DEWEY? WE DO!

Decoding the mysteries of the Dewey Decimal System.

SO MANY BOOKS!!

HOW DO I FIND THE ONE I WANT?

Think of a room full of books. They’re not in any order. Big ones and small ones, paperbacks and hardcovers, a book about dinosaurs next to a cookbook next to a dictionary. It might be fun to browse through a mess like that—but it would be almost impossible if there were one particular book you wanted to find.

In the late 1800s, a librarian named Melvil Dewey developed a way to organize books in a library so they’d be easier to find.

There are lots of subjects books can be about. Some subjects have nothing in common—like wolves and cookbooks. Others are very similar—like flowers and trees.

Dewey grouped all the similar subjects together. He settled on ten big groups of subjects. Then he assigned a number to those big subjects. This first basic classification looks like this:

000 General KnowledgeAlmanacs, Encyclopedias, Libraries, Museums, Newspapers ... 100 Psychology and Philosophy Death & Dying, Ethics, Feelings, Logic, Making Friends, Optical Illusions, Superstitions ... 200 Religions and Mythology Amish, Bible Stories, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Quakers, and other world religions; Greek, Roman and other myths... 300 Social Sciences and Folklore Careers, Customs, Environment, Families, Folktales, Government, Manners, Money, Recycling ... 400 Languages and Grammar Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Sign Language, Spanish. Includes dictionaries.500 Math and Science Animals, Biology, Chemistry, Dinosaurs, Fish, Geology, Insects, Physics, Planets, Plants ... 600 Medicine and Technology Computers, Cookbooks, Engineering, Farming, Health, Human Body, Inventions, Manufacturing, Nutrition ... 700 Arts & Recreation Architecture, Crafts, Drawing, Games, Jokes, Music, Puppets, Songbooks, Sports ... 800 Literature Children's Literature, Plays, Poetry, Shakespeare, Writing ... 900 Geography and History Biographies, Countries, Native Americans, States, Travel, Wars ...

Then Dewey broke the big subjects down into smaller subjects by dividing the big, “hundreds” numbers into smaller, “tens” numbers. Similar subjects were assigned numbers that were close together.

000 Generalities010 Bibliography

020Library & information science

030 General encyclopedias

040 Not used

050 General serial publications

060 Organizations

070Journalism, publishing, media

080 General collections

090 Manuscripts & rare books

100 Philosophy & Pscyhology110 Metaphysics

120 Epistemology, causation, humankind

130 Paranormal phenomenon

140 Specific philosophical schools

150 Psychology

160 Logic

170 Ethics

180Ancient, medieval, Oriental philosophy

190 Modern western philosophy

200 Religion210 Philosophy & theory of religion

220 Bible

230 Christianity

240 Christian moral & devotional theology

250 Christian orders & local church

260 Social & ecclesiastical theology

270 History of Christianity & Christian sects

280 Christian denominations

290 Comparative religion & other religions

300 Social Sciences310 Statistics

320 Political science

330 Economics

340 Law

350Public administration & military science

360 Social programs & services

370 Education

380 Commerce

390 Customs, etiquette, folklore

400 Language410 Linguisitics

420 English & Old English

430 Germanic

440 French

450Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romanic

460 Spanish & Portuguese

470 Latin

480 Greek

490 Other languages

500 Natural Sciences & Math510 Math

520 Astronomy

530 Physics

540 Chemistry

550 Earth sciences

560 Paleontology

570 Life sciences

580 Plants

590 Animals

600 Technology & Applied Sciences610 Medicine

620 Engineering

630 Agriculture

640 Home economics (cooking)

650 Management

660 Chemical engineering

670 Manufacturing

680 Manufacture for specific uses

690 Building

700 Arts, Sports, Recreation710 Civic & landscape art

720 Architecture

730 Plastic arts (sculpture)

740 Drawing & decorative art

750 Painting

760 Graphic arts

770 Photography

780 Music

790Recreation, performing arts, sports

800 Literature & Rhetoric810 American 

820 English & Old English

830 Germanic

840 French

850 Italian, Romanian

860 Spanish, Portuguese

870 Latin

880 Greek

890 Other literatures

900 Geography, History, Biography910 Geography, travel

920 Biography, genealogy, insignia

930 Ancient world

940 Europe

950 Asia

960 Africa

970 North America

980 South America

990 Other areas

But even these divisions were not enough. For instance, Mr. Dewey assigned the number 980 to the continent of South America. But there are many countries in that big continent. The system Mr. Dewey designed was flexible enough to allow for a separate number for different countries and regions:

980 General history of South America981 Brazil982 Argentina983 Chile984 Bolivia985 Peru986 Colombia & Ecuador987 Venezuela988 Guiana 989 Paraguay & Uruguay

Mr. Dewey’s classification system allows librarians to divide the numbers that are used to describe subjects even further by using decimals—which is why we call it the Dewey DECIMAL System.

For instance, 362 is the number assigned to social problems. But there are all sorts of problems in society. So the number is divided again:

362.1 Social aspects of health problems like AIDS

362.2 Social aspects of mental illness

362.4 Social aspects of physical disabilities like

blindness

362.5 Poverty and homelessness

362.6 Social issues of the elderly

362.7 Social issues of children and teens

362.8 Social issues of families, including domestic violence

362.9 Military draft

Librarians can continue to create smaller and smaller divisions using the decimal numbers.

For instance, 582.1 is the number for plants with seeds. But there are different kinds of plants with seeds, such as trees and flowers. So, in the Dewey Decimal System, there can be slightly different numbers for flowers and trees:

582.13 Flowers

582.16 Trees

Books about flowers and trees would be very close together on a library shelf, because their Dewey numbers both begin with “582.” But books about flowers would be right next to each other, followed by books about trees a little further down the shelf.

In really large libraries that have many, many books about plants, the numbers could be even more specific: just for oak trees, or just for roses, for example.

"Next Time Someone Asks You Where the 300s Are""Staff members at Northwestern University Library Cataloging Department

have identified what is believed to be the longest Dewey number ever under serious consideration for assignment: a 23-digit monster for ARAB

ATTITUDES TOWARD ISRAEL by Yehoshafat Harkabi, 301.1543012917492705694. The meaning of the number can be broken

down as follows: 301-Sociology, 1543-Opinions, attitudes, beliefs on specific topics (Add 001-999); 301-Sociology; 29-Historical and

geographical treatment (Add "areas"); 174-Region where specific racial, ethnic, national groups predominate (Add from Table 5); 927-Arabs and Maltese; 0-General relations between two countries (Add "areas"); 5694-Palestine, Israel. In other words: Historical and geographical treatment of opinions on countries where Arabs predominate, and their relations with

Israel."

IS THERE A PAGE ABOUT LIBRARIES IN THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS?

Sometimes it can be confusing to figure out how Dewey Decimal Numbers work on the library shelves.

HINT: THINK MONEY!!!! AS IN DOLLARS AND CENTS!!!

A high percentage of books have Dewey numbers that just extend to the hundredths place—two digits past the decimal point. This makes the numbers look a lot like prices, without the dollar sign!

So, if you aren’t sure whether 919.65 is shelved before or after 919.57, THINK MONEY. Which is larger, $919.65, or $919.57? Remember that Dewey numbers get larger to your right and smaller to your left when you’re standing in the stacks (which is what librarians call shelving). So on the shelf, those two books will look like this:

919.57 919.65($919.57)

($919.65)

Here in the BMHS library media center, while we use the Dewey Decimal System to organize our books and other materials, we DO take a few liberties.

For example, some libraries designate biographies (books about people’s lives) with 920; others with 921; others with B. Here we use 92 for biographies.

Also, Mr. Dewey wasn’t really thinking about popular novels when he created his system. He placed Fiction in with Literature—the 800s. Most school and public libraries choose not to do this. Here at BMHS, we use F or FIC to designate Fiction.

In many school library media centers, there is another way the Dewey Decimal System gets “tweaked.” There can be many books on the same subject, like dinosaurs, or weather, or the American Revolution. All these books would have the same Dewey Decimal Number. And sometimes you don’t want just ANY book about dinosaurs, you want the ones by Don Lessem. So printed just below the Dewey number on the spine of the book (see Parts of a Book tutorial) there are three letters: the first three letters of the author’s last name. The combination of the Dewey Decimal Number plus the letters makes up the book’s “call number.”

Fiction works the same way: on the spine you’ll see F or FIC on the top line, and the first three letters of the author’s last name below. A novel by Walter Dean Myers has the “call number” FIC MYE.

Biographies are a little different. In BMHS, the Dewey Decimal Number is 92. The three letters below the 92 are the first three letters of the SUBJECT’s last name, not the author’s. So all the books about Eminem have the same call number: 92 EMI. And they’re right next to each other on the shelf.

567.9LES

FICMYE

92EMI

The Dewey Decimal System is not the only way to organize libraries. But it is the one used most often in public and school libraries.

College and university libraries often choose the Library of Congress system instead of Dewey. LC uses combinations of letters instead of numbers to designate subjects. Libraries that receive many documents from the government, like copies of Congressional bills, use a system called Superintendent of Documents. And collections of musical recordings may be organized by ANSCR, or the Alpha-Numeric for Classification of Recordings, which uses combinations of letters to stand for genres of music, like symphonies or opera or jazz.

Finally, always remember: IF YOU NEED HELP FINDING

WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR IN THE LIBRARY, ASK A LIBRARIAN!