Page 102 - Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians, 2nd Edition

88 Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians
dex terms, and Boolean com binations. It even of fers au tomatic cuttering,
which saves the cataloger one step in the cat aloging pro cess.
Between edi tions, the Dewey Clas sification sys tem is kept up to date
by an an nual pub lication from the For est Press ti tled Dewey Dec i mal
Clas si fi ca tion: Ad di tions, Notes and De ci sions, or DC& for short. The
most cur rent new and changed entries are posted on the first day of each
month on World Wide Web site <oclc.org/oclc/fp/ddc/newnchng.htm>.
Forest Press’s home page, <oclc.org/oclc/fp>, also of fers news and en -
hancements re lated to the Dewey schedules.

BOOK NUMBER FOR THE DDC

The clas sification num ber alone is not suf ficient to make a unique
identification of each item in the li brary. In cat aloging, an ex tra step
is taken to as sign a book num ber, also re ferred to as the au thor num -
ber, or the Cut ter num ber. The com bination of the classification num -
ber and the book num ber gives ev ery item in the li brary a unique
notation that places the item in a spe cific lo cation. Fre quently, the no -
tation in cludes pre fixes, which are placed above the clas sification
numbers. The most com mon ones are Ref or Ref er ence for ref er ence
ma te ri als, J or Juv for ju ve nile ma te ri als, E or Easy for easy-read ing
collections, etc. This com bined no tation is called the call num ber,
which is what we see on the spine la bels of li brary ma terials.
The book num ber starts with a dec imal point fol lowed by a let ter,
which is the first let ter of the au thor’s last name. If there is no author,
the first let ter of the ti tle is of ten used. Following the let ter is a numer-
ical value that rep resents the al phabetical or der of the au thor’s last
name. Be cause many items may bear the same Dewey clas sification
number, the book num ber al lows items on the same sub ject to be
shelved al pha bet i cally by au thor’s last name.
The three ver sions of the ref erence tool for as signing the book num ber
are C. A. Cut ter’s Three-Fig ure Au thor Ta ble, Cut ter-Sanborn Three-
Fig ure Au thor Ta ble, and a sim ple Cut ter’s Two-Fig ure Au thor Ta ble.
Because of the growth in library col lections, which cre ated a need for an
extended Cut ter num ber, in 1996, OCLC pub lished the Four-Fig ure Cut-
ter Ta bles, based on the ex isting three-fig ure schemes. See Fig ure 6.4 for a
sam ple page re pro duced from C. A. Cut ter’s Three-Fig ure Au thor Ta -