Cheese Is a Type of Animal

630s – Farms and Agriculture
631s – Soil
632s – Bugs and Pests
633s – Veggies
634s – Fruit
635s – Flower Gardens
636.1s – Horses
636.6s – Birds
636.7s – Dogs
636.8s – Cats
637.3s – Cheese
638s – Bees
639s – Fish & Aquariums, followed Reptiles and Amphibians
639.9s – Birds, again

Somewhere along the line most everyone learns about the Dewey Decimal System, usually in school libraries. Librarians get an introduction to the details of the system as a class along the way, but only cataloguers really get to know all the intricacies. They’re the ones who memorize numbers and can really explain the correlations between the various subjects and their locations, but when you work with the system every day things start to stick in your memory anyway. But what you pick up is based on the context and collection of your particular library and position. I can tell you a lot more about the numbers associated with area school assignments than the true crime for adults, for instance.

So the list above is not based on the actual Dewey books, but a perusal of the shelves where I work. A bit about the big breakdown: the 500s are “Pure Sciences” and 600s are “Applied Sciences.” The 580s have botany in the wild and 590s zoology in the wild, which correlate with the 630-35s—domesticated plants—and 636-39s—domesticated animals. But looking at the shelves was interesting; our suburban location is reflected in our collection. We have a ton about flower gardening and pet dogs, but the rest was pretty sketchy. I’m guessing there’s more to the 631s and 32s, for instance, but I only had a couple of books to go by for each. And I would guess the 637s are for cows and goats and other milk producers, but the only 637s on the shelf today were about cheese. So knowing enough about the system to be dangerous but not enough to really know, the only conclusion I can draw is that cheese is a type of animal.