Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Just About Arranging Books :)

When one hears the word 'library', it will conjure a place saturated with books and shelves as far as the eye can see, all zealously guarded with an old hag of a librarian. As with any respectable library, our Library has all these, minus that crazy hag. Always, users would browse for a book, take it out and read it (obviously). Then, the book is simply left for the Librarians to put back on the shelves. This is especially true, after classes leave when their NILAM slot is up, and there are like a tonne of books left to be arranged by the Librarians.

Anyways, have you ever wondered how that seemingly-impossible tonne of books just disappear every time you come into the Library the next day? The answer is simple, and obvious: the Librarians just put those book back where they belong (yes, even though the pile's a size of a whale!). Though quite labour-intensive, and exhausting, there's nothing that could work better than the usual chipping-in and having the spirit of our motto: Towards Success We Work Together !

Even with that enthusiasm, the Library couldn't be as systematic as it is now without one very important thing: a system. With that, we Librarians turn to the basic of any library: the Dewey Decimal System.

In this system, books are categorised in different groups with different numbers according to their subject matter, as with the following:


  • 000 – Computer science, information & general works
  • 100 – Philosophy and psychology
  • 200 – Religion
  • 300 – Social sciences
  • 400 – Language
  • 500 – Science
  • 600 – Technology
  • 700 – Arts & recreation
  • 800 – Literature
  • 900 – History & geography


  • Also, appended to this system is our own additions, created to increase the convenience of browsers to access the following materials:


  • FI – English fiction
  • FM – Malay fiction
  • FC – Mandarin fiction
  • FT – Tamil fiction
  • PMR – References for the PMR examination (also Lower Secondary References)
  • SPM – References for the SPM examination (also Upper Secondary References)


  • With such an awesome system, arranging books is made easy, and the herculean task could be finished within minutes (assuming that a crew of Librarians are working on the same thing at the same time.

    Besides books, other things are categorised and classified in the Library as well. These things are what are termed as 'non-book materials'. They are:

    • C – Chart
    • CD – Compact disc 
    • CDR – CD-ROM 
    • G – Picture 
    • I – Scanning cards 
    • GL – Globe 
    • P – Map 
    • PA – Audio tape 
    • M – Model 
    • PM – Game 
    • K – Kit 
    • MK – Multimedia kit


    Hence, I hope you will find this post informative, entertaining, and effective at killing boredom. Stay tuned for more.

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