or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


The Right Way To Organize Books

   July 12th, 2007 Brian Herzog

cover of Sewer, Gas and ElectricI finished Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas and Electric last night, and found one more good library-related quote. This one pretty much speaks for itself; especially with libraries trying alternatives.

"The call number was the hard part," Kite said. "The call number we got from the video tape was in Dewey Decimal classification code; this library uses the Library of Congress code."

"What did you have to do, translate it?"...

"It's not that simple," Kite said. "You know I never appreciated it before this afternoon, but library filing systems are remarkably arbitrary."

"There's no one right way to organize books, huh?"

Indeed.

classification, classification system, classification systems, ddc, dewey, dewey decimal, electric, gas, libraries, library, library of congress, loc, matt ruff, sewer, sewer gas and electric



Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



Shelving By Dewey Guidelines

   June 28th, 2007 Brian Herzog

Melvil DeweyThis is about as far from Library 2.0 as you can get (and perhaps short-lived), but I created a quickie guide for putting books on the shelf according to the Dewey Decimal System.

My library has gotten a few new pages (people who put returned books back on the shelves) and shelf-readers (people who straighten the shelves and make sure the books are actually in order) recently, and when I started training them, found that we had no documentation on the Dewey Decimal System. We had a Dewey test they needed to pass before they were allowed to work, but nothing with which they could prepare for the test.

So I made up the handout below, as a quick overview/introduction to Dewey, and also a reference guide for them to keep with them in the stacks until they get the hang of it. It's designed for double-sided printing, and some of our shelvers even laminated it.

This handout is tailored for the Chelmsford Library, but feel free to modify the Word version to work best for your library. If you have any questions (or notice any mistakes), please let me know.



Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,