The merits of Dewey...

As a follow up to my musings on the pleasures of browsing, it seems a brief review of the Dewey Decimal system is in order. Most of us learned the Dewey decimal system back in elementary school during the most important class, library (this is what I tell my second grader). The Dewey system has been around since 1876, the invention of Melvil Dewey (quite a ladies’ man, I’ve heard!). The number ranges include a certain topic and tell you where to find the non-fiction books. At PCL the Dewey system only applies to non-fiction, reference, and juvenile non-fiction. PCL’s fiction books are grouped by author’s last name. Some libraries have their fiction works in the 800’s (literature). Sometimes a librarian can rattle off a specific number like 940.3515 for Holocaust or 709.32 for Egyptian art, but if you know these 10 basic groupings, you can enhance your browsing experience.

• 000 – Computer science, information & general works


• 100 – Philosophy and psychology


• 200 – Religion


• 300 – Social sciences


• 400 – Language


• 500 – Science (including mathematics)


• 600 – Technology


• 700 – Arts and recreation


• 800 – Literature


• 900 – History and geography

One of the best things about being a librarian is having the ability to locate the answer to a question even if you don’t know it off the top of your head. So many librarians pay tribute to the genius of Melvil Dewey by naming their cats after him. See Dewey: the small-town library cat who touched the world.