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Summer library programs and brushing up on the Dewey Decimal System

Today B and I went to the library to turn in our summer reading sheets. I had to run back into the house to grab my library card and somehow in the chaos of getting out the door, missed the reading logs. Luckily, our local library let me fill in new sheets and we all received our books...

I find the library a little overwhelming at first. B pulls out books in sets of three and tells me how great they are. We look through his random selection and find that he really doesn't care about them at all. I try to lead him towards an area that would interest him but the young children's books are by author so there is no "train" area.

After about 10 minutes of trying to find books by looking at their spines, I suggested that he pick a topic. B wanted to look at dinosaurs so we wandered over to a series of shelves arranged in a format I hadn't encountered since grade school. Yep, the Dewey Decimal System (college libraries are generally organized by the Library of Congress system - The Pocket Physicist helped me with this one since I barely remember entering the library in college). In case you haven't seen the DDS in a while, here it is.

Dewey Decimal System

  • 000 General
  • 100 Philosophy & psychology
  • 200 Religion
  • 300 Social sciences
  • 400 Language
  • 500 Natural sciences & math
  • 600 Technology (Applied sciences)
  • 700 The arts
  • 800 Literature & rhetoric
  • 900 Geography & history

If you want more information about the Dewey Decimal System, Thinkquest has a good overview of how it works. Check out the difference between the 500's and 600's and what all the numbers mean. If you have a subject in mind and want the DDS number, check out the DC library for their list of categories in alphabetical order.

We were able to find the dinosaur books quickly because they were located on the end of an aisle and our library had signs for each section. B chose three dinosaur books (j567.9), two on T-rex, and we quickly picked up our prizes (discount coupons for miniature golf, roller skating, and a bookstore, plus a free book) before the library closed.

The one negative of our new dinosaur books is they introduce a bunch of new dinosaurs we can't find in our other books. Maybe I'll write about B's favorite Theropods another time - we're all learning a lot about dinosaurs.