Module 4 - Locating - Organizing Material

Organize: to put together into an orderly, functional, structured whole

Imagine you were starting a library and you had a few thousand books, journals and other materials. How would you organize all those sources so people could easily find things? What if your collection grew to a few million items? Could your collection logically adapt and expand?

Libraries basically organize their collections by subject; these subjects are represented by call numbers. A call number is like an address: it is unique to each item and makes it possible for you to find it in the library. Call numbers are based on classification systems. The classification systems keep books and journals on the same topic together on the shelves.

There are two major classification systems that most libraries use: the Library of Congress (LC) Classification System with call numbers that begin with letters and the Dewey Decimal System with call numbers that begin with numbers.