NOTE: Both Michelle Howard, the author of this informative post, and Liz Cottrill and Emily Kiser of Living Books Library in Tennessee highly recommend using the Dewey Decimal System to classify and organize your books. You can use LibraryThing or Michelle’s library database or this OCLC site to find the most commonly used call number in the Dewey Decimal System for any given book.

From Michelle Howard of Children’s Preservation Library in Michigan and Living Learning Libraries in Florida:

Indeed, the numbers to the right of the decimal shouldn’t be seen as any more intimidating than those on the left. They are only more specific. But, it is that very specificity that gets you where you want to go!

Let’s go back to our telephone number metaphor. If you were meeting a new friend, and she said, “My phone number is 228-5555,” you wouldn’t tell her to halt mid-way through, saying, “I can only handle the digits to the left of the dash,” because that would only get your call to her town, not to her house. So, maybe we should think of the numbers to the right of the decimal as those that actually get us to “the final destination;” thus they are not a burden, but are our most treasured tool.

Do you remember that we watched Mr. MELVIL Dewey (not the dastardly John) take “knowledge” and divide it by tens into the 000s, 100s, 200s, 300s, 400s, 500s, etc.? Then we saw that he took the 500s, for example, and divided them by tens again:

500s General

510s Math

520s Astronomy

530s Physics

540s Chemistry

550s Earth Sciences

560s….etc.

Well, we know that the pattern continues. For example, Dewey broke the 530s down by ten again, to highlight the main 10 aspects of Physics….bringing us to this:

530 General physics

531 Mechanics (here are your books about simple machines, such as the lever)

532 Fluids

533 Gases

534 Sound

535 Light