The library catalog is a great place to find physical items, eBooks, book chapters and other items in the Grinnell Collection. It can also find articles, but the library databases are better for that.
Many Academic Libraries like Grinnell use the Library of Congress Classification system for organizing our collections. Keep in mind that each library slightly adapts the system to fit the needs of their library, so the call number for a book at Grinnell may be slightly different from the call number for the same book at the University of Iowa.
Example:
Python for data analysis by Wes McKinney has the call number of QA76.73.P98 M42 2013
Books are assigned a call number based on their subject classification. The first letter in the call number is the broadest subject classification, and the second letter further refines the subject classification into a Subclass. For example, a book on computer science will have the first letter "Q" for Science, and the second letter "A" for Mathematics/Computer Science.
This number further classifies the resource into a specific topic within the subject. For example, the book on Python has the same first two letters as THIS Book, but the numbers following the letters are different.
Python for data analysis by Wes McKinney has the call number of QA76.73.P98 M42 2013
Statistical intervals : a guide for practitioners and researchers.by Hahn and Escobar has the call number of QA276 .H22 2017
The number after the decimal further divides the topic field for even more defined subject classification if necessary. In general, the fewer digits the topic number includes, the more broad the item's coverage is.
Python for data analysis by Wes McKinney has the call number of QA76.73.P98 M42 2013
Introduction to data processing by Gary S. Popkin has the call number of QA76 .P6522
This number is a cutter of the author's name. The first letter is the first letter of the author's last name and the remaining numbers are created using the cutter system. To learn more about the cutter system, visit the Library of Congress's "Using the Cutter Table"
The title number is another cutter, this time made from the first word of the title (excluding articles like "the" or "a"). To learn more about the cutter system, visit the Library of Congress's "Using the Cutter Table"
The last number is the year the item was published. New versions or editions items, will have the exact same call number as their older version except for the publication date.
The 1996 edition of C programming : a modern approach by K.N. King has a call number of QA76.73.C15 K49 1996
The 2008 edition is QA76.73.C15 K49 2008