‘They used the call number to lead you to the Bergson Book,’ she said sheepishly as she led them through a side area strewn with squishy beanbag chairs, then through a set of doors leading into a section of the library where the kid-friendly shapes and colors gave way to taller shelves piled with thicker books. ‘I wouldn’t have realized it was an option. The Bergson book’s call number only had seven digits. We still have ten numbers leftover, so the thought would’ve never crossed my mind,’ Jenna said. Hattie dragged a step stool from the end of one aisle down the second row they came to, gingerly climbed the rungs, and stretched as tall as she could make herself. ‘Well, call numbers don’t have a standardized length. They all start with the same sort of thing … the Dewey system has ten main broad categories, so the broad category would account for the first three call number digits. But after that, every category is broken down into sub-categories over and over in order to shelve the book as specifically as possible.
