Foreword by the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee -- Acknowledgments -- New features in Abridged Edition 15 -- Introduction to the Dewey Decimal Classification: About the Introduction -- Classification: What it is and what it does -- History, current use, and development of the Dewey Decimal Classification -- Overview of the Dewey Decimal Classification: Conceptual framework -- Notation -- Principle of Hierarchy -- Classifying with the DDC: Determining the subject of a work -- Determining the discipline of a work -- More than one subject in the same discipline -- More than one discipline -- Table of last resort -- How Abridged Edition 15 is arranged -- Key features of the Schedules and Tables: Summaries -- Entries -- Notes -- Number building -- Citation and preference order: Citation order -- Preference order -- Manual: Arrangement and format of the manual -- Relative Index: Arrangement and format of the Relative Index -- Interdisciplinary numbers -- Terms included in the Relative Index -- Terms not included in the Relative Index -- Options -- Close and broad classification -- More information -- Glossary -- Index to the Introduction and Glossary -- Manual: Notes on Table Numbers -- Notes on Schedule Numbers -- Relocations and Discontinuations: Relocations -- Discontinuations -- Reused numbers -- Tables: Standard Subdivisions -- Geographic areas, and biography -- Subdivisions for individual literatures, for specific literary forms -- Subdivisions of individual languages and language families -- Summaries -- Schedules: 000 Computer science, information, general works -- 100 Philosophy, parapsychology and occultism, psychology -- 200 Religion -- 300 Social sciences -- 400 Language -- 500 Natural sciences and mathematics -- 600 Technology (Applied Sciences) -- 700 The arts -- 800 Literature (Belles-lettres) and rhetoric -- 900 History, geography, and auxiliary disciplines -- Relative Index: Abbreviations used in the index -- A-Z.