Friday, February 13, 2009

Navajo

Inspired by the ECVHS book A Rainbow at Night: The World in Words and Pictures by Navajo Children by Bruce Hucko (0811812944). The publisher assigned number is 973'.04972, but this number seems to be mostly unused in our district.

Instead, Native American books seem to have been given some of the following numbers:
  • A general 970 number for "History of North America." This seems much too broad to me.
  • 970.004 for "Ethnic and national groups" in general in North America. This still seems a little broad to me.
  • 970.00497 for "general history and civilization of North American native peoples in North America." This number has the specificity of native peoples and would be be good for Native Americans in general, but doesn't seem to be right if you want to distinguish specific groups. Plus, it violates the "no more than 4 digits right of the decimal" rule that some schools use.
  • 970.1, which is an optional number for "North American native peoples"
  • 970.3, which is an optional number for "Specific native peoples"

They are all slight variations and the DDC guide seems to draw distinctions in number usage based on how specific books are with regard to particular group, time period, and location. So, for now I guess I'll go with what seems to be most commonly used in our district: 970.3.

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