I want to find the number for elderly Jewish women. In WebDewey, I can find both elderly women and Jewish women, but not all three concepts combined.

Because there are almost an infinite number of concepts you can represent by building numbers with Dewey notation, not all topics are explicitly listed in WebDewey. To build the number to represent elderly Jewish women, first look at the table of preference in 305 (social groups) to determine the preferred facet in the subject elderly Jewish women. Age groups (i.e., elderly) have preference over groups by sex (i.e., women). The table of preference also shows that age groups have preference over religious groups and ethnic and national groups (both which have notation for Jews).

Now that you've determined the preference order, you start with the number 305.26 for persons in late adulthood (i.e., Dewey's term for elderly people). Within this hierarchy, older women are at 305.262 and older Jewish persons are at 305.26088 or 305.26089 (depending on whether they are treated as a religious group or an ethnic group). Because of the "Rule of Zero" (given in paragraph 5.7 (E) of the Introduction), you prefer 305.262 for elderly women. (The Rule of Zero says, in part: "subdivisions beginning with zero should be avoided if there is a choice between 0 and 1 - 9 at the same point in the hierarchy of the notation.")

Now, to the number 305.262 you can add notation from Table 1. To do this, you will want to determine whether to use --088296 for Jews as a religious group or --089924 for Jews as an ethnic group. (To build this notation, you add 296 for Judaism to base notation T1--088, or to base notation T1--089, add --924 from T5 for Hebrews, Israelis, Jews. [To find these numbers in WebDewey, you could search: t1* OR t5* in the Dewey Numbers index AND *jew* in the All Dewey index].) Unless the work emphasizes treatment of Jews as a religious group, use --089924 for Jews as an ethnic group.

So the number for elderly Jewish women is 305.262089924.

Submitted by: Thanks to Jeff Grave at Pratt College for submitting this question.
Last revised: 13 September 2005