When Peter Baader published his excellent book
“Standortbezeichnung in Bibliotheken” (Location Designation in
Libraries) in 1957 he had an abundance of literature in both AngloAmerican
and European practice to draw upon. But the content of
his book and the way he addressed the issue of book labels;
discussing mechanical ordering, choice of symbols (decimal,
fractions, letters, numbers), and the way he paid equal attention to
call numbers in the formal and systematic arrangement of books,
is very typical of the European library practice. The reason for this
is that the three-part library systems with closed library stacks
remained dominant in the majority of European countries until the
second part of the 20th century. In Anglo-American libraries call
numbering methods have been discussed mainly in relation to the
systematic arrangement and open access to shelves.