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Student Library Assistant Training Guide: Library of Congress

This guide was created to assist FSCJ campus libraries in training student assistants. These web resources and tutorials could be used with training materials specific to each LLC.

Library of Congress Prezi Tutorial

Tutorial Takeaways

Libraries use classification systems to organize the books on the shelves. A classification system uses letters and numbers (call numbers) to arrange the books so that books on the same topic are together. Academic libraries use the Library of Congress Classification System (LC), which has 21 classes and over 225 subclasses, represented by letters.

Familiarize yourself with these classes and it will help you to find books and shelve more quickly.

Read call numbers line by line.

  • Read the first line in alphabetical order
  • Read the second line as a whole number
  • Read the third line alphabetically first, then as a decimal, eg: .C65 = .65  .C724 = .724
  • Some call numbers have more than one letter-number line
  • The last line is the year the book was published. Read in chronological order.
  • Remember: NEVER GUESS. If you're not sure what a call number says, ask us.

Library of Congress labels on spines of books

 

Image taken from The Online Library Learning Center website, a project of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia