Hello!
I am often asked if there is a guideline that specifies how many of each kind of book should we have in our libraries. There is, but remember that it is just a guideline.
Today I am going to have a quick review of Dewey and approximately how many books you should have in each section.
The 000s consist of general information. This is information that cannot be catalogued in one section. Examples would include Question and Answer books with questions on a variety of subjects. I show our students one and comment that the book has questions on astronomy, animals, plants, buildings, history, holidays, and more, so where would be put it? In general information. This section would have about 2 – 5% of your K – 8 library. For a small library of about 4000 books, this would be about 80 – 200 books.
The 100s about books on philosophy, or books about me. We use the terms ‘how I think and feel’ to help describe this section. This is the smallest section consisting of 0.5% of the library or about 20 books. Some titles we have read like this: How Do I Deal with Lying?, and How Do I Deal with Competitiveness?
In the 200s, we have books about religion. Bible stories, books about Bible characters, books about other religions, Adventist books, devotionals, and such belong here. In our schools, we will have many more than the guidelines suggest, so don’t worry. The suggestion is about 1 – 2% or about 40 – 80 books.
The 300s are the Social Science books. There are many categories in this section including holidays, military, careers, recycling, education, folklore, and more. This section should have about 5 – 10% of your library. That would be approximately 200 – 400 books, so it is a medium-size section.
In the 400s, we find books about Language including dictionaries, English grammar, and other languages. We like the First 100 Words in . . . series. Those books are great to use to learn words since they have pictures of common items with the foreign word by the picture. A few years ago I asked the students what languages they would like to see in our library and added some of their ideas. Try to have about 0.5% here, about 20 books.
Pure Science is the 500s. This is one of our larger sections. Check each of the sciences and try to have books for each subject. We have books on Science Fairs, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, mammals, birds, insects, fish, fossils, dinosaurs, math, plants, and more. This section should include about 10% of your library, or 400 books.
Applied Science also should include about the same number of books – 400. The 600s include pets, buildings, food, cookbooks, medicine, cars and other vehicles, trains, ships, inventions, survival, agriculture, manufacturing, toys, and more.
The 700s are Fine Arts and Recreation including crafts, hobbies, art, artists, music, sports, and games, riddles, joke books, and more. About 5% of the library or 200 books in this section are the guidelines.
The 800s include poetry and literature or stories. This is most likely your largest section taking about 25% of your library. Check your shelves and see if you have poetry books. That is often a section that is either missing or quite low when I visit other libraries. Make sure that the poetry books have kid-friendly books available. Shel Silverstein is a good choice, but there are other books that work nicely, too. All the fiction or chapter story books go here. You’ll have about 1000 here.
The 900s are the History, Geography, and Biography books. This would be about 20% of your library or 800 books. Our library separates the Biography into its own section, and I believe that makes it easier for children to find biographies, and I recommend you do the same.
That ends the Dewey section, but you still need a healthy picture book section. Some people call these ‘Easy’ books, but for a number of years librarians have changed the term to ‘Everybody’ books because they are for everybody. The guidelines suggest about 25% of your library consist of picture books so that would be about 1000.
Now, I am well aware that these percentages do NOT add up to 100%. They are guidelines. I would suggest that you check your libraries and see if there are any areas where you are quite low or missing subjects and work to fill in any gaps or holes you might have.
If you need suggestions for your gaps, please contact me. You might not be the only one. I may be able to help.
Have a great week!
Audrey
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