Appendix C: Journalism: A Guide to Recent Literature - Section 12. A Library User's Guide for Journalism and Mass Communication Subjects

This brief guide is designed to help users in library shelf searches on most aspects of journalism and mass communications. Almost any library of significance has an online guide or other materials on how to best utilize that particular library—and this section is intended to supplement such published material. Although there are many schemes for organizing libraries, this guide covers the two most common systems used in academic and public collections. Indeed, many libraries use both as they decided some years ago to switch from the Dewey to Library of Congress (LC) system, but lacked funds and manpower to totally reclassify existing collections (indeed, this guide had its inception in difficulties arising from use of just such a library). The two systems detailed here are:

DEWEY DECIMAL (Dewey): Compiled by Melvil Dewey as the earliest of “modern” systems of library organization, the system first appeared in 1876 and has gone through more than 20 revised editions since. It consists of 10 classes each covering one large sector of knowledge. Most relevant to this book are 00–99 (general works), 300s (social science), 600s (technology), 700s (the arts), and 900s (history). It is still considered one of the best means of organizing a small-to-medium-sized library because it can expand with the collection, although it lacks the flexibility for a truly large collection. Citations in the Dewey system consist of numbers, often carried to two or three decimal places as human knowledge has expanded and become more complex.

LIBRARY of CONGRESS: As the largest library in the country and one of the biggest in the world, the Library of Congress needed a completely expandable classification scheme and so several people over many decades devised the letter-number scheme now in use. It is a complicated and detailed system, and one constantly under revision. Citations in the LC scheme always begin with one or two letters and then numbers (often up to four digits or more).

Most government documents are filed by a classification scheme established by the issuing agency (state, U.S. government, League of Nations, United Nations) and are ordered by agency rather than subject. Each library handles documents differently; some file them separately, others intermix them in the stacks using the overall library classification scheme. The same holds true for periodicals—some libraries file them all in a single place by title; others arrange them throughout the library by subject. Most libraries maintain reference collections, a cross-section of the full collection filed on a non-circulating basis, and the only copy of a mass communications reference may be there.

This guide is based on the published detailed descriptions of both Dewey and LC (the latter supplements amounting to over 50 volumes) rather than on books in any specific library because each collection takes a certain amount of liberty in using the schemes. Be warned: Misclassification in journalism and mass communications topics is all too common, so be sure to check related categories.