Curriculum Library: Making Sense of Call Numbers

The Curriculum Library’s collection consists of materials in a variety of formats:

• Manipulatives: games, CD, DVD, Teaching Aids
• Books and materials about music: history, biography, reference
• Books and materials of instruction & study: primers, textbooks, etc.

 Every item has two identifying labels attached:

•  A barcode: a unique number attaches the item to a record in a database
• A call number label: gives a unique identifier to each item, which acts as a shelf address made up of letters and numbers (alpha-numeric).  It also serves to collocate (group together) items of a similar type, family, or genre.

 A typical call number looks something like this:

This example illustrates the alpha-numeric filing system (putting items in a certain order). The various parts identify the type of material (line 1) the genre, (line 2) the author,  (line 3) the date of publication, and so on. Depending on the item, its call number can be more or less complicated than the example above, but the same basic principles apply for shelving by alphabetical and numerical order.

Line 1

Line 2 

This is an alphanumeric line to represent the authors last name and the title of the book.

Line 3

The final element (line 3), the date of publication, is sometimes omitted.

To find library items in the catalog, please return to the Searching WestCat main tab.

To browse the collection, there are a few guides to Library of Congress Classification that you can use to make sure that you start off in the right direction: