Te Awe Library is trialling a new way of cataloguing its mātauranga Māori books. Photo: RNZ/Pokere Paewai
A Wellington Library is trialling a new way of cataloguing its mātauranga Māori books, organising them by atua (deity) rather than by the Dewey Decimal system.
The trial shelves can be found on the second floor of Te Awe Library in central Wellington and have been integrated with the online library catalogue.
Bridget Jennings is the Senior Cataloguing Specialist at Wellington City Libraries, she said they wanted to create a structure for the library's collections based on how knowledge is organised in te ao Māori.
"Libraries around the world have been thinking about this for a long time, how to reflect indigenous ways of knowing and certainly libraries in New Zealand have been thinking about this."
Jennings said the idea began almost by accident during a conversation with fellow librarian Ann Reweti where they both expressed frustration with the lack of a classification system for Māori books.
They eventually settled on a structure with 13 atua classes, one with Ranginui and Papatuānuku together then 12 individual atua, she said.
The Dewey Decimal system was first developed in the United States and organises library books by discipline or field of study, with numbered classes such as 300: Social Sciences and 900: History and Geography.
Jennings said within those classes it is organised by subjects such as psychology, philosophy, literature etc. Before becoming increasingly granular within that.
Dewey has always been a bit controversial, she said, because it is difficult to deal with what the system considers to be the other.
Librarian Shane Caldwell said they wanted to get away from a system where indigenous people are an afterthought.
"With Dewey, a lot of non white peoples are in the end of the nine hundreds, because when they did it they thought they were going extinct, so they just tacked them on to the end because their histories don't matter that much because they'll be gone soon, obviously they do matter and so we're bringing them out of that."
Bridget Jennings (right) and Shane Caldwell (left). Photo: RNZ/Pokere Paewai
With the trial system, there is some difficulty at times decided which atua a book should come under, he said.
Often it's not immediately obvious how a certain book connects to an atua, for example Caldwell said books about music come under Tāwhirimātea god of the weather, because it's the wind or hau creating the sound.
"It's like a a mix of things and some things can go in multiple places and you know there'd be some topics where in an ideal world would have five copies of a book and it would be in five different places because, you know, you can't break things up so easily."
Under Tangaroa, atua of the oceans, lakes and rivers - and all life within them, and the guardian of knowledge of carving - you can find books on bodies of water, fish, art/the arts and carving.
Rongomatāne, atua of peace, the kūmara and cultivated food is where you find te ao Māori books on peace, agriculture, gardening, food and cooking.
So far, the response has been a combination of enthusiasm and people just going about their regular library business, Jennings said.
"It's kind of integrated itself into the overall collection quite well and people can search for and find things and but at the same time, people are also enjoying the different different perspective that it brings when you're browsing the shelves and Librarians are particularly getting a a bit of a kick out of it."
Libraries in other parts of the world doing similar things, she said. For example there is a tribal library in the United States which has organised it's collection in a similar way.
"I find it quite encouraging and quite exciting to see these developments in the library world," she said.
The library is looking for feedback from the public and Jennings said they are keen to roll it out to other libraries around Wellington.
