Wings and shelving
How to turn a call number into a direction to walk in.
Which wing a book is in
The library shelves by Library of Congress classification, and the first letter of a call number is all you need to know which way to go.
| First letter | Wing | Subjects, broadly |
|---|---|---|
| A to J | South | General works, philosophy, religion, history, geography, social sciences |
| K to Z | North | Law, education, music, fine arts, language, science, medicine, agriculture, technology |
So QA76.76 .M37 begins with Q, which is in the North wing. Every title in the catalogue shows its wing for this reason, worked out from the call number rather than recorded separately, so the two can never disagree.
Two numbers that are easy to confuse
The call number is where a title sits on the shelf. Every copy of that title shares it, and it is what you read off the spine while walking the stacks.
The accession number belongs to one physical volume and to no other in the building. Five copies of a book carry five accession numbers and one call number. It is what the desk uses to tell your copy from an identical one.