Children's & Young Adult Literature Resources: Dewey Decimal Call Numbers

How to Read a Dewey Decimal Number

The children collection books are marked as follows:

The classification is made up of ten main classes or categories, each divided into ten secondary classes or categories, and each further divided into ten subdivisions. This in turn can be further divided. Each division becomes more specific.

The main Dewey Decimal classes are:

          000 Generalities

          100 Philosophy and psychology

          200 Religion

          300 Social Sciences

          400 Language

          500 Natural sciences and mathematics

          600 Technology (Applied sciences)

          700 The arts (fine and decorative)

          800 Literature and rhetoric

          900 Geography and history

Cutter Numbers are added to the classification system, because it is possible for many books to be classified with the same Dewey classification number. The cutter number gives each book a unique number that serves as the address of the book. They usually consist of the first letter of the author’s last name and series of numbers. And if the library has several books by the same author a “work letter” is used, usually the first letter of the title of the book.

Example:

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