BACKGROUND

Before joining the Bodleian Law Library in 2004 I worked at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. One of the projects I managed at Freshfields was the reclassification of the book collection to Moys. When I joined the Bodleian I agreed with Ruth that Moys, a classification scheme rooted in the structure and study of law, was appropriate for the Bodleian Law Library's collection. It wasn't simply loyalty to Moys that informed my view but my experiences of using Library of Congress Classification at White & Case and at the Foreign Office and of Dewey Decimal Classification from my employment at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. I felt that Moys classification worked best for legal collections and, as a law librarian, I could relate the structure of the scheme to law collections and how people used them. I was, therefore, delighted when in 2005 Ruth won support from the Faculty of Law and OULS (Oxford University Library Services as it was then) to reclassify the Bodleian Law Library's monograph collection to Moys. The Faculty of Law was keen to have the monograph collection organised in a more user-friendly manner which would encourage shelf-browsing by subject.

2006 to 2009

Preparatory work for the Moys Reclassification Project began in 2006. Apart from Ruth and myself no other staff member had any experience of using Moys classification. From the outset we agreed that the Moys Reclassification Project would be a long-term one as no funding was available to employ extra staff needed to reclassify the books quickly, hence the reclassification work would have to be undertaken by the Law Library staff, fitted in around existing commitments. We planned that the books would be physically re-organised during summer vacations to minimise disruption to readers. We also agreed that the project would only cover the main collection which consists of books that have not been replaced by later editions, books that have been replaced by later editions are moved to the secondary collection. The secondary collection would remain in its original shelfmark order and a new secondary collection for Moys would be developed. To help arrange books on the shelves we decided to add three letter codes for author surnames and the year of publication. We also decided not to use all the tables on offer in Moys as we wanted to avoid the classification numbers becoming too complex.

In terms of numbers, the main monograph collection breaks down as follows (see Table 1 below):

Table 1

Breakdown of the monograph collection in numbers.

Starting in 2006 Bodleian Law Library staff had to be trained in how to use Moys, workflows had to be devised to enable the reclassification process to run smoothly, policies put in place so that decisions could be recorded and adhered to, and an over-arching project plan was drawn up. The reclassification of the book collection was started by two members of staff, Philip Bower and Tamas Foldi, with other members of staff added to the team as the project got underway.

The reclassification workflow was probably the easiest task to arrange. Before beginning work on reclassifying a section of books we use Excel to create a list of books held in the section we want to reclassify. The report is divided into 30 items per sheet. We store the printed sheets in a box. Next to the box there is a register and staff members note which sheets they have taken and when they have returned them. Staff collect their 30 books from the shelf, leaving a note behind to say the books are being reclassified. They then reclassify each book according to Moys, pencilling the number inside the front cover and adding to a field in the integrated library system which is kept hidden from public view. Nowadays we also add a barcode to each book and its item record. The books go back to the shelf and the reclassifier moves to the next sheet. This workflow means that multiple staff members can reclassify in the same area of the collection and we can keep track of where the books are in the library, as we are a reference only library this is particularly important.

SUMMER 2009

In summer 2009 we were ready to put what had previously been called the ‘Cw UK’ collection into Moys classification order, this numbered approximately 20,000 titlesFootnote ³. To help with the summer project we employed 15 postgraduate students.

As we planned for the summer move we realised that our existing method of creating spine labels using a Brother P-Touch wasn't going to work, the system was too slow and the amount of tape we would need was too costly. Consequently we asked the students to type spine labels using a Word label template, they used Excel reports as the source for the spine labels; the spine labels were printed, and each sheet of labels was kept with its relevant part of the Excel report.

To achieve the physical re-organisation of the book collection, we developed a workflow which we still use today. This process involves removing the books from the shelves, laying them in their current shelfmark order on the Reading Room tables, removing old labels, replacing with new Moys labels, and putting the books back on the shelf in Moys order. We use Excel reports generated from the integrated library system to keep track of where books are located.

The re-labelling and re-organising of the ‘Cw UK’ collection was completed over summer vacation 2009 and this created our first Moys section which ran from KL to KN; we also had some titles located in KB. Readers adapted well to the new scheme with positive comments on the subject approach.

SUMMER 2012

The next major move of the book collection in to Moys classification order took place in summer 2012Footnote ⁴.

Part of the reason for the three year delay was to ensure that we had this collection of books reclassified, in order for a move to take place over summer vacation it is important that there are enough books to move as the work involved is too time consuming for a small move. But, we were also delayed by two other projects. In 2010 the Official Papers Collection moved in to the Ground Floor of the Bodleian Law Library and this inevitably took time away from the Moys Reclassification Project. Then, in summer 2011, a new integrated library system & resource discovery tool was implemented across the Bodleian Libraries (formerly OULS) which meant we were unable to add the new Moys numbers to the library system and, more significantly, we needed a new process to record the new Moys classification numbers in the system. Working with the Bodleian Libraries OLIS Team these problems were resolved by summer 2012.

The 2012 move focussed on the move of the “rest of Cw UK”, i.e. Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, and the Republic of Ireland and this would expand the existing Moys collection held in KL to KN. This move would necessitate the integration of approximately 3,000 books into the existing Moys collection plus a major book move to enable space to be created to house the merged collection.

Unlike in summer 2009 we took the decision not to employ students. Although the students were enthusiastic and energetic, their lack of Moys knowledge meant that library staff spent a great deal of time answering their questions. As we still needed help with the project, various part-time Bodleian Law Library staff were employed to work additional hours to assist with the project. This was very helpful as they were familiar with Moys. Again spine labels were created in Word.

We'd also realised that different activities had to be assigned to different teams with individuals responsible for those activities and coordinating with others. This time I delegated the book move to the Law Library Facilities Team to manage and the re-labelling of books was delegated to the Acquisitions Librarian, Lindsay Robinson. These changes resulted in the 2012 move running more smoothly than the one in 2009. The one problem we did encounter was that I hadn't correctly allocated enough space in the right areas for the newly merged collection which meant that books had to be shuffled on the shelves to get the spacing correct which took time.

The 2012 project was the point at which we introduced country codes to the readers. For this collection we had used our own locally devised alpha-numeric country codes rather than following the rules in the Moys Classification SchemeFootnote ⁵. For example, in contract law the books would be arranged as follows:

• KN10.CHI 2009 English contract law (no alphanumeric country code)

• KN10.SMI 2001 English contract law (no alphanumeric country code)

• KN10.I5.CAR 2000 Irish contract law (.I5 is the alpha-numeric country code for the Republic of Ireland)

• KN10.S3.ILF 2001 Scottish contract law (.S3 is the alpha-numeric country code for Scotland)

The introduction of country codes was an area of concern for library staff as we didn't know how readers would react to this; under the old scheme the jurisdiction was stated at the start of the shelfmark, for example “Cw Guernsey 510 D269a”. New signs explained the concept of country codes and, remarkably, readers coped with the changes.

2012 to 2014

After the 2012 move we agreed that we needed to focus on completing the reclassifying of the common law countries. The reason for this was that the remaining common law countries would need to integrate with the existing KL to KN Moys collection, enabling subject browsing of common law jurisdictions. From autumn 2012 onwards we directed our efforts to reclassifying the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

In November 2012 the 5^th editionFootnote ⁶ of Moys was published. Changes had been made in the schedule to KN84 through to KN98.99 and we decided to adopt the changes. This meant correcting books which were already in Moys order as well as the books which were reclassified but still arranged under the old shelfmark scheme. To ensure that we maintained consistency this work was allocated to one member of staff.

Whilst we concentrated on reclassifying materials to reach the optimum number for a physical move, summer vacations were freed for a couple of other projects. In summer 2013 the Bodleian Law Library team worked on a project called Notable WorksFootnote ⁷ and in summer 2014 efforts were directed towards the 50^th anniversary celebrations of the St Cross BuildingFootnote ⁸

IMPACT OF REFURBISHMENT

In summer 2014 the preparatory work for the refurbishment of the Bodleian Law Library beganFootnote ⁹. The refurbishment plans were vast. Central to the project was the requirement to decant 2,100 m of Law Library open shelf material to the Bodleian Libraries Book Storage Facility (BSF) in Swindon. The problem was that in order to be accepted at the BSF every item had to have a barcode, the barcoding process generated an item record in the integrated library system and it was this item record that was key to physically re-locating the item from the Law Library to the BSF. Although we were able to send a couple of discrete collections of books to the BSF without too many problems the rest of the material that had to be sent off-site was serial in nature and none of it was barcoded. Thus began a large-scale barcoding project which ran from November 2014 to August 2016.

Figure 1.

The Reading Room floor during summer 2009.

Although we were fortunate that we could employ temporary staff to help with the barcoding and book moving work, a number of the library staff were involved in upgrading catalogue records and holdings, work that had to take place ahead of barcoding. This meant that for a long while our reclassification work was very much relegated to the background.

The key achievement for the Moys Project during the refurbishment was the reclassification of the entire Reserve Collection. The Reserve Collection comprises 800 high use books that we issue to readers to use in the Library. The refurbishment gave us the opportunity to reclassify and re-arrange the Reserve Collection from an alphabetical arrangement by surname to Moys order. We kept this work restricted to a team of three people to ensure that we had consistency in our approach. The interesting feature of this project was that it involved reclassifying books from areas that we had not yet tackled as part of the wider project for example jurisprudence and international law. This provided some useful feedback which we will be able to incorporate when we move on to reclassify these sections in the main collection.

Figure 2.

Crates for moving barcoded materials to the BSF, Barcoding Project 2014–2016.

With the refurbishment complete in October 2016 reclassification work resumed. We were somewhat surprised by the beginning of 2017 to realise that we had completed the reclassification not only of the four common law countries but also Criminology and General & Comparative. As it would be impossible to complete the moving work for this volume of books over a three month period we decided to focus on the four common law countries and leave Criminology and General & Comparative to another time. In addition we realised that we also needed to complete another book move to ensure that space was created in the right part of the collection; the book move involved moving legislation from Floor 2 to Floor 1; physically swapping over the journals & law reports with the existing Moys collection; and then re-spacing the existing Moys collection to allow the newly reclassified books to file in.

SUMMER 2017

Having learnt from the problems of 2012, I spent much more time on planning moves for summer 2017Footnote ¹⁰. Two members of Law Library staff, Sam Hughes and Ben Spiers were instrumental in this work. Sam devised a method to sort our Excel spreadsheets of new Moys numbers in to the correct Moys order which allowed us to see which areas would need most integration.

Ben had detailed measurements of each part of the monograph collection and was able to use the Moys-sorted report to flag the shelves where the new sequences would start. By adopting this approach we were able to avoid the problems we'd had in 2012 when we'd returned the books to the shelves and discovered that we hadn't allowed enough space.

Meanwhile the task of printing new spine labels had to be done and this was managed effectively by a group of staff in the Information Resources Team, new labels were printed and kept with their relevant Excel sheet.

The 2012 project had also demonstrated the importance of involving staff in the project that understood the Moys classification scheme. This meant that they were able to spot errors quickly and understood the filing order on the shelf. As the 2017 project was so much bigger than the previous ones all the full-time staff agreed to be involved in the project over the summer and we reduced our coverage of the enquiry desk to ensure that we had enough people available to help with the project work.

As I had some funding available in my staff budget I decided to employ someone to work additional hours on the project. This was one of the problematic parts of the 2017 project due to the length of time that it took to set up the role. In previous projects we'd been permitted to allocate additional hours to our part-time staff but for 2017 the policy had changed and I could only appoint someone using a casual contract. The contract came through in time for the start of the project but it was a near-run thing and something that will have to be borne in mind for the next stage.

The summer 2017 move was our most successful one yet. We moved and re-labelled over 12,000 titles and re-spaced over 18,000 titles, eventually merging over 30,000 titles in to one continuous Moys run which now starts at K and finishes at KZ. We were incredibly lucky as the Bodleian Libraries Book Moving Team was able to complete the various book moves so that the Law Library staff could concentrate on the re-labelling and re-shelving work. When the books were returned to the shelves the classification numbers were updated on the catalogue and new notices added to the book cases.

We had expected problems when the new academic year began as the books were in a new order with more alpha-numerical country codes in use as well as being located in a different section of the Reading Room (see Table 2 below).

Figure 3.

Screenshot from a section of an Excel report sorted by new Moys classification number.

Figure 4.

The Reading Room in summer 2017.

Table 2

Diagram to explain arrangement by alpha-numeric country code.

We created a shelf arrangement chart for the common law section to help readers identify the different sections and the alpha-numeric country codes (see Table 3 below).

Table 3

Overall shelf arrangement.

As in previous years, readers adapted to the new system. We only had one comment from an academic who preferred the jurisdictional approach rather than Moys.

2018 ONWARDS

We took a break from all things Moys in the latter part of 2017. This was partly due to the start of the new academic year and also as I felt that the team needed a rest from the project to avoid becoming jaded.

We began the reclassification of Roman law in January 2018. I had concerns about tackling the Roman law section but under the management of Felicity Staveley-Taylor the reclassification work is progressing quickly.

THE FUTURE OF THE PROJECT

As of 30 June 2018:

• • We have approx. 8,000 titles in Criminology and 10,000 titles in General & Comparative that have Moys numbers but are waiting to be moved.

• • We are reclassifying Roman law, about 3,000 titles.

• • On the main Reading Room floor we still have Jurisprudence, Legal History, Ancient, Primitive, and Romano-Dutch to reclassify, probably around 8,000 titles. We plan to reclassify these in 2018/2019.

• • On floors 1 and 3 we have approximately 30,500 books to reclassify.

My goal is to complete the move of the Reading Room monographs so that they are all in Moys classification order. I am planning for this to be done by the end of September 2019 but this date is flexible.

After that I'm undecided as to whether we continue with reclassifying the rest of the collection held on floors 1 and 3. My hesitancy isn't because I lack faith in the Moys scheme. To reclassify the remaining books will take many more years. The largest section yet to be reclassified to Moys is International law but this section, unusually for the in-house scheme, already has a subject arrangement so we need to consider whether Moys reclassification can improve the existing arrangement. The remaining books are largely drawn from civil law jurisdictions and it would be useful if they were in subject order but this needs to be balanced against the large-scale book move we would need to do in order to achieve this. Another factor that we need to consider is that we are increasing our provision of e-books. The Bodleian Law Library is a legal deposit library and since the switch to non-print legal deposit we are receiving fewer print monographs via legal deposit, instead monographs are accessible via the Bodleian Libraries computer networkFootnote ¹¹. We are also increasingly buying e-books to support teaching and research. Once the Reading Room floor reclassification project is completed then we will have to take some time to consider our next steps in consultation with the Law Faculty and readers.

BENEFITS FROM THE RECLASSIFICATION WORK

The Moys Reclassification Project has enabled us to find numerous lost items and identify missing items. We've been able to relegate antiquarian materials from the open shelves to locked cases and have been able to use conservation grade boxes to protect more fragile items. We have made significant improvements to our catalogue records and our holdings which in turn has benefited everyone who uses SOLOFootnote ¹² for research in to the Law Library's holdings. SOLO means that our Moys shelfmarks are available for other libraries to adopt if they so wish. Overall the Moys collection of books in the Reading Room is in good order and through the judicious use of notices and shelf guides readers are able to navigate their way through the collection.

The Law Library staff has spent hours discussing spine labels as our first batch of reclassified spine labels deteriorated very quickly, with the type face fading and blurring. We have experimented with different fonts and types of labels and we now have what we consider to be very clear and long-lasting spine labels that are easy to read and don't degrade.

As we reclassify materials we now add barcodes to the books. Although we are a reference only library the barcodes are useful for when we wish to loan books to research readers at their desks and for running reports. It also gives us a headstart if any future changes are made to our reference only status.

The Moys Reclassification Project has been an incredible way to build staff relationships. All staff are encouraged to join the reclassification team if they wish, regardless of their grade or role. We've had a huge number of people working on the project ranging from interns to the Bodleian Law Librarian to graduate trainees. This approach means that we always have a group of people working closely together on the project. The project work provides an intellectual challenge and gives staff a sense of ownership of the project. When the large-scale moves happen over the summer it helps to bring everyone together as a team.

Aside from the experience of managing the reclassification project, the project has led me to be involved more closely with BIALL. I joined the BIALL Publications Committee as the rep from the Editorial Board of Moys. I've delivered a Moys training course on behalf of BIALL in how to use Moy's. Nowadays I am the joint list-owner of the MOYS-USERS mailing list. We've shown a number of law librarians around the collection and talked to them about the Moys Project. In these ways I feel that I am helping to continue the development of Moys as a classification scheme and building relations with librarians across the world who also use Moys.

Naturally the biggest benefit we have derived from this project is having a collection of common law books that can now be browsed by subject, this opens up the possibility of readers discovering other materials that are of interest to them; under our old scheme the majority of the monograph collection is, in effect, arranged by author's surname. The work involved in this long running project is always made worthwhile when you can direct a reader to the shelf where – for example – they can find all books on intellectual property law in the United States, this was impossible before we introduced Moys and was a significant barrier to using the monograph collection.

Figure 5.

New Moys spine labels.

LESSONS LEARNT

Having been involved in the reclassification project since its inception, the biggest lesson I have learnt in managing a long-term project is the importance of flexibility, always expect the unexpected and be prepared to adapt your plans to the circumstances.

I've learnt a number of other lessons too.

Keep an easily accessible record of policy decisions and project documents and keep those documents updated and archive the out of date ones. At one point we had a myriad of documents held in different places with different versions. After experimenting with a wiki, we now use SharePoint. When making policy decisions make it clear where you are deviating from your chosen classification scheme. At the beginning of the Moys Reclassification Project we wanted to adhere to the Moys scheme very closely but as the project has moved on we have created a number of local policies, for example we use our own alpha-numeric country codes and not the ones given in the 5^th edition as this works for our collection and readers.

If you are reclassifying a large collection of books, review the collection beforehand looking for the potential problems. If you are the only person involved in the reclassification then it should be fairly easy to stay on track but if you have a team of people reclassifying it is important that you check progress and make sure that they are confident in asking for help. With any classification scheme people can often devise different numbers for the same item. Remember that often there is no correct answer with classification, the correct answer is the one that fits your collection. Also if you are working with a team of people, deliver training so that they are all given the same message in terms of local policies.

For any book move make sure that your measurements are as accurate as possible. It is important to find out as much information about shelf space and the size of items being moved. Reclassified books are returned to the shelf in a different order and that is when shelf pitch and height becomes very important. If you can, make sure you have plenty of people on hand to help with book moving as it always take longer than you expect.

Embrace the knowledge of your team, it's amazing the individual skills and knowledge that people have fetched to the project. During a long-running project, staff will leave so make sure you have a plan in place to capture where they are with their work on the project.

Be aware that your institution's policies may affect what you want to do, make sure those hurdles are jumped in plenty of time for the next stage of the project. For example, at the Bodleian we need to ensure that our library systems people are available to help switch the numbers in the catalogue.

Keep motivated! Set goals that are achievable and don't overwhelm people with the size of the entire project. Break the project in to mini projects and ensure that each part of the mini project has a designated team leader.

Don't forget about communication. The one thing that I wish I had done is to have made the project more visible to students and academics. We've only tended to publicise the project around the time we move the books; at one point I intended that we would write regular blog posts, tweet our progress, and regularly report back at meetings but those good intentions fell by the wayside due to the pressure of keeping the project on track and keeping people motivated whilst trying to deal with my regular day to day work.

Finally, be prepared to explain your classification scheme and why you have chosen it. In a long running project it can be easy to forget what your ultimate objective is.