Dewey & LC are grand on a nationwide  basis, where a person can find the
same category under the same number all over the country.  But for a museum
such as yours, where all books are on different aspects of the same
subject, and you have maybe 100 or 500 books, I'd go for ease of use.

By that I mean: initially separate the books into subjects, i.e. - History
starts with 001, Research starts with 101, Digging Techniques starts with
201, Identifying starts with 301, Cleaning & Conservation starts with 401,
and so on.

Different editions or books in a series could have an a, b, c, etc. added
after the number.

Once this is done you can cross-reference your computer listings in several
different ways, and change or update whenever you want.

-Jim Lyons, volunteer
Museum of American History, Palo Alto, Calif.
Palo Alto Historical Association
Los Alto Museum
Moffett Field Museum


On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 3:41 PM, Jerrie Clarke <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> We're a small archaeology museum with a nice small reference library.  The
> books in the library have never been cataloged fully and never put in the
> museum's database.  The curator and I are discussing using a library
> catalog number as well as an object id number to specify the topic and help
> us organize them on the shelves.  Her last museum used Library of Congress
> and mine used Dewey Decimal in order to be part of the town's library
> consortium.
>
> Library of Congress is very complicated and most of the books at my last
> museum seem to begin with the same Dewey Decimal number.  I'm wondering if
> other small museums use one of these systems or just give the books a
> object id number; or do something entirely different. Any recommendations?
>
> Jerrie Clarke
> Director
> Lost City Museum
> PO Box 2507
> Overton, NV 89040
> (702) 397-2193
>
> http://museums.nevadaculture.org
>
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