How To Use the Dewey Decimal System
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The Dewey Decimal System organizes information into 10 broad areas, which are broken into smaller and smaller topics. Different topics are assigned numbers, known as "call numbers." For example, "Tigers" are given the number 599.756. To see what books we currently have available about tigers, go to the nonfiction shelves and find the books that have that number on their spine label.
A list of some of the information you can find in the different Dewey Decimal areas appears below. You can use our catalog to search for specific subjects. If you click on the links with each section, you will be redirected to a sampling of the catalog offerings on that call number’s topics.
Dewey Decimal System
000 General Knowledge
Find out what's cataloged in the 000s
- Computers and the Internet
- UFOs and Unexplained Mysteries
- Almanacs, Encyclopedias
- Libraries, Museums, Newspapers, World Records...
100 Psychology and Philosophy
Find out what's cataloged in the 100s
- Death and Dying
- Ethics
- Emotions and Feelings
- Logic
- Making Friends
- Optical Illusions
- Superstitions ...
200 Religions and Mythology
Find out what's cataloged in the 200s
- Amish
- Bible Stories
- Buddhism
- Christianity
- Judaism
- Islam
- Quakers, and other world religions
- Greek, Roman and other myths...
300 Social Sciences and Folklore
Find out what's cataloged in the 300s
- Careers
- Customs
- Environment
- Families
- Folktales
- Government
- Manners
- Money
- Recycling
- Transportation...
400 Languages and Grammar
Find out what's cataloged in the 400s
- Dictionaries
- English grammar
- Sign Language
- Arabic
- Spanish and other languages from around the world...
500 Math and Science
Find out what's cataloged in the 500s
- Animals
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Dinosaurs
- Fish
- Fossils
- Geology
- Insects
- Physics
- Planets
- Plants
- Stars
- Weather ...
600 Medicine and Technology
Find out what's cataloged in the 600s
- Cookbooks
- Engineering
- Farming
- Health
- Human Body
- Inventions
- Manufacturing
- Pets
- Nutrition
- Robots
- Space Science ...
700 Arts and Recreation
Find out what's cataloged in the 700s
- Architecture
- Crafts
- Drawing
- Games
- Jokes
- Movies
- Music
- Puppets
- Songbooks
- Sports ...
800 Literature
Find out what's cataloged in the 800s
- Children's Literature Anthologies
- Plays
- Poetry
- Shakespeare
- Writing Process ...
900 Geography and History
Find out what's cataloged in the 900s
- Ancient World
- Biographies
- Countries
- Native Americans
- States
- Travel
- Wars ...
Nonfiction vs Fiction
Fiction is fabricated and based on the author’s imagination. Short stories, novels, myths, legends, and fairy tales are all considered fiction. While settings, plot points, and characters in fiction are sometimes based on real-life events or people, writers use such things as jumping off points for their stories.
Nonfiction, by contrast, is factual and reports on true events. Histories, biographies, journalism, and essays are all considered nonfiction. Usually, nonfiction has a higher standard to uphold than fiction. A few smatterings of fact in a work of fiction does not make it true, while a few fabrications in a nonfiction work can force that story to lose all credibility.
Historical Fiction vs Creative Nonfiction
In a work of historical fiction, the story takes place in the past, but characters, actions, and other details are fictionalized. Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, is a broad term that encompasses many different types of writing (and, it seems worth noting, not all of it is historical). Creative nonfiction that covers the past uses the tools of dramatization but does not fictionalize.
Creative nonfiction that includes historical eras or events does not fictionalize. While it might read like a novel, its task is to remain factually accurate. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah tells of his experience as a child during wartime in Sierra Leone. It unfolds with the kind of detail and tension you would expect in a novel. When rebels attack Beah’s home, he is in another town:
For more than three hours, we stayed at the wharf, anxiously waiting and expecting either to see our families or to talk to someone who had seen them. But there was no news of them, and after a while we didn’t know any of the people who came across the river. The day seemed oddly normal. The sun peacefully sailed through the white clouds, birds sang from treetops, the trees danced to the quiet wind…
“What are you going to do?” Gibrilla asked us. We were all quiet for a while, and then Talloi broke the silence. “We must go back and see if we can find our families before it is too late.”
Here, Beah recounts his own experience. Authors writing about events or eras they didn’t experience can also dramatize.
Both historical fiction and creative nonfiction that covers historical events or eras serve to illuminate real events from the past in a compelling and dramatic way. But each has a different relationship with factual accuracy.
Source: Ask the Writer: What's the difference between historical fiction and creative nonfiction?