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What are the digits on the legal page of most books for?
I noticed, when I opened a book, down the bottom of the page with edition information etc there was written:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I looked in a book from a different publisher, same thing. Another had a 0 instead of ten. Another didn't have any. The next one I found was:
9 11 13 15 14 12 10 8
and the next was
1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04
What are these for?
3 Answers
- TonyLv 51 decade agoFavorite Answer
That's called a printer's key or number line and is used to define the printing history of the book. Numbers are removed as new print runs are established. If the number 1 appears, that should normally be a first printing of that edition. If the lowest number is a 4, for example, that is the fourth printing. The "04" in your example should refer to the year 2004, although this scheme can vary between publishers. And the sequence really has nothing to do with the Library of Congress classification system, which is based on alphanumeric sequencing.
- STEVE CLv 41 decade ago
I'm pretty sure these are the numbers used for filing books in the Library of Congress
