Dewey Dewey...

I feel like I have been spending a lot of time on the DDC. I think I understand most of the information in the course notes for week 6, but I am still having a tough time grasping the process of number building because I have never actually seen an edition of the Dewey book or "schedules" or whatever it is that a librarian looks at to give him or her these numbers. I understand the overall idea that you need to create numbers because you have to figure out where the patrons of your own library are most likely to look for things, but in this day and age, aren't computer library search systems set up on a Boolean type idea anyway?

At this point, (never having actually looked at the "book") I am also wondering, how often do these issues (the need to create specific, 5 or 6 digit DDC codes) arise in a high school library? Our library just doesn't have that many books. How complicated does the DDC have to be? Next week I am going to our librarian to ask if she has a copy of the Dewey book. I doubt she will, because all cataloguing is done at the district office. Maybe I will go wandering over there, because it will hopefully help me wrap my head around this whole process, and get a clearer mental picture of where this course fits with the reality of working in a high school library.