AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
![]() See how the system makes order of the universe? I *big glittery heart* Dewey. But actual construction is back in the 600s with technology. 646: Sewing, clothing, costume design, hair, and makeup.629: “Other engineering” is a big one it includes cars, trucks, planes, space exploration, AND robots.599: Mammals (each mammal has its own special number after the decimal, there are just too many to list).567: “Fossil cold-blooded vertebrates,” otherwise known as dinosaurs.550s: Volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and weather.520s: Space (Astronomy, not space exploration–that’s the 600s).You probably won’t find the Disneyfied versions here.ĥ00s (Natural Sciences, far and away the most circulated nonfiction section) Fun fact: fairy tales are fictional, but they are kept in the 300s basically because they represent, and teach us about, the cultures they come from. 398.2: Fairy Tales (398 is folklore in general, including nursery rhymes). ![]() 350s: Military (not including war or history, those are down in the 900s).Ooos (General Information) to 200s (Religion)ģ00s (Social Sciences) to 400s (Language) They occasionally stray from the list, but it’s a pretty universal truth of childhood nonfiction reading that they will ask for something on this shortlist. If your child has a favorite, or if you ever need to make a library trip as quick and painless as possible, this is the list to save. Most of them are in the 500s, 600s, and 700s. It tells me more when a child can show a classmate that the dog books are 636.7 than if they can recite that the 000s are “General Information.”Īnd I can tell you, there is a shortlist of subjects (out of thousands of possibilities) that kids ask me for Every. But I do hope they learn their favorite sections. I don’t expect kids in the 21st century to memorize the 10 main categories like we all had to do growing up. I should have a “WWDD?” sticker on my car. There are just so many fiction books that it makes no sense to squeeze them into their rightful place in the 800s (I also love blowing a second- or third-graders mind with this fact). I love that everyone thinks Dewey is just for nonfiction, but it’s actually for all books, period. I love that animals are in the 500s (Natural Sciences), but farm animals and pets are in the 600s (Technology). I think it’s beautiful and idiosyncratic and a soothing constant of the universe. Pretty much everything I know about Dewey was learned on the job and through osmosis as a lifelong library user and second generation librarian.Īnd now I live the Dewey Decimal system naming the number for random subjects is my best party trick. So it’s not an impossible system to learn. Exactly one class period was dedicated to learning the Dewey Decimal System, and I had the flu that week. It covered all the different systems used in academic and public libraries, plus all the methodologies behind cataloging. As part of my Masters in Library and Information Science, I had to take a class in cataloging. ![]() My favorite dorky librarian joke is that I was absent the day they taught the Dewey Decimal System in library school.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |