Information Literacy Guide | Locating Information | Dewey Decimal System Resources | Site Outline

 

Locating Information: Dewey Decimal System: Locating a Book
  1. Dewey Decimal System
  2. Using the Online Catalog
  3. Reference Tools
  4. Electronic Searching

 

In 1876 a librarian named Melville Dewey attempted to arrange all knowledge into ten very general categories which he then continued to divide into smaller and smaller topics. His plan was to find a way to put all books on the same subject together on the library shelves.

Locating a Book

Books using the Dewey Decimal system are in numerical order.
If you can count, you already have a good idea about which book comes first.
If you already understand decimal order from your math class, you already understand the trickiest part of locating books using the Dewey Decimal System. It is exactly the same.

Why do you need to understand this to find books in the library? Click Here.
These books are in correct Dewey Decimal order. It is just like counting. Notice that the only time we worry about the alphabetical order in the second line is when the Dewey number is exactly the same. You can see this in the 567 books.

 

These books are also in correct order.

If you think they are NOT in order it is probably because you think that .413 is a bigger number than .51 or .51 is a bigger number than .7 but that is not true.
Although .413 is LONGER, it is not MORE.

In math class, your math teacher probably told you to add zeros to make the same number of decimal places so you would be comparing .413 and .510 to make it easy to see which is more.

In the library, you can't put zeros on the books so it is best to think about the point where the numbers become different. Compare

365.413
365.51

The 3, 6, and 5 are all the same.
The 4 and the 5 are different.
The 4 is smaller so it would come first. It doesn't matter how many other numbers come after it.

Why is this important to understand?
Think about how you find a book in the library.

Let us suppose that you know you need a book with the Dewey number 365.246
You walk to that area of the library and this is the first book you see:

If you understand that 365.246 is LESS THAN 365.7, you will search to the left and eventually be in the correct place to find the book.

Which way do you go?

If you think 365.246 is MORE THAN 365.7, you will search to the right and you will NEVER find the book.

On to the next section... Using the Online Catalog System

 

 

 

Defining Locating Selecting Organizing Presenting Evaluating

Information Literacy Skills Jump Menu

 

Please send comments or questions to the 4J Web Team.
Eugene School District 4J
200 North Monroe Street, Eugene, Oregon 97402
Phone: 541.687.3123 [TTD 541.687.3447]

4J Small Logo
Last modified: October, 2003 by Steinke, Ague, Feuerhelm, Maxwell, and Warburg