The Dewey Decimal System:
​What's it all about?
The 10 General Dewey Decimal Groups
PictureMelvil Dewey 1851 - 1931
A man named Melvil Dewey created this system in 1873, when he was only 21 years old and working at his college library. Melvil had a problem, his non-fiction books were unorganized! You see, before he came along, each library had its own way of organizing items. It was often difficult for people to find specific books in libraries. Library visitors would have to rely on the librarian to know where each item was shelved. And this was the same story when visitors would visit a new library; they would have to find out how to use a different system for each library they visited.
Melvil knew there had to be a better way! While fiction books were easy to organize based on the first 3 letters of the author's last name, non-fiction books, which are books about real facts, events or people, couldn't work the same way. Think about trying to look for a book about trees by author! It would be impossible, especially since many non-fiction authors write about multiple topics. So, Melvil came up with a system of organizing the non-fiction books by separating them into 10 general groups and then giving each group its own numbers between 000 - 999. Smart! REMEMBER: More than one subject can fit in one group. EXAMPLE: Non-fiction books about art and sports both live in the 700 group. This is because both of these subjects are considered things we do for fun, or "recreation."
PictureExamples of Call Numbers
Each non-fiction book has at least a three-digit number, which appears on the spine of the book, so you can easily see them when looking at books on the shelves. Melvil called it the Dewey Decimal System. Today, the Dewey Decimal System is the most widely used classification system in the world, earning Melvil the title of "Father of Modern Librarianship."

Thank you, Melvil Dewey!

​Videos:

-Understanding the Dewey Decimal System
-ASF Library - Dewey Decimal System 
​-Dewey Decimal Rap - The Original
-The Dewey Decimal System Rap - Shafer Style

Test Your Dewey Knowledge:

Now let's test your Dewey Decimal knowledge:
-Dewey Decimal Matching Game
-Shelve It - Mrs. Lodge's Library

Frequently Asked Questions:

Wait a minute! Why are fairy tales and folk tales in the 300 - Social Sciences group? They aren't "real."
Good question! Many of these stories were written to teach a lesson about behavior. An example would be The Boy Who Cried Wolf, which teaches the importance of telling the truth. Many folktales describe real cultural traditions. This makes these books part of Social Studies, which is part of the Social Sciences group.

If there is a literature section included in the Dewey Decimal System groups, why do libraries have a separate Fiction section?
Books in the 800-Literature group are items like plays, jokes and poetry. Fiction books were placed in this group when the Dewey Decimal System was first created. Today we have so many fiction books in our libraries, it became easier to give them their own section and way of being organized...you know...ABC order....by author's last name.

The recipe for a non-fiction call number on a biography - numbers for the subject on the top (921) and first 3 letters of the books subject on the bottom - doesn't seem right. What's up?
Biographies, books about famous peoples, have their own special call number recipe. Numbers for the subject on the top, like other non-fiction books, however, the letters on the bottom are the first 3 letters of the famous persons name, not the author. EXAMPLE: The call number for a biography about the life of George Washington, written by Robert Smith, would be 921 WAS, not 921 SMI.