Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)

A classification system used by libraries to arrange books by subject. It has ten main classes, each further subdivided into ten divisions, each having ten divisions of increasing specificity.

The DDC is “arranged by discipline, not subject” so a topic is organized by its disciplinary treatment and not its more obvious topic. A “history of clothing” might be classified under history rather than fashion.

DDC’s ten main classes and the first layer of subdivisions

Class 000 – Computer science, information and general works
- 000 Computer science, knowledge and systems
- 010 Bibliographies
- 020 Library and information sciences
- 030 Encyclopedias and books of facts
- 040 Unassigned
- 050 Magazines, journals and serials
- 060 Associations, organizations and museums
- 070 News media, journalism and publishing
- 080 Quotations
- 090 Manuscripts and rare books
Class 100 – Philosophy and psychology
- 100 Philosophy
- 110 Metaphysics
- 120 Epistemology
- 130 Parapsychology and occultism
- 140 Philosophical schools of thought
- 150 Psychology
- 160 Philosophical logic
- 170 Ethics
- 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
- 190 Modern Western philosophy
Class 200 – Religion
- 200 Religion
- 210 Philosophy and theory of religion
- 220 The Bible
- 230 Christianity
- 240 Christian practice and observance
- 250 Christian orders and local church
- 260 Social and ecclesiastical theology
- 270 History of Christianity
- 280 Christian denominations
- 290 Other religions
Class 300 – Social sciences
- 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
- 310 Statistics
- 320 Political science
- 330 Economics
- 340 Law
- 350 Public administration and military science
- 360 Social problems and social services
- 370 Education
- 380 Commerce, communications and transportation
- 390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
Class 400 – Language
- 400 Language
- 410 Linguistics
- 420 English and Old English languages
- 430 German and related languages
- 440 French and related languages
- 450 Italian, Romanian and related languages
- 460 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician
- 470 Latin and Italic languages
- 480 Classical and modern Greek languages
- 490 Other languages
Class 500 – Science
- 500 Science
- 510 Mathematics
- 520 Astronomy
- 530 Physics
- 540 Chemistry
- 550 Earth sciences and geology
- 560 Fossils and prehistoric life
- 570 Biology
- 580 Plants
- 590 Animals
Class 600 – Technology
- 600 Technology
- 610 Medicine and health
- 620 Engineering
- 630 Agriculture
- 640 Home and family management
- 650 Management and public relations
- 660 Chemical engineering
- 670 Manufacturing
- 680 Manufacture for specific uses
- 690 Construction of buildings
Class 700 – Arts and recreation
- 700 Arts
- 710 Area planning and landscape architecture
- 720 Architecture
- 730 Sculpture, ceramics and metalwork
- 740 Graphic arts and decorative arts
- 750 Painting
- 760 Printmaking and prints
- 770 Photography, computer art, film, video
- 780 Music
- 790 Outline of sports, games and entertainment
Class 800 – Literature
- 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
- 810 American literature in English
- 820 English and Old English literatures
- 830 German and related literatures
- 840 French and related literatures
- 850 Italian, Romanian and related literatures
- 860 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures
- 870 Latin and Italic literatures
- 880 Classical and modern Green literatures
- 890 Other literatures
Class 900 – History and geography
- 900 History
- 910 Geography and travel
- 920 Biography and genealogy
- 930 History of ancient world
- 940 History of Europe
- 950 History of Asia
- 960 History of Africa
- 970 History of North America
- 980 History of South America
- 990 History of other areas
Wikipedia Source

Johnny Decimal

Johnny Decimal is a customizable system for organizing personal files, loosely inspired by the DDC. Unlike DDC, the Johnny Decimal system (or any system created from it) is not strictly for knowledge files. In fact, the first step is to shelf out “an area of our life” such as “life administration,” “home business,” or a specific hobby.

The Process

Shelf = Area. Dedicate “a shelf” to an area of your life. Keep it below ten shelves, and don’t try to use all ten shelves at once.
Box = Category. Allow ten boxes per shelf, which is a way of categorizing the files on that shelf.
Assign a number to each box. Boxes in the first shelf are 10-19, on the second shelf are 20-29, etc.
File your stuff in folders, which have a patterned ID number. The ID number would be box number + an incrementing decimal. A Johnny Decimal number is two digits, decimal, and two more digits. The first two digits are the category number. The last two digits are the ID number.

Example

[Shelf] 10-19. Life administration

[Box] 16. Travel

[Folder] 16.02 Travel insurance

[Files] Travel insurance documents, etc.

Eleanor Konik

00 Meta transcends the “normal” contents of my vault by being more “about” my vault than actual notes.
- 01 Attachments is mostly screenshots I use as reference materials.
- 02 Templates is for files I have strict formats for, like article metadata, my newsletters, and common dataview queries.
- 03 Guidance is for notes to myself and others about how to use Obsidian, mostly, but also has style guides for various publications.
- 04 Datascopes is for handy dataview queries that, for example, pull in all of my questions, or help me sort to-be-processed files by number of links, etc. I used to keep these in my “pending” folder or whatever but I found that I had difficulty finding them again because they weren’t really pending… they were meta ;)
10 Indexes is mostly for lists of things.
- 11 Assemblages is where I keep index groups of people connected by profession or relationship or whatever, like all the pentesters who use Obsidian. Many of these are still aspirational lists, but I make them whenever I decide I want to keep track of particular types of people.
- 12 Tools is mostly my version of annotated bookmarks, where I list out things that are useful for different purposes, like research tools and writing tools.
- 13 Stories is mostly indexes (many powered by the dataview plugin) of different stories, be they all the chapters of a novel or all of the short fiction that might suit a particular anthology I’m working on developing.
- 14 Logs is things like my health log, my gratitude log, etc. I prefer this method to daily notes, although I do date them.
- 15 Tasks is for lists of things I need to do, although I don’t do any complex task management, this is sometimes useful on a per-project basis.
20 Information is where the majority of what most people consider “notes” lives.
- 21 Entities is how I keep track of key information about people and groups.
- 22 Unread is mostly all the PDFs I might read one day, but probably won’t, but like to have on hand so that I can search them when I’m researching since I’ve already vetted them for being high-quality.
- 23 Unaltered is for full-text references like PDFs and markdown files created with Markdownload, which don’t really have any annotations and I probably shouldn’t share.
- 24 Pending is generally for the products of automations and things I need to finish processing, like markdown files generated by Zotero or Readwise, photos/PDFs of handwritten notes, or links I “dumped” into my notes while in a hurry and on the go. Some folders are automatically created by Readwise (which is why no numbering), the rest were just logical.
  - Articles
  - Books
  - iPad (mostly PDFs and images I made using handwriting notetaking apps)
  - PDFs (that I need to read)
  - Tweets
- 25 Bare is very quick claims and sources with a couple of claims associated where I am pretty much just linking to the bare minimum to help me find it again.
- 26 Annotated is the results of my usual process, where I get all the highlights and annotations for a particular source. This is the final resting place for source notes I’ve fully processed using the Konik method for making useful notes.
- 27 Questions is where I keep track of research into different things I’m interested in answering.
- 28 Concepts is mostly a place to connect all the ideas related to a specific concept or region, like animals or Cyrus the Great of Persia. They aren’t claims, they’re just topical collection points. The backlinks for these are usually pretty valuable.
- 29 Claims — if I can be said to have a zettelkasten, this is it. I organize the vast majority of what most people would call notes into the format of “claim / evidence / explanation” which is to say that I title all of the files with a descriptive title that shows what the evidence could be used for, include a quote and a source, and sometimes even explain what it’s related to or why I saved it.
30 Worlbuilding is where I store the notes I need to keep my fiction writing consistent.
- 31 People is for character profiles and has a lot of dataview queries to help me keep track of which stories involve which characters.
- 32 Places is similar but for locations.
- 33 Groups is for in-universe organizations like powerful military groups or cultures.
- 34 Events is where I keep track of major wars, timelines, trade fairs, etc.
- 35 Things is mostly for all the other stuff that doesn’t fit into a clear category. There are animals like the yhaoginli (giant spiders herded for their silk), diseases like bloodspot fever, drugs like euphorigum, etc.
40 Products is where all of the stuff destined for publication lives.
- 41 Primitives is where all my ideas for nonfiction articles live before they get fully developed.
- 42 Primordial is the same but for fiction.
- 43 Complete is where things go when I think they’re done but am blocked from publishing it, for example if I finish a story but don’t have an accompanying Afterword, or finished a nonfiction piece but haven’t written a query yet to submit it somewhere that might publish it.
- 44 Published is where all of my newsletters go once they’re live. They’re organized by date and identifiable by the naming scheme, for example 2022.04.20 Blame (MF) is a microfiction story I published in April 20, and 2022.04.20a Blights are a big deal was the accompanying afterword / analysis piece. 2022.04.25 Bats is a research overview; I can tell by the lack of the “a” and or length designator.
- 45 Proprietary are my copies of articles that are published on other outlets that I probably shouldn’t redistribute.
- 46 Submitted are stories that are currently out on submission with pro-rate magazines, separated out from Complete mostly because they tend to have a bunch of different .docx versions floating around and there’s a lot of clutter.
- 47 Longform are novels I’m working on that I prefer to keep out of the Primordial folder for ease of concatenation.
50 Life is for all the other stuff that’s mostly private and has the lowest proportion of actual markdown files of everything except the obvious attachments folders or places where reference materials live.
- 51 Professional is where my education / teaching / client / etc work lives.
- 52 Family is for my notes about my kid, toy ideas, gift ideas, ancestry stuff, pregnancy reflections, etc.
- 53 Occasions is where I keep my files for conferences and talks and presentations, but also party planning, vacation notes, etc.
- 54 Forms is for tax stuff, legal stuff, basically anything that is for government paperwork or like, “goes on a form.”
- 55 Hobbies is where my notes about video games, sewing, gardening, etc. live
- 56 Programming is all the crap about sql database queries, css, how the Obsidian DOM works, plans for a redirects plugin, etc.
- 57 Days is my archive of daily notes that I don’t want to delete yet.

Eleanor Konik (OLD VERSION)

00 Meta
10 Dated Notes
20 Worldbuilding
30 Characters
40 Interests
- 41 Gardening
- 42 Programming
- 43 Video Games
50 RL Concepts
- 51 Indexes
- 52 Encyclopaedic
- 53 References
  - Books
  - Discussions
  - Journals
  - Videos
  - Websites
- 54 Insights
- 55 Questions
- 56 Synthesis
70 Newsletters
80 Stories
90 Articles
.. 90 Meta
.. 91 Seeds
.. 92 Recurring
.. 93 Published

Zooming in…

40 Slipbox (as in Zettelkasten)
- 41 Indexes
- 42 Encyclopaedic (this is stuff that isn’t “properly atomic” because it’s more “overview” style but still heavily paraphrased and mashed up from various sources)
- 43 References (yeah yeah yeah it’s three layers deep, but you can surely see why)
  - 43.01 Books (literature notes, long but processed, with lots of direct quotations and annotations)
  - 43.02 Journals (literature notes but on journal articles)
  - 43.03 Discussions (honestly these are mostly raw dumps of conversations from Discord that I want to refer back to later)
  - 43.04 Audiovisual (notes on youtube videos and podcasts)
  - 43.05 PDFs (this is where Zotfile puts all of my academic PDFs it downloads from the internet — see this guide 31 for details)
  - 43.06 Zotdumps (this is where Zotfile puts all of my raw annotations, as described in the guide linked above)
- 44 Insights
- 45 Questions
- 46 Synthesis
50 Worldbuilding
- 51 Verraine (notes for my epic fantasy universe — could easily be a wiki by itself)
- 52 GeneE (my science fiction universe)
- 53 Neith (my urban fantasy universe)
60 Characters
- 61 Character Ideas (this is where I keep useful references like “a list of verbal tics I brainstormed” and “different ways to describe a person’s nose)
- 62 Character References
  - b. ATA 100-199 (ATA indicates that these are characters from Verraine who were born during that timeframe. Since I write a lot of flash fiction and characters might appear in multiple stories, it’s easier to keep track of this way).
  - b. ATA 200-299 (“ATA” stands for “After the Archivist” aka after the invention of written records)
  - b. CE 1900-2099 (I can tell at a glance that this is my urban fantasy universe)
  - b. AGA 2250 (AG stands for “After Globalization Achieved”)
70 Newsletters (I write my weekly research roundup newsletter 12 in markdown in Obsidian, they’re organized by date. I separate them from my daily&weekly notes by using a 2021.03.21 format instead of dashes or W03 for example, so my navigation searches stay clean)
80 Stories
- 81 Universes (these are the “master” files for Verraine, which has an overview summary and relies on dataview to pull all stories set in this universe)
- 82 Indexes (these are basically the “table of contents” pages for individual novels)
- 83 Pitch materials (queries, blurbs, elevator pitches, etc)
- 84 Prose
- 85 Snippets (deleted scenes, scribbled ideas, snatches of a scene, etc)
- 86 Publication (information about different markets, resources for self-pub, etc)
- 87 Marketing
90 Articles
- 91 Images
- 92 Seeds
- 93 Recurring (notes for recurring features like my reading roundups 6 or Thesis Thursday 9)
- 94 Published
- 95 Nonfic Markets (mostly indexes that leverage dataview and formatting guides. My “seeds” folder has like eleven billion things in it so I really rely on dataview and these index pages to see what I’ve got going on)

On this page

Explorer

Dewey, Johnny, Konik decimal systems

Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)

DDC’s ten main classes and the first layer of subdivisions

Johnny Decimal

The Process

Eleanor Konik

Tags

Eleanor Konik (OLD VERSION)

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