Greetings!
I understand that you might not be familiar with Dewey and the different sections and also wonder what in the world should I put in each section? What do I weed out? Each week we will have a section or two for you to take a look at and make quick decisions. I’ll help you with ideas of what to discard and what to keep and what to add to make your library attractive and more functional for your students.
At the end of this post is a quick overview of the Dewey 100’s. As I look over this, I can see that in an elementary setting we probably don’t need anything in divisions 110 – 140, so that makes things a bit easier. There might not be much in the 160 division – Logic – either. This is not the logic puzzle category. Logic puzzles will go in the 700’s section. As I look at the 180 and 190 section, this is also not a usual category for an elementary school, so we will concentrate on the 150’s and 170’s here.
The 150’s include books on emotions and dealing with these feelings.
The 170’s section will have books on family relationships including marriage and divorce, friendships, and the vices and virtues. Check your library and see if you have any books to help students whose parents are going through a divorce. Are any students having trouble making friends?
This is not a large section and if you have a small handful of books here you will be fine as far as the ‘official Dewey distribution’ goes.
Here are a few books that you might consider for your library.
1. Boom by Michael Ross, Editor. The subtitle is “A guy’s guide to growing up”. This is a great book for guys who are going through puberty and the book helps answer a lot of intimate questions that boys have and don’t know how to ask others. It is published by Focus on the Family and has a religious bent. A page on having sex has two sides – one side is what Hollywood says and the other side is what God says. I highly recommend this book along with the ‘girl’ version titled Bloom by Susie Shellenberger also published by Focus on the Family.
2. Young Man: a Christian Boy’s Guide to Teenage Sexuality and Young Woman: A Christian Girl’s guide to Teenage Sexuality are written by Jonathan and Ana Gallagher and are the Adventist counterpart of Boom and Bloom. We don’t have either of these books in our library at present. The books are quite attractive and well done but they appear to be more appropriate for high school rather than elementary.
3. You have heard of Steven Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This book and others like it would go in this 170’s section. But I recommend Sean Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective TEENS. Sean is Steven’s son and this title is much more attractive to our students because of the word ‘TEENS’ in it. Even though our students aren’t yet teens, they are approaching them quickly and want to think of themselves as teens. It is entirely possible that they will pick this book up and read parts of it.
4. PowerKiDs press has a series of books on feelings and problems that students encounter in life. The titles in this set begin with “How to deal with . . .” and include Anger, Bullies, Competitiveness, Discrimination, Feeling Left Out, Fighting, Hurt Feelings, Insults, Jealousy, Lying, Secrets, and Teasing. These books can be bought individually and are only about 24 pages each. This series fit nicely in the 150’s.
So, how do I weed in this section? If you have any copies of the old books titled “On Becoming a Woman” or “On Becoming a Man” by Shryock in your library, this would be a good time to get rid of them and update to the suggestions above. Check publication dates. Anything published before 1990 would be books to look over and see if they are still valuable to your library. Check the covers of the books for wear and tear. If they are old and beat up, toss them. Are pages missing? Toss it. Is the book in bad condition, but popular at your school? Can you get a better copy or a newer edition? Toss the old one and get a new one.
Each week I’ll have ideas for you to get your library into shape a little at a time. Don’t be intimidated. You can do it.
Have a great week,
Audrey (with help from Joy)
100 Philosophy, psychology
110 Metaphysics (cosmology, space, time, change, structure, force and energy, number and quantity)
120 Epistemology, causation and humankind (the unconscious and subconscious, origin and destiny of human souls, determinism and indeterminism)
130 Parapsychology and occultism (also phrenology, dreams and mysteries, etc)
140 Specific philosophical schools (humanism, sensationalism, naturalism, pantheism, eclecticism, liberalism)
150 Psychology – Emotions, Death, Dying, Sadness
160 Logic
170 Ethics (ethics of family relationships, occupational ethics, recreation and leisure, sex and reproduction, social relations, consumption, etc)
177.6 Friendship, friends
179.8 Vices – anger, cheating, covetousness, envy, hatred, jealousy, pride, sloth
179.9 Virtues – gratitude, cheerfulness, gentleness, honesty, humility, modesty, patience, prudence, self-control, self-reliance, toleration
180 Ancient, medieval and eastern philosophy
190 Modern western philosophy
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