Imagine you were starting a library and you had a few thousand books, magazines and other materials. How would you organize all those sources so people could easily find things? What if your collection grew to a few million items? Could your collection logically adapt and expand?
Basically, libraries organize their collections by subject. These subjects are represented by call number systems, called classification systems. There are two major classification systems at Steen Library: the Dewey Decimal System (which starts with numbers), and the Library of Congress (LC) Classification System (which starts with letters).
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The Dewey Decimal System, often used by schools and public libraries, is based on ten general topics represented by numbers: 000 Generalities These
general categories are further subdivided into more specific topics.
For example, the book Teleworking has the call number 300 - Social Sciences |
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Each branch is divided into
more specific topics represented by combinations of letters and numbers. For example,
the book Teleworking has the call number H - Social sciences and business |
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