Dewey, or decimal, and the Cutter, or expansive. They are outlined in
the following chapters. Don't try to devise a system of your own.

Having decided on your system of classification, begin to classify.
This is one of the many things which can only be learned by doing.
Give fiction no class number, but an author number or "book-mark"
only, as explained in a later chapter. Give all biography a single
letter as its class number, and follow this by the author number.

Distinguish all juvenile books, whether fiction or other, by writing
before their numbers some distinguishing symbol.

Take up first, in classification proper, the subjects of history and
travel, which will be found comparatively easy.

It is easier to classify 25 or 50 books at a time in any given class
than it is to classify them singly as you come to them in the midst
of books of other classes. Consequently, group your books roughly into
classes before you begin work on them.

As soon as a book is classified enter it at once in your
shelf-list--explained in a later chapter--and see that an author-card
for it is put in the author catalog--explained later--with its proper
number thereon.

If, after you have made up your mind, from an examination of the
title-page, or table of contents, or a few pages here and there, what
subject a book treats of in the main, you are still in doubt in what
class to place it, consider what kind of readers will be likely to ask
for it, and in what class they will be likely to look for it, and put