dewey? we do!
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DEWEY? WE DO!. Decoding the mysteries of the Dewey Decimal System. SO MANY BOOKS!! HOW DO I FIND THE ONE I WANT?. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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!