Re: [Refdb-users] call numbers

[Matt P. <mat...@ut...>]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 09:55:57PM -0500, Bruce D'Arcus wrote: 
>  
> On Feb 5, 2004, at 4:02 PM, rob caSSon wrote: 
>  
> >newer books are more likely to have been cataloged by the library
of 
> >congress, and you have a pretty good chance that call numbers will
be 
> >consistent across libraries... 
>  
> "Newer" as in the stuff published in the past 100 years?  50 years?
20? 
>  
so, for instance, (don't have a cite on this at the moment) books
about 15 years old 
often have as many as 4 separate call numbers in the University of 
Toronto Library system alone. (One branch still uses the Dewey system;

in the other cases the last couple of digits often ary from branch to 
branch, and in addition the library adds a final tag to the end of the

call number indicating the branch.)  Many libraries (e.g., the
Staatsbibliotehk in 
Berlin, the Cambridge Univeristy Library, and the Bibliotheque 
Nationale, if I remember correctly, though it's been a while since I 
used them) don't use the LC system at all.   
 
So it can be a fairly complicated problem.   
 
matt