St. James Press, c1988. The Library of Congress is the national library of the United States. Call Number Two very tangible results of the work of the Library of Congress are the Subject Headings and the Classification Schedules which enable libraries around the world to organize, manage, and locate resources within the smallest or the largest collections. The Classification Schedule uses a combination of letters and numbers to create book categories. These categories arrange similar subjects together on the shelf.
All classification systems are simply devices to help users locate specific works.
The call number is the same for the same book in any library which uses LC Classification and applies regardless of whether the book is placed in circulation, reference, oversize, or elsewhere. The following items are arranged in call number order. Take particular notice of the third line which contains a combination of letters and numbers. The numbers on this and succeeding lines should be interpreted digit by digit and NOT as whole numbers. In other words, R43 is read as R four three and NOT as R forty three.