How to Assign a Book to a Dewey Decimal Code
- 1). Place the book in a class first. The 10 classes are 000-Computer science, information and general works, 100-Philosophy and psychology, 200-Religion, 300-Social science, 400-Language, 500-Science, 600-Technology, 700-Arts, 800-Literature, and 900-History and geography. For example, the book "Gray's Anatomy" is placed in the technology section. This is because applied sciences, such as medicine, go under technology and not science.
- 2). Put the book into a division under each class. Each division is two digits and a multiple of ten: 00, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90. The unabridged Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) index contains a complete list of all divisions. For "Gray's Anatomy" the division is the number 10 for medical sciences and medicine.
- 3). Place the book in a division's subsection. There are 10 sections under each division, resulting in 1000 sections used in the Dewey Decimal System. Each section is directly related to the division it falls under and has a single digit of one through nine assigned to it. As with the divisions, look to the DDC index for a list of subsections. Continuing with the "Gray's Anatomy" example, the book is about anatomy which has a "one" as its number. Now the book is placed under the Dewey Decimal Code of 611.
- 4). Add a decimal point and continue to classify further if necessary. Most libraries have the Dewey Decimal Classification Index with the complete list of classifications. A book could have a Dewey Decimal Code of 389.93042 and each number has a different classification. This can leave you with tens of thousands of possible classifications.
- 5). Go to your local library to use the DDC index and assign a Dewey Decimal code to a book. The index is not available online to the public or in a print form at any location other than a library.
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