Doing It the Dewey Way

If you have ever entered a library needing a book on a specific subject, you have used either the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress Classification System. As part of our annual observation of Dewey Decimal System Day on December 10, your local librarians would like to remind you how it works.

The Dewey system was conceived by Melvil Dewey in the 1870s. All knowledge is divided into 10 groups, and each has 10 subgroups. These can be broken down even further to be more specific.

The LC system was developed in the late 1800s to arrange the books in the Library of Congress, and has 21 groups; each group is indicated by a letter of the alphabet.

Both classification systems arrange non-fiction books into groups of similar items for ease of access to any subject.

The LC system is mostly used in academic libraries, the Dewey system is in most public and school libraries.

Fiction books have a special Dewey classification, although most libraries do not use it. American fiction can be found in the 810s, and fiction from other countries can be found elsewhere in the 800s. We use the first 3 digits of the author's last name and omit the numbers.

As an example, "Killing Reagan" by Bill O'Reilly, is shelved in our history section at 973.927 O'RE. The LC number for this book is E 877.3.O74 2015. The E stands for American History, and the numbers make the details more specific.

We also have a Reference section in the basement, with books that can only be used in the library, and a Montana section, that contains non-fiction books about the State of Montana.

If you are now thoroughly confused, please don't hesitate to visit us and we will do our best to help you find anything you need!

The Glasgow City-County Library is located at 408 Third Ave S., 228-2731. Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. You can also visit them online at glasgowlibrary.org.