Part I: Bobst Orientation
The Building
Reference
Centers
History
Reference
LC Call Numbers
Sample Topic
Part I: Bobst Orientation
LC Call Numbers
Browsing for books can be quite worthwhile, if you know where to begin. Books relating to social history, economic history, religious history or political history are all found in different areas of the library. Therefore, some familiarity with the Library of Congress classification system is helpful. This system, originally devised in 1899, is used in most research libraries to classify books - that is, to assign call numbers, based primarily on the book's intellectual content. This way, books on similar topics are grouped together on the shelves.
Library of Congress call numbers begin with one or two letters, which indicate the book's general content, as seen in the accompanying outline.
As you might guess, historical materials are concentrated in the following areas:
C (Auxiliary Sciences of History)
D (General
and World History)
E (American
and US History)
F (Local
US History and History of the Americas)
The tables above are intended only as a guide to familiarize the researcher with LC classification, and to facilitate browsing. A more complete breakdown of the Library of Congress Classification system is available from the Library of Congress Classification Outline.
Be aware that Library of Congress classification does not succeed entirely in bringing together all related research materials. Different aspects of one subject may be separated; areas such as Women's Studies, which utilize a variety of disciplinary approaches, are particularly subject to this problem. Significant concentrations of historical materials are found in other areas of the LC classification scheme.
history department / bobst history res ources / bobcat / databases