Arrangement of Documents in Libraries:
Until the end of the 19th century library collections were small in size. Not as many subject fields had developed as one notice now, and publishing was not as wide spread. The readership was not as large as we notice in the present times. Libraries of yesteryear attempted to arrange their collections on the basis of fixed locations. This method was employed to allocate each and every document a particular and permanent place on a particular shelf of the library. Each new document, irrespective of its thought content, was assigned to the place immediately next to the one previously added to the collection.
The fixed location failed to bring together documents embodying the same subject. Fixed location implied chronological order of accession under broad subject categories.
In some of the older libraries, attempts where made to arrange the collection on the basis of extrinsic characteristics such as colour, size, year of publication and type of binding of documents. All these arrangements or sequences are not as helpful as, the subject arrangement.