The Dewey Decimal System

Non-fiction books in the LMTC are arranged by broad bodies of knowledge, then by topic.  Books are assigned a call number from 000 through 999 based on their topics, then arranged numerically.  This helps keep most books on similar topics close to each other.  It doesn't always work out, though, because topics can be combined in different ways.  For instance, three books with "gold" as part of the topic might be in different parts of the collection if the topics of those books were, "gold as a chemical element" (in the 540s), "gold as a standard of monetary value" (in the 340s) and "making gold jewelry" (in the 730s).  A typical call number looks like this:
 

The top line indicates the topic (in this case, physics) while the bottom line is the start of the last name of the author (in this case, Smith).  If there were two book on the same topic by people named Smith, they'd end up with the same call number.  That's okay, because things like titles, publication dates, and barcodes help distinguish the books as separate works.

 Features of Non-Fiction Books

This is a Powerpoint Mr. Noah uses to introduce some features of non-fiction books and encourage students to check out and read non-fiction. 

 Non-Fiction Reading Suggestions

The lists of interesting non-fiction books below are arranged by broad Dewey category. These lists are in PDF format.