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The U.S. Naval Academy Nimitz Library

HH200 / HH300 - Historian's Craft / Research in History

Two of the required History Major seminars. HH300 builds on the skills introduced in HH200.

Library of Congress (LC) Classification

Using Library of Congress Call Numbers

Although it was developed to organize materials housed at the Library of Congress, the Library of Congress Classification system (LCC) is widely used in academic libraries around the world. The LCC system begins with 21 categories, each identified by a letter of the alphabet. 

Most of the categories include subcatagories that are identified by 1 or 2 more letters. For example D contains World History and Histories of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.; DS is Asia, a sub-topic in World History. 

Individual topics are delineated by place, time period, etc. using numbers. For example, at DS801-897 you'll find books on Japan.  A call number may have up to 4 digits (1-9999) in the main part, and then if necessary, decimal places that may have only numbers or both a letter and numbers.

Below are the major classes or categories found in LCC:

Example: Searching for Panama

Panama books