Teaching Dewey.

The article presents a library media specialists's suggestions for organizing books and information in the library. The library media specialist realized that he needed a clearer understanding of Dewey Decimal system, a method of classifying and cataloging library materials by subject. Melvil Dewey, teacher and librarian extraordinaire wanted to place all knowledge and subject matter into one of 10 categories given by him. According to the Dewey decimal system, each book is assigned a number based on its subject matter, and as the number of books increased, so did the length of the numbers, requiring the addition of the decimal point and tenths and hundredths. The library media specialist tried to simplify the naming of Dewey's categories for the kid crowd of 2005 as most elementary students have no clue what the terms "social sciences" and "generalities" mean, much less "philology," which was used by Dewey for the 400s. Majority of library media specialists stress on the importance of some type of visual props in teaching Dewey to students. INSET: READER'S Advisory..