RESOURCE CENTRE MANUAL
HEALTHLINK WORLDWIDE
5.1.2 How to classify materials
To classify materials, ask yourself:
1. Is the material about a particular subject or subjects (for example, is it a book
about health education or a video about counselling?) or is it more general
(for example, is it a directory or atlas?) Find out by looking at the following:
• for books and other print materials: the title page, list of contents and
introduction, preface or foreword
• for audiovisual materials: the title, description and any accompanying
materials, and by watching a video, listening to an audio cassette, or
looking at slides.
2. If the material is about a subject, does it deal with one subject or several
subjects?
3. If the material deals with one subject, use that subject to classify it. Find the
subject in the classification scheme and assign the corresponding classification
number to the material.
4. If the material deals with several subjects, can all these subjects be regarded as
part of one broad subject? If so, use the broad subject to classify the material.
5. If the material deals with several subjects that are not part of one broader
subject, use the subject that is either most thoroughly covered by the material,
or of main interest to users of the resource centre, to classify the material.
6. Check that you are classifying materials on similar subjects consistently, by
looking at several materials to which you have assigned the same
classification number. You can do this by going to the shelves and looking at
the materials that are already there.
7. If the material is for general reference (such as a dictionary or atlas), you do
not need to classify it. Place it in a section of the resource centre for general
reference materials.
8. If you have a lot of materials with the same classification number, you can
distinguish them by putting the first three letters of the author’s name after the
classification number. If there is no author, use the first three letters of the
title. For audiovisual materials, use the producer’s name.
If the resource centre collection expands into new subject areas (for example,
emerging diseases such as hypertension), you may need to add new subjects to your
classification scheme. Most classification schemes are designed to make it easy to
add new subjects when necessary. Details of how to extend the classification
scheme are included in Section 5.2.2.
SECTION 5: ORGANISING THE INFORMATION
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