News and Events

With about 1 million books in the Stacks of central Pattee Library, most people never noticed approximately 44,000 books in the corner of the second floor with Dewey Decimal Classification numbers. These older volumes were not converted to the more contemporary Library of Congress Classification, LC, when the rest of the collection (and those of most American libraries) was converted from Dewey to "LC" in the 1960s and 1970s.  

Recent statistics indicate that about eight percent of the Dewey classified books in Pattee are still actively used, and these have been converted to the LC shelf numbers. The others have been moved to the Libraries new annex facility, where in most instance, they can be retrieved within three days.

Marking the first step to a simplification of the arrangement of books in the Pattee Library Stacks, this move will make room for the thousands of new books that are added each year to the Libraries collection. For additional information, contact Daniel C. Mack, head of the Arts and Humanities Library, at dmack@psu.edu

editor’s contact: Catherine Grigor, manager  of Public Relations and Marketing, University Libraries, cqg3@psu.edu, 814-863-4240.