Each work-study student is required to complete the course Shelving with the Library of Congress Classification System at WebJunction. You will be required to create an account in order to access the tutorial. Once you have successfully completed the tutorial, print off the certificate and turn it into the Librarian.
Shelf-reading is an important part of library maintenance. It includes reading each call number in order to ensure that the books are properly shelved. Patrons often place books back on the shelves without knowing exactly how to shelve books. It is inevitable that every worker will at some point accidentally misshelve a book. After a long day it becomes easy to loose focus and make simple mistakes. You should try not to shelve books or shelf-read when you are very tired.
Move through the bookcases from left to right, and top to bottom by short shelves.
It is a good idea to take a quick survey of the shelves to get a sense of the physical extent of the alpha-range you're looking at so you won't inadvertently jump to the next subject letter. "LCC tunnel vision" often happens when scanning Cutters and losing sight of the entire call number.
Shelf-reading can take quite a while. It is more important that you take your time to be accurate than to rush through quickly and make mistakes.
After you have shelf-read for an extended amount of time, take a break. If your eyes hurt and you continue anyway it will lead to sloppy work.
Once again, we are more interested in making sure that the shelves are read precisely, not quickly. Do not hurry when shelf-reading.
All Library of Congress Call Numbers begin with letters that represent various subject areas.
LC Classification, Main Subject Classes:
| A: General Works B: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion C: Auxiliary Sciences of History, such as Archeology,Genealogy, Biography D: World History, including history of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand E-F: History of the Americas G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation H: Social Sciences J Political Science K: Law L: Education M: Music N: Fine Arts P: Language and Literature Q: Science R: Medicine S: Agriculture T: Technology U: Military Science V: Naval Science Z: Bibliography, Library Science, Information Resources |
The main subject classes often are narrowed even further by the addition of a second letter, called a subdivision. For the full listing of the main classes and their subdivisions, see the Library of Congress site.
How to Read a Call Number:
Let’s start with a sample call number: QL737.M336 O83 2004
This call number will lead you to a book with the title Tasmanian Tiger, by David Owen.
The first letter, "Q" represents one of the main subject classes listed above. In this case, the main subject is Science. Items are shelved by this letter first, in alphabetical order.
The second letter "L" represents a subdivision of the sciences, Zoology. On the shelf, books with the subdivision of QL would be in the "Q" section, and then arranged alphabetically within that Q section (QL books would be shelved after any QK books we own, and so on).
The numbers following the letters are classification numbers (in this example the numbers 737). In combination with the class and subdivision, the classification number further narrows the subject matter. These are read as whole numbers, so QL737 would come after QL700 but before QL800.
The next piece of information, the M336, is called a cutter number. The letter part of the cutter is read alphabetically. However, the numeric component of a cutter number is always read as a decimal, so in this case the M336 is really read as M.336, and M336 would come somewhere after M3 but before M4
If necessary, a second cutter may be included in a call number, also (in this case, the second cutter is O83). It is read in the same way as the first cutter, as a way to further narrow down the location of the book on the shelf.
Folllowing the cutter number(s) you often will see the year of publication. In this case, that would be 2004
Now that you have the basic information about how a call number is arranged, you can begin to use it to find books on the shelves. Also, if you are new to the Library of Congress system, please don''t hesitate to ask a librarian to help you get started and show you how to find something. We are happy to help!
