Working with Dewey - 300s

Greetings!
This week we move on to the 300s and see what needs to be done there.

This section is the most confusing to me. It is Social Science, and is easily mistaken for Social Studies by children which is confusing since Social Studies (History and Geography) are in the 900s! Another reason it can be confusing is that there seem to be so many categories there. It isn’t as straight forward as the 200s – Religion or 400s – Languages. Here is a list of what is included in the 300s.


300 Social Science
306 Family, marriage, divorce, death

310 Collections of general statistics

320 Political science
325.1 Ellis Island, Immigration
326 Slavery

330 Economics
331 Careers
332 Money; allowances
333 Energy
333.95 Endangered species

340 Law

350 Public Administration and Military science

360 Social problems and services, associations
362.4 Physical disabilities
362.7 Personal safety
363.7 Recycling

370 Education
371.3 Study Skills – testing,
372 Elementary Education
372.4 Old reading series books
372.44 Vocabulary
372.6 Language Arts
372.61 Grammar
372.623 Writing – reports, essays, themes
372.63 Spelling
372.7 Math

380 Commerce, communications and transportation
383 Pony Express, Mail

390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
391 Costumes, clothing history
394.2 Holidays (Rogers separates the holidays out as shown below)
394.2 Christmas
394.21 Thanksgiving
394.26 All other holidays
395 Manners
398 Folklore, fairy tales, legends


So, let’s ignore 310 and 340. You likely won’t use these sections much if at all in the elementary library. Instead here is what you will likely be using most.

306 Family, Marriage, Divorce, Death

320 Political Science
325.1 Ellis Island, Immigration
326 Slavery

330 Economics
331 Careers
332 Money; allowances
333 Energy
333.95 Endangered species

350 Public Administration and Military science

360 Social Problems and services
362.4 Physical disabilities
362.7 Personal safety
363.7 Recycling

370 Education
371.3 Study Skills – testing
372 Elementary Education
372.4 Old reading series books
372.44 Vocabulary
372.6 Language Arts
372.61 Grammar
372.623Writing – reports, essays, themes
372.63 Spelling
372.7 Math – Teaching of math

380 Commerce, communications and transportation
383 Pony Express, Mail

390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
391 Costumes, clothing history
394.2 Holidays (Rogers separates the holidays out as shown below)
394.2 Christmas
394.21 Thanksgiving
394.26 All other holidays
395 Manners
398 Folklore, fairy tales, legends


Use this somewhat shorter list to see what you might put in your library. Do you have books on divorce? Consider how many of your students come from divorced families. It may well be a subject that is important to include in your library.

Books in immigration, Ellis Island and slavery will help support your curriculum as you teach these subjects.

Do you have any books on careers? Allowances? Money? Our Adventist Book Centers have a few books on money management and one or two are particularly focused toward children. Other subjects that are important to have in your library are books on endangered species, recycling, study skills, holidays, and manners.

Some subjects that are fun to include are books with costumes and clothing, and the Pony Express.

What should we weed out of this section? Check to see if the books you have are older than five years. If they are, it is possible that the information inside is outdated. Take a look inside to see what information is given and make a quick evaluation to decide if the book is still worthwhile to have in the library. If you aren’t sure, make a notation inside the front cover of the date you considered discarding the book. If in a year or two the book still has not circulated, you may then feel more comfortable about discarding it.

Look at the books in each section quickly.
1. Check the physical condition of the books. Weed out books that are marked up, shabby, have very small print or poor quality pictures, missing pages, warped cover or wavy pages damaged by water.
2. Check the content. Is the information obsolete? Do you have travel books from the 1960s? Do you have multiple copies that aren’t needed?
3. Do you have materials that aren’t circulating? Why aren’t they being used? Can you promote them so they will be used or would it be better to find other materials to replace them?
4. Is there other information on the same subject in your collection to justify discarding the book?

I was in a school a few years ago that had multiple shelves of old Reader’s Digest and Time Life books on countries and travel. The books were in good condition, and there was a lot of information and pictures in them. I would have discarded them since they were outdated but the teacher wanted to keep them. The books helped to support the study of different countries and any outdated information could be updated quickly by using the internet. You decide if the book will help support your curriculum or not. You might want to discard them, but if there is nothing else to replace the information, it might be best to keep the books until you can upgrade to a new set. Then you can discard the old set.

You might want to consider subscribing to a database such as CultureGrams from Proquest or Scholastic’s database GO!
CultureGrams includes a section about the United States and another section about the countries of the world. The information is updated every few hours so what the students learn is up to the minute.
GO! is a database that I don’t have, so I went to the website to find out about it. It looks like it includes three encyclopedias, two science resources – one on animals and one on science, a United States resource and a world resource, plus a Spanish resource for Spanish speakers. I don’t know anything about price, but you can check it out at this site. http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/grolier/

I hope things are going well for you and that you have a great week.

Audrey