SuDocs Basics
The
SuDocs (Superintendent of Documents) system is almost straightforward.
"A" call numbers (such as A 17.1: ) are publications of the Department
of Agriculture, "C" is Commerce, "D" is Defense, and so on. It's
called a provenance system--the letter indicates the first letter
of the agency which issues it. With
some exceptions:
This tutorial is designed to train you to find, shelve or file items that are in SuDocs call number order. If you want to know more about the intricacies of the system try these pages:
1. It is NOT a decimal system! In the SuDoc system the number after the period is a whole number. In the example below, notice how the same 5 books would be sorted differently as a decimal than they would as a SuDoc number.
2. Remember: Letters, Numbers, Years!!
3. If the call number varies after the colon, it gets tricky. If it varies right after the colon, then it's Letters, Numbers, Years. This is the primary order.
Until
the year 2000, the first number was dropped from years, so those years
have 3 digits. Beginning with the year 2000, years will be 4 digits.
Within
those primary Letters/Numbers/Years categories, however, the secondary
order (at least in this library) is Letters, Years, Numbers
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But
you knew it wasn't going to be that easy, didn't you :-)
