If you’re a Princeton Public Library user who frequents the shelves, you’ve probably had a brush or two with our biography collections. Until recently, the various adult biography books, audiobooks and DVDs were organized using an admittedly antiquated system of “cutter numbers,” developed by Charles Ammi Cutter in the late 1800s. Well folks, change is finally here!
Under the old system, biographies were labeled with the prefix “B,” the first letter of the subject’s last name, and finally a string of numbers unique to each individual. For example, the call number for Maeve Binchy biographies would be “B B6128.” Not exactly the first thing that comes to mind, is it? Thankfully, the interests of findability won out and we saw fit to make a change.
Several months ago, the decision was made to update our biography collections to a system that is more intuitive and easier to browse. Now you can find biographies organized under prefix “B” followed by the first three letters of the subject’s last name. Maeve Binchy bios are now assigned call number “B BIN.” So, as long as you know the name of the person you are looking for, it is easy to navigate the biographies without relying on the catalog. Much easier, right?
We look forward to seeing you at PPL and encourage you to take a spin through the freshly relabeled biographies.