With all of that information I made an A+ on my report!

"Drop Back Theory"

(Specific to General)

Click here to return to Dewey's home.

Now that you understand Dewey numbers can go from

General to Specific, I am going to teach how they can also go from Specific to General.

This is known as the "Drop Back Theory".

I live in Jonesboro, Arkansas, which is in Craighead County, and I needed to do a report on the history of my county.

The first thing I did was go to the card catalog to see what section I should look under and it said 976.798 because that is the number of my county. 

Recalling back to the lesson my Librarian taught me about the Dropback Theory, I dropped back a number to 976.79 to find information about Northeast Counties of Arkansas.  I didn't find anything there so I dropped back a number to 976.7 to Arkansas.

Then, I dropped back to 976, which is South Central U.S.  As I continued dropping back, I came to 970 which is General History of North America.  In the 900s, I found General History.  After I wrote down all of that information I dropped back one last time to the 000's which is Encyclopedias.

When I went to the shelf, I found some books on Craighead County to do a pretty good report, but I felt I needed more information.

North America

Home

The 500s and 600s

500 - 600 Chart

General-to-Specific

Drop-Back

Theory

Let's "Dew"

It!