Dewey Decimal System
The Dewey Decimal system is a number-based system that we use for organizing books into categories. Dewey is broken down into ten mail categories, and each of those is broken into ten, and so on. The chart below will give you an overview of what's in each category.
The more specific your number gets (say, 973.775 instead of 900), the more specific your topic is:
900 is History & Geography
970 is History of North America
973 is the United States
973.7 is the American Civil War
973.77 is Civil War Hospitals, Charities, and Prisons
973.775 is the book Women doctors and nurses of the Civil War.
For a complete list (to the ones place) of Dewey categories, visit OCLC's Dewey Summaries page.
| Dewey Numbers | Category Tttle | What the title means | This section has books about: |
| 000-099 | Generalities & Information Systems | Collections of facts, and how information is organized | World record books, computers, encyclopedias, Bigfoot |
| 100-199 | Philosophy & Psychology | The science of thought: how we think about things, and what we think about | Self-help, logic, ethics, brain research, optical illusions |
| 200-299 | Religion | Gods and creation stories from all cultures | Religions and mythologies from all over the world |
| 300-399 | Social Sciences | How society functions | Education, law, military, peoples' rights, folklore |
|
400-499 |
Language | Vocabulary, grammar, and foreign languages | Dictionaries, grammar guides, foreign language dictionaries, sign language |
| 500-599 | Natural Science | The world around us | Math, chemistry, space, weather, dinosaurs, science experiments, wild animals |
| 600-699 | Applied Science/Technology | Things people have done using science | Medicine & health, vehicles, construction, engineering, domesticated animals (livestock and pets), cooking |
| 700-799 | Arts & Recreation | What we do for fun | Art and architecture, crafts, music, drawing, sports, games, joke books, movies |
| 800-899 | Literature | Everything we don't keep in the fiction section | Shakespeare, plays, poetry, books about other books |
| 900-999 | History & Geography | What we're done and where we've done it | Maps, ancient civilizations, countries of the world, historical events, wars |
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