Lesson slide for teaching undergraduate students about call numbers & subject headings in a for-credit information literacy and research skills class, ISLT 1111.

1. Information Use and Student Success

2.  What sort of information do you organize?
How do you determine what goes where?

3.  Each group will receive 16 notecards with
book titles on them
 Sort the book titles into topics/subjects that
you think go together
 You come up with what topics you think are
useful

4.  What sorts of topics did you organize your
book titles into?
 What books were sorted into each topic?
Were there any disagreements about where
to put them?
 Did some of the books seem like they could
fit under multiple topics?

5.  Different people can have different
interpretations about what the subject of a
book is
 In order to keep their collections as
organized as possible, librarians use
controlled systems to determine what goes
where. Academic libraries like at Mizzou use
Library of Congress
 Library of Congress sorts books two ways:
call numbers and subject headings

6.  Every book in the library is assigned a unique
string of letters and numbers called a call
number
 Since no books share a call number, they
work as an address to help you locate a
particular book in the library

7.  Take a few minutes and complete the
following tutorial (link available in Course
Materials)
http://www.clark.edu/Library/iris/start/boo
ks_organized/books_organized.shtml

8. DP269 .C373 2013
First letter: Class
Second letter:
Subclass
Numbers before
decimal: second
subclass
Letter and numbers
immediately after decimal:
Represents the author Last numbers:
Year of publication
Call number for: A Short History of the Spanish Civil War

9.  So, let’s look at the call number from last
slide: DP269 .C373 2013.
 The first section of a call number (DP269)
describes what a book is about.
 First letter is a class, or broad topic. D signifies
World History & History of Europe, Asia, Africa,
Australia, New Zealand, etc.
 Second letter is a subclass. It is a more narrow
topic. P means it is about Spain-Portugal
 The number is an even narrower topic. Anything
269-269.9 is about the Spanish Civil War

10.  Since call number are assigned partially
based on what the book is about and books
are placed in the library based on call
numbers, books on similar topics are located
near each other
 Therefore, if you find one good book on your
topic, it’s likely there is another one nearby

11.  So the call numbers represent a way of
describing the subject of a book. But what if
the book could be described multiple ways?
 Subject headings are alternate ways to
identify what a book is about. Unlike a call
number, a book can have more than one
subject heading

13.  Using keywords to Identify Subject Headings

14.  The subject headings given to a book are not
random. There is a set list of terms that
librarians pick from when trying to describe a
book. Sometimes the official term is
different from the term you are likely to use.
 So, your topic is the death penalty. However,
there is no LC heading for “death penalty.”
The vocabulary used in LC is “capital
punishment.” This is why it’s good to start
with a keyword search: it helps you find the
subject headings that are actually used.

15.  When you have a long research project (and
you do), you need to keep track of what
resources you are using
 Especially if you are working on more than one
 There are many ways to do this (Microsoft
Word, written notes), there is specialized
software designed to organize your resources
and keep track of them

16.  Assignment: Identifying Subjects by Call
Number
 We will be meeting in Ellis Library at the
reference desk
 Bring your student ID and a list of the books
you found on your topic so that you can
check them out

17.  Go to the BlackBoard page
 In the left column find and click on the tab
that says “Exit Slips”
 Click on the link that says “Exit Slip:
Organization of Information
 Fill out the survey on this week’s lesson