Helping School Librarians Understand Dewey 300 Social Science

Helping School Librarians Understand Dewey 300 Social Science - Many School Librarians are confused by the organization of 300 Social Science. This School Librarian & Social Sciences college major explains Dewey's disciplinary numbering based on the fields of study found in the 300s.If your school library collection is like mine, the 300 Social Sciences takes up large part of your Dewey area. What boggles the minds of students, teachers, and School Librarians alike is the mish-mash of disparate topics with an arrangement that doesn’t make much sense. Plus, the 300s seem to have many books that belong in other Dewey sections!

As a lover of the Dewey Decimal Classification system and a college major in the Social Sciences, I hope to help you understand this Dewey Class…and suggest some changes that might better serve your students and teachers.

THE METHOD OF ASSIGNING DEWEY NUMBERS

Remember that Dewey Decimal Numbers are assigned by discipline, that is, the field of study—the profession. How does that differ from subject?

  • Subject asks, “What is this about?” and is the topic of a book—the informational content inside.
  • Discipline asks, “Who is this for?”—who will use this—and assigns a Dewey number so those folks find their professional information in one place.

A particular subject, then, can be assigned more than one Dewey number depending on which profession uses the material for their own purposes. Here’s a DDC example of a simple water report that can apply to 5 different Dewey numbers:

Use 333.91 for monitoring to protect water quality, 553.7 for chemical & biological status, 363.6 for assuring compliance with standards, 628.1 for technical aspects of water treatment, and 628.93 for effectiveness of sewage treatment. (Abridged 15, p65.) [edited for brevity]

Also keep in mind that books for more than one discipline or subject are assigned the lowest Dewey Decimal number that includes all disciplines—using the rule of two or the rule of three. This explains why the 300 section is so large: its numbers are lower than 6 other Dewey Classes, so multiple subject/discipline books are placed in the 300s rather than where we might need them for our school curriculum.

Visit my blog posts on Dewey 590s Animals for more about disciplinary alignment, and Let’s Put Dewey Decimal Books Where Students Can Find Them for more on the rules of two & three.

WHAT DOES 300 SOCIAL SCIENCE REALLY INCLUDE?

Calling the 300s “social sciences” may be a slight misnomer: the social sciences include geography and history which Dewey places in the 900s, as well as psychology which Dewey places in the 100s. Thus, of the 7 social sciences, only sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics are in the 300s.

Since these four disciplines are about social relationships and the organization & function of human societies, I’ve chosen a more specific name for this Dewey number which students understand better than the generic “Social Sciences”:

Dewey 300 –  Society, Government, and Culture

Unfortunately, the materials for these 3 broad headings are not necessarily in contiguous divisions and sections, so here’s the 300 divisions each one encompasses:

  • Society: 300 Sociology & anthropology and 360 Social problems & services
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  • Government: 320 Political science, 330 Economics, 340 Law, and 350 Public administration & military science, and 380 Commerce, communications & transportation
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  • Culture: 370 Education & 390 Customs

NOTE: You probably won’t have any 310s in your school library because it’s just for statistical records.

SOCIETY

300 Sociology & anthropology
The 300s begin with society, specifically sociology & anthropology. If we consider psychology (the 100s) as the social science of the individual, then 300-307 is the social science of groups. It includes behaviors like bullying, gangs, prejudice & discrimination; interactions such as social change & civil disobedience; and relationships between individuals, groups, and communities. It does have one section important for School Librarians:

  • 305 Groups of people introduces those used throughout the rest of the 300s by age, gender, social class, race, ethnicity/ancestry, occupation, and illness/disability. School Librarians need to build this section with high-quality, equity-sensitive resources because it can so strongly influence the minds of our students.

360 Social problems & services
This division may be, I suspect, the one that gives School Librarians the most headaches. It’s categorized according to type of problem and how the service is provided:

  • for specific groups of people (according to the groups in 305),
  • as governmental services such as public safety, crime & punishment,
  • by public & private societies & clubs,
  • by commercial insurance services,
  • by associations.

Some books in this division are victims of the rules of two or three, such as substance abuse and mental & physical disorders. I relocated many of these to appropriate higher numbers for better student access.

363 Other social problems and services
If the 360s are problematic, this section is particularly exasperating for School Librarians. Like any “other” section of the 300s, it’s a dumping ground for disparate topics. To understand what’s covered in this section, think of it as the basic needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy: physical needs for human survival, and our need for safety & security.

  • 363 begins with Public safety from hazards, followed by police services with crime investigation & forensics, and ‘safety’ from moral ‘problems’, like alcohol, gambling, prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, drug trafficking, and abortion. The public safety portion ends with another dumping ground—363.3 Other aspects of public safety which has just about everything else, from censorship to terrorism to gun control to firefighting.
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    363.34 Disasters is actually disaster relief, and school libraries may have sizeable sections here on earthquakes & volcanos, floods & tsunamis, and other earth & weather-related disasters. I relocated many of these to 551 Earth science so they’d be together for science class assignments.
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  • 363 ends with physical needs and the services that provide for it. This section includes housing, public utilities like water treatment, food supply issues including malnutrition of the poor & famine, and population issues like family planning & birth control, sterilization, and over-population.
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    363.7 Environmental problems is another perplexing spot, because so many popular school topics about environmental protection are crammed in here. I added additional numbers (below) to better define the different topics:
Description Dewey number
Environmental problems 363.7
Sanitation – waste control, recycling .72
Pollution .73
By source – oil, toxic chemicals, acid rain .738
Of specific environments – air, water, soil
Global warming from CO2 (greenhouse effect) &
ozone layer depletion (You may find ozone books in .738 due to the rule of 2 regarding refrigerants, but I moved mine here because it’s a global issue of the atmosphere.
.739
Noise pollution .74

GOVERNMENT

It’s no surprise that 320 Political science, 340 Law, and 350 Public administration & military science align with the 3 branches of U.S. government. (Be aware that other countries may not have this structure, but most of those books are in the 900 section. )

  •  320 Political science includes civil & human rights, the political process & elections, relations between nations, and the legislative process, hence, books about the U.S. Congress.
  • 340 Law covers international, constitutional, regional/state, economic, criminal, and civil law, and includes the United Nations, the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • 350 Public administration covers the executive branch—the U.S. Presidency, the Cabinet, and management of departments or agencies such as national security, justice, foreign affairs, health & education, and those with economic or environmental oversight. 355-359 military science covers all branches of the military, which is administered by the head of state.

 

MAKING THE 300’S MORE STUDENT-FRIENDLYMaking the Dewey 300s More Student-Friendly - This Class name & several sections of 300s Social Science are exasperating for students and School Librarians, but a few changes can help. Calling it Society, Government & Culture helps students, as does actually adding decimal numbers to clarify different topics.

330 Economics
Economics is probably nestled between 320 and 340, because legislatures (320) set taxes and budgets. This division also includes careers, money, banking, credit cards, the stock market, and taxes. (You may also see books on socialism & communism because they are economic-based systems, but I prefer all books on types of government together, so I relocated mine to 321.)

School Librarians need to know that 330 also covers economic development and management including that of natural resources, so that’s why we find a sizable group of books in 333.7-333.9. I actually added decimals to my books to differentiate between the different topics, according to the table below:

Description Dewey number
Economics of land & energy 333
Land, recreational & wilderness areas, energy 333.7
Conservation & protection .72
Land .73
Grasslands .74
Forest lands .75
Rural lands .76
Urban lands .77
Recreational & wilderness areas .78
Energy – alternative, renewable .79
Primary forms of energy – solar, nuclear .792
Secondary forms of energy – renewable .793
Photovoltaic energy .796
Subsurface resources – nonrenewable 333.8
Fossil fuels .82
Geothermal .88
Other natural resources 333.9
Water energy – hydroelectric .91
Wind energy .92
Biofuels, biodiversity, wildlife refuges .95

380 COMMERCE, COMMUNICATIONS, TRANSPORTATION
This division may seem redundant with topics in 330 Economics; however, this division is for regulatory aspects (law & public administration) and public consumption—the socio-cultural perspective of ‘products’ & ‘people’, that is, services that sustain or benefit our way of life. Here we find:

  • domestic & international trade
  • the infrastructure for communications—postal, telegraph, computer, wireless (radio, television, satellite), and telephone
  • the infrastructure for transportation, including railroads, waterways, air traffic, roads, local mass transit, and pipeline transport of utilities.

You may see here books that are topical with those in the 600s, and they may get increased circulation by relocating them there.

CULTURE

Near the end of the 300s we find the two divisions relating to culture and it’s institutions.

370 Education
Education is how our culture and traditions are passed down from adults to children. Most books with this division number will be about teaching, so will be shelved in our Professional collection. You may, however, want to do as I did, and build a circulating group of books on schools for the historical time periods our students study in their social studies classes, and books on study skills topics.

390 Customs, etiquette, folklore
This is the division we probably think of when we refer to “culture”. It differs from 300 Sociology & anthropology in that 300 is about groups & institutions, whereas this division is about our personal or informal way of life. We find here sections on personal adornment such as clothing & accessories, cosmetics, jewelry, and body alteration like tattoos and body piercing.

We also find sections on customs for home & family life, death, and special occasions, like marriage, festivals, birthdays, and holidays. Interestingly, it’s also where we find such arcane topics as cannibalism and taboos. The topics may seem similar to 306 Culture and institutions, but 306 is about behaviors and interactions, whereas these sections are for specific celebratory rituals.

  • 398 Folklore, especially 398.2 Folk literature can be a sizable section in school libraries, and if yours is not well organized, you might want to read my post Let’s Put Dewey Decimal Books Where Students Can Find Them. I offer alternate numbers to group these books according to how our students study folklore.
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    At 398.8 Rhymes and rhyming games we find Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes, as well as lullabies and jump rope rhymes. If your school library serves PreK, you may want to build this section and relocate related books from other areas to make it easier for you and your teachers to find them all together.

WHEN THE 300’s ISN’T THE RIGHT PLACE

School Librarians Can Change Dewey to Improve Student Access -Many School Librarians get frustrated with the Dewey Decimal Classification system and want to “genrify” it like we do our fiction literature. I believe this is because they don’t understand the purpose of DDC:

works that are used together to be found together.

It’s that purpose of DDC which gives us the freedom to change a Dewey number. Since our disciplinary use is different than career professionals, we can locate books where they will better serve the needs of our school curriculum.

For example, one DDC rule of two/three victim is U.S. slavery before the Civil War. Books on this subject can be found at 2 places in the 300s:

  • 306.3 Culture/economic institutions if the content is slavery as an established socio-economic culture of the time.
  • 326 Slavery and emancipation if the content is about abolitionism and antislavery movements, the political issues of that time period.

I didn’t like either location, so I changed all these books to a little-used but legitimate DDC number where students would find the books within the historical time period:

973.71 Civil War – Social, political, economic history

This number already includes the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation, so now all U.S. slavery books are together. After relocating the books, students easily discovered them there and even thought I’d bought new ones!

So, School Librarians don’t have to give up Dewey for radical organizational changes to make their school library more student-friendly. For additional creative ways to use DDC, get my new E-book How to Make Dewey Decimals Student-Friendly found at No Sweat Library, my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

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Let’s Put Dewey Decimal Books Where Students Can Find Them!

Let's Put Dewey Decimal Books Where Students Can Find Them! - If the Dewey Decimal Numbers on certain books make it hard for students to find them, it's OK to change those numbers! Improve student access to books in your school library with these creative & useful DDC modifications. #NoSweatLibrarySchool Librarians strive to create a student-friendly library. For me, this means minimizing the time it takes students to find what they need. Accordingly, I tell them to search the OPAC By Subject and the results will show them the Dewey number for the location of those books. Unfortunately, there’s nothing more frustrating to a student—or to me—than getting a list with several widely different Dewey numbers.

Every one of us, at some point, wonders why a book has a Dewey Decimal Number that places it in a certain location, yet another book on the same topic has a different Dewey number placing it in a different location—sometimes at opposite ends of the library! Should we change the number on one of them? Which one is “correct”? What if there are several books at both—or multiple—locations?

I am not a Dewey purist, so I say we can be flexible with Dewey Decimal Numbers: put a book where students will find it.

IT’S OK TO CHANGE A DEWEY NUMBER

Remember that the Dewey Decimal Classification System was designed to organize knowledge by discipline, that is, by the field of study of those who’d use the information. Library of Congress catalogers use that principle when they assign Dewey numbers for Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) data, and usually it works fine in our school libraries. But, sometimes the Dewey number for adults working in a field isn’t compatible with the topical curricular needs of our PreK-12 students.

Dewey Decimal Numbers Are Meant to Serve Patron Needs - The Dewey Decimal Classification System today is vastly different than the original. Every year the OCLC and LOC make adjustments to better serve our changing world and patron needs. So, it's OK for us to change a Dewey number to put books where our students will find them! #NoSweatLibraryOur young ones look for books by subject or topic, and they expect to find all of them together. I often change a Dewey number to put a book where students will look for it. In fact, changing a Dewey number for student access actually fulfills the very purpose of Dewey Classification: “works that are used together to be found together.” For kids we can take some creative license and redo the numbers on books if they will be more useful in another location.

I know there are arguments against changing Dewey numbers, but I believe they lack validity. Here’s my reasoning:

  • Don’t worry about “the next librarian.” Who of us has memorized DDC numbers past the 10 main classes? The next librarian will be as concerned about student access as we are, and will be grateful that books are where everyone can more easily find them.
  • Finding something in a different library? Who remembers the Dewey number of a particular book? A book search will tell them the location of any book in that library. So what if it’s different from ours as long as they can locate it.
  • Even professional catalogers may disagree about where a book “belongs.” That’s straight from the cataloging professor when I took the course for my library degree!
  • The most compelling argument for making changes is that LOC and OCLC continuously make changes to DDC to meet the changing needs of society. Each new publication of DDC and Abridged DDC has numerous pages of Dewey number additions, deletions, substitutions, and revisions that have been made since the previous publication. Sometimes they’ll change a whole section, like moving pets from the 500s to 600s or travel guides from the 600s to 900s. Dewey is meant to accommodate patron needs.

USEFUL MODIFICATIONS USING DEWEY NUMBERS

For books with multiple subjects, DDC follows the rule of two or rule of three. This means books are assigned to the first, or lowest, Dewey Decimal Number that includes both/all disciplines. If you weren’t aware of this, it may explain why certain books are where they are…especially so many in the 300s!

These 2 rules are particularly annoying when applied to computer books, typically found in 004 and 005. When students are looking for books about computers, they’re thinking of the manufactured physical product. Since the 600s are Applied Science & Technology, that’s where students are more likely to look for it, and since I changed such books. the computer books are checked out much more than they were in the 000s.

Image of 621.3 Electronics & Computers shelf label

Image of the book "Unbuilding" by David MacauleySometimes it makes sense to group books together in one Dewey class to make them all more accessible. A librarian’s recent LM_NET post asked about David Macaulay’s book “Unbuilding,” a fictional dismantling of the Empire State Building. It was classified in 690 Buildings, but she had 3 books on the construction of the Empire State Building in 974.71, which is the number for the State of New York’s History.

Historians (and perhaps NY students) would expect to find a significant event like ESB in the history of New York State, but who else would? My middle school library had books on buildings (including several by Macaulay) scattered in 300s, 600s, 700s, 900s, even 000s (about libraries!). I changed them all to 690 Buildings where students would more logically find them, and within a few days the shelf was bare…boys saw them and couldn’t check them out fast enough!

HELPFUL ALTERNATE DEWEY NUMBERS

To make a Dewey section more useful for students we may need to make a more extensive alteration of Dewey numbers. One of the first changes I made resulted from an elementary librarian’s suggestion on LM_NET. Few of us have 398.2 Folk literature differentiated between fairy tales, legends, fables, myths, and tall tales, yet that’s how our students study them. There are already Dewey numbers that align with these literary types as a better way to organize folktales. These changes rejuvenated my folktale section, and I’m sure they will do the same for you:

  • NoSweat Library Dewey Subject Signs & Shelf Labels - Make it easier for students to find a Dewey book in your school library with these colorful, pictorial signs and shelf labels. They're just what you need for your middle school (or elementary) library!Fairy tales=398.21 Paranatural beings of human/semihuman form
  • Legends=398.22 Legendary or mythological persons
  • Fables=398.24 Plants & animals, real & legendary
  • Myths and creation stories=398.26 Physical phenomena
  • Tall tales=398.27 Everyday human life, historical/quasi historical events
  • Multicultural tales I changed to 398.23 Places and times from 398.2089. That allowed me to reduce 2 decimal numbers then add one back indicating continent of origin according to Table 2 Geographic areas.

Another mess is the 920 Collected biographies. A spine label with 920 and the author’s 3 letters is not user-friendly for anyone, especially not for kids. DDC offers an alternative called Option A, which uses numbers 921-928 to align with main Dewey Classes! I used them to completely redo my 920s. Students loved the change and circulation of those biographies dramatically increased!

CREATIVE ADJUSTMENTS TO DEWEY

How to Make Dewey Decimals Student-Friendly: an Ebook for School Librarians - This 20-page e-book offers legitimate Dewey Decimal Classification system workarounds, as well as a few creative ways to assign DDC numbers, that puts topical books together so students can more easily find them. Includes tables for specific topical sections of books. NoSweatLibraryAddictive Substances was a problematic topic for my students because it appears in 3 different Dewey numbers—362.29, 613.8, and 616.86—depending on whether the book is about addiction as a social problem, as personal health & safety, or as a disease. To simplify access for students needing books about drugs, I decided to put all the books in 616.86.

Here’s the “creative” part: For similar drugs the Dewey number additional decimals are wildly different. After careful analysis, I decided to adjust some of the thousandths numbers to create a more consistent grouping of drugs for 616.86. Students immediately noticed the larger drug section, thought I’d purchased new books, and their circulation skyrocketed. Learn more about creative Dewey in my e-Book, available in my TPT store.

LOC and OCLC have begun to make DDC culturally responsive, but School Librarians must be especially responsive to the diversity of students we serve. DDC’s application of expansion numbers for racial, cultural, ethnic, and national groups is inconsistent. In a search for something that could apply across all Dewey numbers, I found that Table 2 Geographic areas lists numbers for the continents that can be added as an identifier. It’s the familiar one added after 9 in the 900s. I decided to use them as “Continent of origin” for cultural and ethnic grouping, so I’ve adjusted and even created numbers in various sections of the school library to overcome Dewey’s racial and cultural biases. You can read more about it in my e-Book!

I applied this “Continent of origin” concept to books in 305.8 Groups of people, 398.23 Multicultural folktales, and 920 Collected biographies. My biggest change was gathering books together to create two completely new sections in 973 U.S. History: 973.04 Multicultural U.S. History and 973.08 Multicultural America about which I’ve written before.

I made other significant changes to 973 U.S. History by removing all the State books except our own, because a) it’s the only one our middle school students study, and b) because more accurate information about states is available online. I kept many topically relevant books found among those state Dewey numbers, and moved them to a better Dewey section, such as putting books about 9-11 in 364.1 Criminal offenses where we have other terrorism books. I also redid the Dewey number into the appropriate time period for timely U.S. history books, like the original colonies and westward expansion.

IS THIS WORTH IT?

School Librarians who change Dewey numbers can change student & colleague attitudes about the school library. Learn how to benefit them ... | No Sweat LibraryYou may be thinking, hey…this is way too much work! I admit, it takes some extra time up front, but just do a little bit at a time—not all of it at once. I typically pull out odd books while shelving, attach a stickie note with the new number, then make changes when I have a few minutes free at the circulation desk. For new books I may have to redo spine labels and cataloging for selected topics, but it doesn’t take that long.

Here are the greatest benefits for changing Dewey numbers:

  • It’s easier for students to browse like-topic books, which excites them.
  • It’s faster for students to find the books they need, which pleases teachers who seem to think students waste time looking for things in the library.
  • It increases circulation, which satisfies our administrators who may think the library is just an add-on.

If changing Dewey Decimal numbers changes people’s minds about our School Library Program, then I believe it is totally worth it!

I hope this has convinced you to make changes to Dewey Decimal numbers on some of your books so they are more accessible for students. There are no “Dewey Police” that come into our library to check number assignments and lock us up for making Dewey changes, so let’s go ahead and DO IT! Our students will thank us, and that’s all the reason I need.

MAKE DEWEY EVEN EASIER WITH SIGNAGE

NoSweatLibrary Dewey Subject Signs & Shelf Labels - Make it easier for students to find a Dewey book in your school library with these colorful, pictorial signs and shelf labels.

Even with Dewey number changes, the best way to help kids locate books is better library signage. If you like the above examples of colorful labels I created for my Dewey shelves, you can get Dewey Subject Signs & Shelf Labels in my NoSweat Library store on TPT. Your students, like mine, will enjoy looking at your new signage and discovering topics within the library they hadn’t known about before!

The real key to helping students locate books is teaching them how to locate a decimal number on the shelf. Teaching the DDC is a colossal waste of time. Work with your math teachers to create a hands-on lesson about place value and sequencing. To learn more about this, read my blog post Do We Teach Dewey … or Don’t We? A School Library Lesson.

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