Helping School Librarians Understand Dewey 590 Animals

Helping School Librarians Understand Dewey 590 Animals - Many School Librarians are confused by the organization of Animals in 590 Science. This School Librarian/Science Teacher explains Dewey's disciplinary numbering based on biology's scientific nomenclature! #NoSweatLibraryBefore I became a School Librarian I taught secondary science—biology, chemistry, and physical science—so the 500s are my favorite subjects. A librarian colleague asked if I could explain the reasoning behind the Dewey Decimal Classification of animals in the 500s, so here it is!

DEWEY SUPPORTS THE “DISCIPLINE”

The DDC classifies books according to discipline, that is, the field of study, so animals, being part of a science discipline, are assigned to the DDC Class of 500 Science, and as living things are assigned to the DDC Divisions of Life Sciences, biology numbers 570-590. The discipline of biology has a special system for organizing living things called taxonomic classification and the scientific nomenclature of biology, from broadest to most specific, is:

Kingdom>Phylum>Class>Order>Family>Genus>Species

Within its groupings, biology classifies according to increasing complexity, and DDC follows the biology discipline’s classification system, so cellular life and its Kingdoms are in 570, the more complex Plant Kingdom is 580, and the most complex Animal Kingdom is 590. In biology the Animal Kingdom has Phyla which DDC doesn’t specifically differentiate, but roughly they are:

  • 592-595 Phyla Invertebrata – animals that don’t have a backbone.
  • 597-599 Phyla Vertebrata – animals that do have a backbone.

The DDC section numbers (the ones-place) are equivalent to a biology Class (not to be confused with Dewey Classes) according to the increasing complexity of the organism:

  • 592-595 Invertebrates
    • 593 Class of sponges, coral & starfish
    • 594 Class of clams, oysters, octopi
    • 595 Class of crustaceans & insects

To understand Dewey numbers 596-599, know that the tenths place is assigned to each different biology Order, so by increasing complexity:

  • 596-599 Vertebrates
    • 597 Class of cold-blooded vertebrates:
        • 597.1-597.7 Orders of Fishes (sharks are 597.3)
        • 597.8 Order Amphibians
        • 597.9 Order Reptiles

      Dewey number 597

and for warm-blooded vertebrates:

    • 598 Class Birds
    • 599 Class Mammals with
      • 599.2 Order Marsupial – Families possum, kangaroo
      • 599.3 Orders of small placental mammals – Families rabbits, rodents (rats & mice), squirrels, beavers
      • 599.4 Order Chiroptera (bats)
      • 599.5 Order Cetacean – Families whales, dolphins, manatees

      Dewey numbers 599-599.5

      • 599.6 Order Ungulates – Families of land-based plant-eating animals (camels, cows, deer, horses, elephants)

      Dewey number 599.6

      • 599.7 Order Carnivora (Families felines, canines, bears, marine carnivores like seals & walruses)
        (You won’t find books here about animal pets such as cats, dogs, or birds; DDC assigns pet books to 636 Domestic animals.)
      • 599.8 Order Primate (monkeys, baboons, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee)

      Dewey numbers 599.7-599.8

      • 599.9 Order Hominids—that’s us.
        You rarely have 599.9 books, because books on humans are usually about the human body so are in the 610s Medicine & health.

Keep in mind that with Dewey, a book covering multiple groups is assigned the lowest and least specific Dewey number. A book about American large animal wildlife with wolves and mountain lions would be numbered 599.7 and shelved with other carnivore books; if the book also included moose and elk, then it would be numbered 599 and shelved with other mammal books. If you’re looking for books for a class assignment, you might need to look beyond just one specific Dewey number or do an online catalog search by Subject to pick up any relevant books outside of a specific number.

A LIBRARY LESSON TO USE DEWEY 590 WITH STUDENTS

Join Life Science with Dewey Subjects for an Authentic Classification Lesson - Enhance student comprehension of life science classification with a Library Lesson on Dewey Decimal Subject Numbers for animals! Here's how to do it... #NoSweatLibraryHere’s a Library Lesson suggestion for middle school Life Science using Dewey Decimal Subjects to enhance student understanding of taxonomic classification. To prepare for this lesson I pull books from shelves so there is a sample of the various kingdoms, phyla, orders, etc. with about 6-8 books per table (seating 4 students).

To begin the lesson, I give students a classification of living things taxonomy chart worksheet, based on what they study in 6g Science, which stimulates student participation during Direct instruction. During the Modeling & guided learning activity, students hierarchically organize the books on their table and fill in boxes on their worksheet with Dewey numbers and the animal subjects of the books.

There are a few empty boxes left, so for Independent practice, students visit the Science 590-599 bookshelves to find one book whose Dewey number and subject fills in an empty box on their worksheet. They return to the table and work with their table partners to fill in any empty boxes.

Students paste the daily-grade worksheet into their Interactive Notebook (graded later by their teacher). , then they can browse for a book to check out. I see students apply what they learn as they explore other topical sections of the Science shelves as well as the 636 section on domesticated animals and pets.

I have a similar lesson for 6g on ecology, for 7g on human body systems, and for 8g on weather and weather disasters. As middle school Science has become more integrated, these quick Library Lessons offer single-visit reinforcement for a variety of Science topics at any grade-level, and also give students more insight into and experience with the different Dewey Subjects in the library. As always, teachers love that I have a graphic organizer worksheet to use as a daily grade.

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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!

 

If you like the colorful shelf labels above, you can
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Do We Teach Dewey … or Don’t We? A School Library Lesson

Do We Teach Dewey ... or Don't We? A School Library Lesson - I don't teach the Dewey Decimal Classification System and you don't have to either. There's a better way to teach students how to find a book in our School Libraries and it supports Math. Read on to find out how I do Dewey... #NoSweatLibraryI don’t teach the Dewey Decimal Classification System during Library Orientation. In fact, I don’t teach it at all. The eye-opener came my second year as a librarian when I was telling students (during an incredibly boring orientation) that library books were originally shelved behind the circulation desk, and the DDC was created so librarians could organize books to find one when a patron asked for it. I suddenly realized that DDC is for me to know for organizing books, not for students to know for finding one. Students only need to know how to find a number on a shelf, and anyone who can put 3 numbers in consecutive order can do that—even a kindergartner!

CAN I JUSTIFY NOT TEACHING DEWEY?

Nowhere do the new AASL National School Library Standards ever mention the Dewey Decimal Classification System. (Nor did the Standards for a 21st Century Learner!) It’s not even listed in the Glossary or the Index. For the Shared Foundation CURATE the NSLS offers this:

Learner School Librarian School Library
A. THINK 2. Act on an information need by identifying possible sources of information. A. THINK – Challenge learners to act on an information need by:
2. Designing opportunities for learners to explore possible information sources.
C. SHARE – Facilitates the contribution & exchange within & among learning communities by:
2. Including & tracking collection materials in a system that uses standardized approaches to description & location.
3. Establishing policies that promote effective acquisition, description, circulation, sharing & access to resources within & beyond the school day.
B. CREATE 1. Gather information to the task by seeking a variety of sources. B. CREATE 4. Promote information gathering appropriate to the task by providing tools & strategies to organize information by priority, topic, or other systematic scheme.  

Notice that it’s only the School Library level that is concerned with classification or a system, which is often handled at the district level. The School Librarian’s main concern is to simply help students use the system to find what they need. I particularly like the wording of Think #2, and I’ve written about designing such opportunities for science and for social studies in a way that coordinates DDC with both “the discipline” and with classroom learning.

Nothing in NSLS states, or even suggests, that the learner needs to know details of the Dewey Decimal System. After identifying whether the school library has a book they need, a learner only needs to be able to find the book on the shelf.

WHAT TO TEACH INSTEAD OF DEWEY

Education is changing from a content-based mentality to critical-thinking and problem-solving, so why teach a content-based lesson on Dewey? DDC organizes Classes & Divisions “by discipline,” but few School Librarians honestly understand the difference between “class,” “division,” and “discipline” well enough to explain it to each other, let alone a kid—who doesn’t need to know that at all. Most School Librarians only know a few Dewey Divisions. Quick: name the 10 Divisions of the Science 500s or the Arts & Leisure 700s. And those are the easy ones.

NoSweat Library Dewey Decimal Library Lesson presentation slide - They rarely visit the library, so a Dewey Decimal lesson gives Math classes a curricular reason to visit the library, especially if we offer a practical, hands-on application of decimal concepts.

A slide about place value from my math lessons.

The school library is all about problem-solving, and we need to make our lessons about how to use an organization system to locate resources. Students only need to understand that each place value in a Dewey decimal number stands for a more specific subject or topic, so more decimals mean a narrower topic of a book. What those subjects or topics are should be a sign on a shelf, not a scrap of trivia in a kid’s brain.

This goes beyond just a lesson; it touches on the latest trend of dumping Dewey for a “kid-friendly” word-based system. I’m astonished when I hear this, since Dewey is itself a short, simple notation for locating a book on the shelf. I doubt that kids are any more likely to “learn” letter acronyms than Dewey numbers.

They’ll still have to look up what the Subjects are, we’ll still have to teach them how to find a book using a classification system, and we’ll still need to put signs on the shelves, all of which we can do just as easily with Dewey numbers!

Granted, for elementary students, especially very young ones who haven’t learned about decimals, Dewey numbers may seem a bit daunting, but even a kindergartner quickly learns to count to 100, and helping kids discern and practice numerical order is a more important skill to focus on than what the numbers stand for. It’s incredible that many of my 6th graders can’t do this, so a lesson activity that sends kids off to find books by number is not only a better strategy for the library—and for reinforcing Math skills—but it’s a lot more fun! At least it always is for my 6th & 7th graders after I changed my lessons from content to process!

DO DEWEY WITH MATH CLASSES

Make Dewey Lessons More Relevant with Math Classes - Here's a great way to bring Math classes into the school library: review decimal concepts & library organization by having students locate Dewey Decimal-numbered books on the shelves. I do lessons with 2 different grade levels! #NoSweatLibraryI suggest that our reluctance to focus on number location is due to math anxiety—after all, most librarians seem to come from a language arts background, not a math one. But think about it: Numbers and decimals are part of the math curriculum, so why not bring in math classes for a Dewey lesson? They rarely visit the library, and a Dewey Decimal lesson gives Math classes a curricular reason to visit the library, especially if we offer a practical, hands-on application of decimal concepts. And it certainly answers the common question in math about “When are we ever going to use this?”

Thanks to a suggestion from my library colleague, Cindy Nietubicz, I bring both 6th and 7th grade Math classes into the library for a Dewey Decimal Lesson. The timing is perfect for us: these math classes begin decimal units about 5 weeks after school begins, our ELA fiction reading pattern is well established, and students are eager to check out Dewey books.

My math lessons serve to activate prior math knowledge about what students should already know about decimals, so it prepares them for what they’ll be learning during their upcoming unit. With 6g students we review place values and sequencing decimals; with 7g students we review adding and subtracting decimals. Students practice how decimals are used in the library by locating Dewey-decimal-number books on the shelf. Math teachers like having this fun, non-graded review where they can see which students are having trouble with decimals.


NoSweat Library Dewey Decimal Library Lesson presentation slide - They rarely visit the library, so a Dewey Decimal lesson gives Math classes a curricular reason to visit the library, especially if we offer a practical, hands-on application of decimal concepts.Animated lesson slide for students to practice putting decimals in order.

After the practice activity, students have plenty of time to browse for Dewey books to check out. Many get an interesting book they find during the activity. Others are stimulated to use my signage to find Dewey numbers of their favorite topics. When students are seated, we follow the same silent reading and invited checkout procedure that we use for ELA classes.

Math teachers love these lessons so much that they come to me early in the school year to see when we can schedule them into the library. It also whets their interest in collaborating on other math-related lessons in the library. Students love these lessons, too. Sixth graders are always puzzled about why they’re in the library with a math class…most have never done that before. What amazes me is how many comment afterward that now they understand how all those numbers work, which is, of course, the whole point of teaching Dewey numbers to our students.

If the slide images above have sparked your interest, you can find my Dewey Lessons in my NoSweat Library store on TeachersPayTeachers, as well as my colorful Dewey Subject Signs & Shelf Labels.

Make your Dewey Decimal Library Lesson more authentic and relevant by inviting 6g Math classes to review decimal place values and sequencing! Students & teachers love this Library Lesson that activates prior knowledge at the beginning of their 6g Math decimal unit. Do this lesson, and your math teachers will come to you every year asking when you'll schedule their visit! Make your Dewey Decimal Library Lesson more authentic & relevant by inviting 7g Math classes to review adding & subtracting decimal numbers! Students & teachers love this Library Lesson that activates prior knowledge at the beginning of their 7g Math decimal unit. Do this lesson, and your math teachers will come to you every year asking when you'll schedule their visit! No Sweat 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!

WHY DO I SAY “DEWEY NUMBERS”?

Should you be wondering why I deliberately use the phrase Dewey numbers—and Dewey books—I identify areas of the library by what’s on the spine labels of the books; since there’s a Dewey number on the spine labels, it’s the Dewey area of the library. My decision to begin doing this came during the aforementioned (incredibly boring) orientation: I was explaining that we separate fiction books from the 800s into their own area of the library, but the ‘non-fiction’ area still had some fictional books, such as aliens, fairy tales, and poetry. I thought, “Why am I making this so confusing to students? If I just call them Dewey-number books I’ll alleviate confusion and questions!” So from then on, that’s what I called them. Now I clarify with students that ‘non-fiction’ is about the content of a book, not it’s location. If you take anything from this blog post, I hope it’s the terms ‘Dewey area’ and ‘Dewey-number books.’ Our kids deserve common sense.

line of books laying down

 

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