Call Numbers throughout History
The historical roots of book labelling and call numbering
systems can be found in archaeological artefacts of the highly
organized and professionally managed libraries of Mesopotamia
dating back to the third millennium before the Common Era.
Bushnell, for instance, writes about instructions from what is
supposed to be the preserved remnants of a catalogue of the library
in ancient Agadé1: “...the would-be borrower is told to write down
on a piece of the papyrus provided for the purpose, his name and
particulars of the work he would consult, when the librarian will
take down the tablet and hand it to him”. Each of these tablets “had
its special number and place and the whole was classified in a
manner which puts some of our modern libraries to shame”
(Bushnell, 1931, p. 25-26). Excavation of the ancient libraries, such
as the one in Nineveh, discovered hundreds of thousands of clay
tablets filed in the same order they were on the wooden shelves
before these were burned down. The tablets were systematically
organized and it is obvious that in order to maintain and manage
this arrangement some system of labelling had to be in place.
Bushnell also writes about a library from the ancient city of Larsa
(now Senkereh): “Mr. Loftus brought from Senkereh a number of
triangular contract tablets with holes and the angles. It is assumed
that cords were passed through these holes in order to secure pieces
of papyrus on the tablets. In some libraries this method was adopted
to attach labels showing the class-mark, the book number, etc. of
the tablet in the collection to which it belonged.” (Bushnell, 1931,
p. 28). When writing of a classification system comprising 120
classes, which was used by Callimachus for the arrangement of his
catalogue, known as Pinakes, Norris (1939) comments that it is
most likely that the same classification system was used in the
physical arrangement of the Alexandrian library collection.