Locating Books with LC call numbers

Now that you have an idea of how the LC call number system works, we're going to look at how the books are shelved.

Order on the Shelf

Books will be found in order; first alphabetically, then numerically. The examples below are in the correct order. So, HD will come before HF which in turn comes before HV. The books will then be placed in order by the numbers following the Class identifiers. Remember that they go in counting number order.

If there is a decimal in the "first line" treat it as you would a decimal in math. In the example above, using the HF5387 example, .21 comes BEFORE .3 because as a decimal, .21 is smaller than .30.