Theological librarians in the early 1900s were faced with few options when it came to the classification of
theological books. The Dewey Decimal Classification System was fairly new and untested for theological
collections. The Cutter system was also new, and the Library of Congress system was in its earliest stages
of development. Location classification was still in practice in many libraries, and many of those who had a
classification system were using homegrown systems developed for their own purposes. Beginning in 1908,
however, this would all change through the work of Julia Pettee