure what word will please you. I didn’t intend to imply faddishness, just tendency.
Spezza,
Arranging books by classification numbers or call numbers is convenient, not neccessary. One can arrange books by acquisition number or height or color or number of pages. People expect books on similar subjects to be grouped together, which they generally are when grouped by call number, but one can easily imagine a library where in fact the information you get from the computer tells you that the particular book you are looking for is located on the 3rd floor, 6 row of shelves, 3rd shelf from the top, 7th book in, but this does not allow you to locate other books on the subject.
Heh, that’s the call number patrons bring to me all the time.
For books that I’ve heard about and want to read, I log onto our local library’s website and put a hold on the book. They bring it down to the hold shelves, by the circulation desk and send me an email to come pick it up. If I don’t come within 7 days of the email, it gets reshelved and I’m charge a buck for the reshelving. Saves time and steps.
That’s cool as far as it goes, but it’s not research. If I was researching, first I’d be going to a different library, and second, I’d be browsing. You do the computer search first, but then you browse to see what your keywords didn’t bring up.
Also, browsing is how I found Terry Pratchett and Kinky Friedman. I was walking along and got stopped by the titles **Carpe Jugulum ** and Elvis, Jesus, and Coca-Cola. Good things come to those who browse.
The other answer as to why libraries still have their old systems is that it costs a million bazillion dollars to switch over from one system to another. Not just the physical cost of relabeling every book (and having to have a a dual system while the work is going on) but the simple endless task of finding every last book, many of which are out or in locations that nobody can now remember. Easier to burn the library to the ground and start from fresh.
That wrong, hunh? Could be.
My father and I had this argument back in the 1970s. He had the attitude I have now, and I opposed it, but I’ve come around more to his way of thinking.
Of course, many very large libraries already have closed stacks and have had them for a long time. To get a book or books, you have to give a clerk the accession numbers for the book.
A typical community public library is not like this, of course, and it may never be. As someone pointed out, converting to this would be expensive and perhaps pointless.
However, my local public library’s catalog is now online with a web-based frontend. I can browse through titles, discover availability, and reserve books without having to go to the library itself. This is a great combination of technologies. Also, there is nothing like an air-conditioned library on a hot day!
Our Minneapolis Public Library recently built a new Central Library building. One of the main advantages of the new building compared to the old one is that it has much fewer “closed stacks”. This is expected to save the library thousands of dollars every month, as the patrons will get the books themselves, rather than having to send library clerks down into the stacks to retrieve a book someone wants. And because the books are open for browsing, they expect them to be used much more often.
But there is a lot of online activity. The entire catalog is online, and you can search that from home, find books & see which library has a copy of them, and even do an online request for a book to be shipped to your neighborhood branch library & held for you. You get an email when it arrives and is ready for pickup. This feature is being used more & more by library patrons.
The Minneapolis Library just merged with the Hennepin County Library System (really more of a hostile takeover, but that’s a different story). One of the problems in the merger is that they used different classification systems – LoC vs. Dewey. Merging them will be expensive and lengthy (especially because Governor Tim Pawlenty went back on his word and vetoed the money allocated for this).
The deciding factor in choosing which system to use seems to have been that the computer system vendor of one of the systems is getting out of the library catalog business, so they are going with the other one.
I hear that was the real reason for the fire in the library of Alexandria.
Which is precisely why the MSU-Northern campus library is currently (as of a few years ago, no reason to assume they’re done by now) in the process of changing over from Dewey Decimal to LoC. Someone must’ve been chugging the funky cold medina.
What they should do is extend Dewey Decimal in a natural fashion. You know how non-Christiain religions are jammed in a single section? They still have all of the numbers they could ever need. All of them. In the Universe. See, the DD is based on real numbers, not piddly-shit integers or la-la-land letters. And in the reals, there are just as many numbers from 0.1 to 0.2 as there are from one trillion to five quadrillion. All we have to do is keep adding numbers to the end, and with each division we make we have a new section to use, the same size as the whole system itself. Leverage the power of aleph-one! Make the Dedekindest cut of all!
But after I suggest that they leave in a schnitt. I guess after a certain number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
KneadToKnow: Look at Google Books for how you can browse from home. The extension of that to libraries without user-visible classification systems should be straightforward. If I misunderstood you, I apologize in advance, but I can’t think of that (hypothetical) system as a mere retread of the old ‘closed stacks’ world.
Want to know what’s a huge PitA? Trying to find something in a public library in South Korea without a “cheat sheet.” In the first place, there are plenty of libraries that are closed stack, plenty that have both closed and open stacks. And they use their own version of the Dewey Decimal System. If you grew up in the US (as I did), then going by memory for where a particular subject’s books are will take you to the wrong subject. When I go to any of the public libraries here, I always take a cheat sheet with me telling me what the category numbers mean here.
I believe they use the Colon system in India in some places, don’t they?
So which books get irrational Dewey Decimal numbers?
But seriously… why don’t we add categories past 1000 to Dewey? Eg, for all the computer books.
I miss the old card catalogs…effin’ computers…
Because we already put all the damned 00 labels on 'em.