The Split Call Numbers: Classifying a School Library That Has No Shelf List
The library of a government-aided inter college in a district town holds about 6,300 volumes. Every book carries a hand-written number from a scheme devised by a retired teacher: A for Hindi literature, B for science, then a running number, so B/47. Two copies of the same chemistry textbook sit at B/47 and at C/112, because the second copy came as a donation and was given a general number. The card catalogue records only author and title; there is no subject entry and no shelf list. Students preparing for the Class 12 board examination ask the counter for 'the physics book with the numericals' and the attendant simply walks the shelves. Three vocational trade sections have been sanctioned and about 400 new titles will arrive this session. The principal wants a written classification and cataloguing plan. You have one attendant, one computer with 4 GB RAM but no internet, and about ₹5,000 for printed cards and labels.
1. What classification and cataloguing decisions will you take for the 400 incoming titles, and how will you deal with the 6,300 existing volumes? Set out a phased plan with realistic time estimates.
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Decision 1 - one standard scheme for everything new: DDC 22nd edition plus a book number. A scheme must be predictive: the borrower should be able to guess that 500 means science and 800 means literature without asking. DDC's relative index also lets a vocational title on, say, poultry farming be placed without the librarian inventing a letter. Twenty-two is the last edition widely taught in Indian library schools and its printed schedules are cheap and available.
Decision 2 - catalogue at a defined minimum level under AACR-2R: class number, author, title, edition, publisher, year, pages, both accession numbers under one entry (so the split chemistry copies become one record), subject heading, and tracings. The real failure here is not the letter scheme but missing subject access and split copies.
Decision 3 - build the missing shelf list first. Without a shelf list there is no inventory, no way to see gaps, and no safe way to renumber, because nothing records which number each accession carries.
Phased plan.
- Weeks 1-2: shelf list in class-number order on cards or an Excel sheet; reconcile it against the accession register; merge the two chemistry copies under one number with two accession numbers.
- Months 1-3: all 400 new arrivals fully classified; then the highest-demand sections, Class 12 science and Hindi literature, about 400-500 volumes. At 8-10 minutes a volume that is 60-80 staff hours, roughly four weeks at three hours a day.
- Rest of the year: the remainder shelf by shelf.
Total for 6,300 volumes is about 800-1,000 staff hours, that is, close to a year for one person at three hours a day. Put that figure in the written plan, so nobody expects a month's work.
2. A senior teacher objects that renumbering will confuse students mid-session and asks you to leave the old numbers alone. How do you respond, and what practical safeguards do you build in?
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I would not defend the decision abstractly; I would show what a call number does. It is the address of a book. If one copy of a title has two addresses, every enquiry costs a walk, and every mis-shelving hides a book permanently. But the teacher's concern is legitimate, so the plan is adapted rather than abandoned.
Safeguards:
- Mark, do not erase. A self-adhesive label with the new number goes over the old one; the old number stays legible underneath and is never inked out. Nothing irreversible happens.
- No renumbering during the examination weeks. Freeze the retrospective work for the three weeks before and during the board examination, and say so in writing.
- Concordance list at the counter. A simple alphabetical sheet, old number to new number, so a borrower holding a slip with B/47 is still served.
- Catalogue note 'formerly B/47' so the record itself carries the bridge.
- Ask the teacher to name the ten titles his class uses most, reclassify those first, and let him see them found in one minute. A visible small win buys more cooperation than an argument.
Explain the spend: about ₹5,000 covers spine labels, cards and printed shelf guides, so the objection is about disruption, not cost, and the disruption has been capped.
3. The principal proposes to abandon the catalogue altogether and simply arrange books by subject on the shelves, since 'students only want to borrow'. Argue the case, and say what you would do with the ₹5,000 if a full catalogue is not possible.
Read the worked answer
A classified shelf arrangement answers only one question, and only for a borrower who already knows the scheme. A catalogue performs four distinct functions that shelves cannot:
- Find a known item when the borrower knows the author or title but not the subject class.
- Collocate - show all works of an author, or all books on a topic, including those shelved elsewhere because they are oversized, in the reference section, or in a vocational trade section.
- Choose among editions, when the 2009 and 2019 editions of a textbook differ in syllabus coverage.
- Locate a specific copy by accession number, which is exactly what an inspection or stock verification demands.
Removing the catalogue also removes the only instrument of inventory, at a time when two copies of one title already have different numbers.
Compromise, since ₹5,000 will not catalogue 6,300 volumes:
- Keep the classified arrangement but add strong guiding - shelf labels with class numbers and subject names, tier guides, a printed subject-to-number chart at the counter. Most of the 'walk the shelves' problem is a guiding problem, not a catalogue problem.
- Spend the money on an author-cum-title list and a subject index, generated on the offline computer and printed A5 double-sided, covering the 800 highest-circulation titles first.
- Keep an accession register index by title, so every book is at least findable by title even before it has a full record.
This gives the principal a cheaper answer than a full catalogue while refusing the false economy of having no finding tool at all.