Sunday, August 7, 2011

Chinese Postal Card Used As Catalog Card



When the Communists came to power in China after World War II they repurposed some things used by the previous government including this pre-stamped postal card which became a library catalog card. The unknown library which used the catalog card classified its books using the Dewey Decimal System. The 508.1 classification is used for natural history. An interesting piece of postal librariana for my collection.

3 comments:

pussreboots said...

Fascinating piece of history.

吳宇凡 said...

Dear NIX, in Dewey decimal system the 508.1 classification is used for natural history, but libraries of China had modified the system in 1929 by Kuo-chun Liu(劉國鈞), so the 508.1 classification is not used for "natural history" at this catalog card, it is "social sciences book series".

Larry T. Nix said...

Thanks for the information on the modified Dewey classification number for this item.