Greetings!
This week we will do both 800s and 900s.
The 800s will probably be your largest section to work with. For the most part, you will have three basic sections. We will ignore 820 – 890 since you will probably not have any literature in Old English, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, or any other languages. An elementary school library will probably only have literature in English, so we will concentrate on that.
808 Collected stories
This includes books that have multiple stories in them such as Uncle Arthur, The Children’s Hour, Guide’s Greatest, Shoebox Kids, Really Truly stories, and others. It may be that you decide to put these collected story books in with the 813s and that may be what works best for your library. One thing you need to know about these books. Some sets such as Guide’s Greatest stories are written by multiple authors. If you want to keep them all together, catalog them by just one author. We started out with a few that had Lori Peckham as the editor, so now all our Guide’s Greatest books are catalogued as if she were the editor so the series can be shelved all together.
811 Poetry
Look for books on poetry with poems that children would enjoy reading as you add to this section. Keep older poetry books if you need to locate a poem from there, but consider putting in some Shel Silverstein, as well.
813 Stories, Fiction (If you don’t like the word ‘fiction’, use the word ‘story’ instead.)
When adding to this section, look for books that will appeal to boys. I have a few posts on ideas for books for boys on my blog. Sdalibrarian.blogspot.com. For some reason, boys will not read books about girls, but girls will read books about boys.
Weed out books that are in bad shape, missing pages, or marked up. If a book is important to your school or community, replace it with a newer, better copy. Weed out books that aren’t circulating at all. At our school we have years that some books never move, but other years that they are checked out. We won’t weed them because they are being used every other year. If your library is automated, you can begin by compiling a list of books that haven’t been checked out in the past five years or so and then examine those books to determine if they are shelf-worthy.
One thing I have done regularly is to take books that I am considering weeding out and putting them on a special cart or table with a sign to the effect in that these books are in danger of being kicked out of the library, or endangered books, or something clever like that. I have also requested that students take a book and read the first few chapters and let me know if it is a good story and worth keeping in the library. Most students are willing to help in this way. Also, they usually like the story and actually read the whole book, so that is a nice trick to have up your sleeve.
The 900s are geography, history, and travel books.
In the 900 section you will put general history or geography information. This would include books that have information about all fifty states or a history over time. If it cannot be cataloged to a specific historical time period or a specific area, put it in this general section.
910 Geography and travel, pirates, shipwrecks, Titanic, atlases, maps, charts.
913 Geography of and travel in the ancient world
914 Geography of and travel in Europe
915 Geography of and travel in Asia
916 Geography of and travel in Africa
917 Geography of and travel in North America
918 Geography of and travel in South America
919 Geography of and travel in other areas
920 Biography (or put in a separate ’B’ section which is much easier for kids)
920 Collected biographies (books that have more than one story about a famous person)
927 Sports biographies (we have all our athletes biographies here)
929 Genealogy
929.9 Flags
930 History of the ancient world
940 History of Europe – Middle Ages, castles, WW1, WW2
950 History of Asia; Far East
960 History of Africa
970 History of North America
970.1 Native Americans
971 Canada
972 Middle America; Mexico
973 United States of America
973.2 Colonial, Pilgrims
973.3 Revolutionary War
973.4 Lewis and Clark
973.5 Westward expansion, War of 1812
973.6 Mexican-American War
973.7 Civil War
973.8 Spanish-American War, Reconstruction, Transcontinental Railroad
973.9 Vietnam War
974 Northeastern United States
974.7 Ellis Island
975 Southeastern United States, September 11
975.3 Washington, D. C.
976 South central United States
977 North central United States
978 Western United States
978.6 Montana
979 Great Basin and Pacific Slope region
979.5 Oregon
979.6 Idaho
979.7 Washington
979.8 Alaska
980 History of South America
990 History of Other parts of the world – Australia, Arctic, Polynesia, New Zealand, etc.
996 Pitcairn
996.9 Hawaii
You may not notice the correlation between the geography and history sections. Notice the Geography of and travel in the ancient world – 913- and History of the ancient world – 930. Both have a three (3) in the number. Geography and history of Europe both have a 4 in it and so on. Isn’t Dewey fascinating!?
As far as adding books to your library, check the subject headings here and add in as needed. I would recommend that you have a separate section for your biographies which really makes them easy to find.
Weeding this section may go quickly. Check your books on countries and make sure that information is not outdated. Look for two-color photos and other markings of an old book and strongly consider weeding these out and replacing with new editions. It may be that your school subscribes to a database that keeps this information updated and you won’t need to worry about the old books any longer. Try CultureGrams from Proquest for state and country information. They update hourly. In any case, information in this section is best if it is current.
I hope you have a great week. We only have one more to go!
Audrey
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