Library Organization
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey, I was going to read that!
00:18Who would want that?
00:20Oh, please.
00:23You cannot be serious.
00:26Ha ha.
00:29Uh, okay.
01:00It appears right there on the book's spines.
01:03Owls around the world looks good.
01:05Ooh, and so does Who Says Hoot.
01:09In most libraries, books are organized in a couple different ways depending on type.
01:15Fiction books include novels and other made-up stories.
01:19They're generally shelved alphabetically by the author's last name.
01:24The call number has an F for fiction and the first three letters of the author's last name.
01:30So, Natalie Babbitt goes before Christopher Paul Curtis, which goes before Kate DiCamillo.
01:39If there's more than one book by a single author, they're alphabetized by title.
01:44Like, Curtis's books go Bud Not Buddy, Elijah of Buxton, The Mighty Miss Malone, and The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963.
01:57Nonfiction books are based on facts and real events.
02:01Instead of getting organized by author, they're usually arranged by subject.
02:07Books about owls, volcanoes, ancient China, or whatever.
02:12And to keep it all neat and tidy, most libraries use the Dewey Decimal Classification System.
02:19Each subject gets a call number, like 598.97 for owls.
02:25And books are ordered on the shelves by those numbers.
02:30Each digit of the call number refers to a category, starting with the biggest one in the 100s place, Class.
02:38Here, the 5 stands for the 500s class, Science and Mathematics.
02:45In the 10s place is the Division, 9 is for Zoology.
02:50And in the 1s place is the Section, 8 is for Birds.
02:55You can keep adding numbers after the decimal point for even more specific subcategories.
03:01Like, 598.9 is Raptors and Birds of Prey.
03:06Then, 598.94 is Eagles.
03:100.96 is Falcons.
03:13And 0.97 is Owls.
03:17Well, there are 10 classes.
03:21Information
03:23Philosophy and Psychology
03:26Religions
03:28Social Sciences
03:30Language
03:32Science and Mathematics
03:34Technology
03:36Arts and Recreation
03:38Literature
03:40And History and Geography.
03:42By the way, the 800s is for books about literature,
03:46because, like I said before, literature itself is usually shelved separately.
03:51It's a lot of numbers, but don't worry, you don't have to memorize any of it.
03:57You can use the card catalog to look up books by subject, title or author and find the call numbers.
04:04In most libraries, the card catalogs are digital and you can always ask a librarian for help.
04:10Once you have a call number, you can look it up at pretty much any library.
04:15That's the beauty of the Dewey Decimal System, everything is consistent.
04:19It's the most widely used classification system in the world.
04:23Before it came along, most libraries grouped books by height or when they were purchased.
04:29Total nightmare for finding anything.
04:32Which led a librarian named Melville Dewey to invent a new system in 1873.
04:40Dewey set it up based on his own point of view and the way society worked back then.
04:46It might have made sense back then for gardening and sewing to go under technology.
04:52But today, not so much.
04:54It seems like they should be shelved in arts and recreation.
04:58But apparently knitting was considered an art back then, so it's shelved far away from sewing.
05:04Which is just confusing.
05:07A lot has changed since Dewey's time, which is why some folks are not big fans.
05:13Critics often point out the system's outdated biases.
05:1770% of the religion class is devoted to Christianity.
05:22All the other religions get smushed into one division.
05:26Islam has over a billion followers worldwide, and it gets just a single call number.
05:32There have been some revisions, like adding computer science and updating geography.
05:39But no major overhauls, since making changes is so much work.
05:44A small number of libraries have scrapped Dewey in favor of a system more like what's in bookstores.
05:50What some call genre-fying.
05:53It also arranges books by subject and breaks them into subcategories.
05:58Supporters say its organization is more relevant to how people search for info today.
06:04With subjects like computers, games and activities, juvenile fiction, health and fitness, and self-help.
06:12Yeah, designing any classification system means making choices.
06:18About how to group information, what to prioritize, and what to leave out.
06:23If we created a new system today, we'd all probably give the internet a big section.
06:28But I might give more space to animals, while you might favor music or sports or whatever.
06:35Those decisions could influence what people learn, or what they consider important.
06:41Hey, looks like this kid's ready to check out.
06:55Was that necessary?