If books were kept in heap within the library, getting the desired title in the right time would be next to impossible. Going through the heap looking for the title that you want is very hectic as many books have similar cover color and size.
This problem led one of the pioneers to come up with an organized way of sorting out books in a library. A librarian by the name Melville Dewey designed the first order of books in the late 1800, and was a pioneer in door glass replacement. The system of recording books in the library was named after him and called the Dewey Decimal System. The system has been in application in most of the public and private schools. It has a world acceptance as it’s easy to apply and understood by most of the library users globally.
At the beginning before the era of advanced technology came, catalogs were used to represent a book on the shelf of a library. As the books are titled according to their subject, the catalog has a call number which tally with the number on the spine of the book. The call number has three parts and is the address of the book on the shelf. The first part is a letter giving the subject of the book. It’s followed by a number which gives the section of the library where the book is located. The third part of the call number gives the exact position on that section and the title of the book, such as ski Japan.
Therefore to locate a book in the library, one need to understand the call numbers that is available on the catalog and their importance. Through the system that was established by the pioneer Melville, the optimum use of the library is achieved.
Advantage of having an organized system in a library of locating books in that it is maintained neat and one user after the other can get books easily. Through the use of catalogs, a library user can be able to know when a book is on the shelf or not. This reduces on the time wasted on looking for a book that is not available. The catalog also shows the number of books that are available in the library.
One of the most important use of the organized method of books storage in a library is the tracing the foot steps of a book. This is done both inside and outside the library. The acts of losing books is greatly reduced and avoided. The users have a reduced tendency of stealing books.
Due to the speed at which technological advancement is taking place, the catalogs in the libraries are now stored electronically on a computer or Cavoodle. The search engines that are used give nearly all the details of the book. This ranges from the title, writer, the related topics and some phrases that are in the book for easy access. One only needs to know one name of the writer or the phrases or key words of the title and you are able to locate the book in question.
