We use the Library of Congress cataloging system at Towson University. Call numbers in this system have five parts, increasing in specificity from left to right. The class is the large subject category. In the example given below, "G" refers to the class "Geography." Next comes the sub-class; in this case subclass "GB" is all about physical geography. The topic number GB 2403 lets us know this book will be about Ice of some kind. The cutter number includes the first letter of the last name of the author and a specific number assigned to this book. We know that our book was written by someone with a last name starting with B.
The graphics below give the class, sub-class, and topic numbers for music scores in the LC system. Thank you to Bowling Green State University librarians for making these graphics and making them publicly available.
