Thursday, December 11, 2008

Happy Belated Birthday

Yesterday, December 10, 2008 was the 157th anniversary of Melville Dewey's birth. Libraries and their users owe a great deal to Dewey and his Dewey Decimal System that has existed since 1876.

The Dewey Decimal System allows library users to browse the shelves and find related material on the same subject.

How to Use the Dewey Decimal System

The Dewey Decimal System organizes information into 10 broad areas, which are broken into smaller and smaller topics. Different topics are assigned numbers, known as "call numbers." For example, "Animals" are given the number 599. To see what books the library currently has in on animals, go to the nonfiction shelves and find the books that have a 599 as part of their call number. A list of some of the information you can find in the different Dewey Decimal areas, appears below.

Dewey Decimal System

* 000 General Knowledge
Almanacs, Computers, 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 ...

* 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
Cookbooks, Engineering, Gardening, Health, Human Body, Inventions, Nutrition, Pets ...

* 700 Arts & Recreation
Architecture, Crafts, Drawing, Games, Music, Songbooks, Sports ...

* 800 Literature
Plays, Poetry, Shakespeare, Writing ...

* 900 Geography and History
Countries, Native Americans, States, Travel, Wars ...

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