In preparation for the third floor renovations this past summer, the library moved all of the books off of the third floor. We took advantage of the fact that every book in the library was already moving to tackle the massive project of changing our call numbers from the Dewey Decimal System to the Library of Congress Classification System.
A call number is the number individually assigned to a book that designates where it goes on the shelf. The Dewey Decimal System is common in K-12 school libraries and public libraries. It arranges books from 000-999, with many decimals in between. The Library of Congress Classification System is more common in colleges and universities and it arranges books from A-Z before assigning a number.
One of the main advantages of the Library of Congress system is that it makes browsing much easier, because the subjects are organized into groups that are less fragmented and more suited to college level research. And since we’ve joined the majority of university libraries with this change, it better positions our students who go onto graduate level research.
We couldn’t have completed this project on such a short timeline without the help of our student employees. They spent their summer searching the shelves for books in the Dewey system and hand applying new call number stickers to the over one hundred thousand books in our collection.
This project is very nearly complete, with just some reference books to go. Once everything is properly rehomed, we’ll be shifting things around to make sure we are using our available shelf space to its best advantage. So, don’t be surprised if you still see a lot of book movement in the library this semester!
Want more information of using the Library of Congress system? Check out our guide with handy graphics to get you started.
Kudos to Access Services Librarian Clarissa Grunwald and Collection Development Librarian Tom Zaharevich for coordinating our switch to LC!
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