Book-Related Interestingness

Apropos of nothing, here are some interesting things to look at:

Optical Illusion Bookshelf
As if Dewey isn't mystifying enough. Spotted at There I Fixed It, and more photos at Neatorama:

"Become Someone Else" Bookstore Ad Campaign
This series of posters were developed to promote a used bookstore in Lithuania:

Bibliochaise Book Shelf Chair
I think this bookshelf chair looks great, but I'm not sure how comfortable it would be:

Thanks Chris - keep them coming.

Posted under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Bookshelf FAIL

This just makes me laugh...

Posted under Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Ahmadinejad Classification System

I recently noticed in our Reference collection one of the quirks of the Dewey Decimal System that people often refer to as "serendipitous" - but look at the picture below to see if you also see a problem:

The books that caught my eye are these (biggify the photo to see the Dewey numbers):

• Ref/809.927/Prin - Imaginary people: a who's who of modern fictional characters
• Ref/809.933/Ency/2002 - Encyclopedia of Holocaust literature
• Ref/809.933/Mang/Pb - The dictionary of imaginary places

And here's the Dewey breakdown:

809 - History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures
809.91-.92 - Literature displaying specific qualities and elements
809.933 - Literature dealing with specific themes and subjects

I didn't see .927 described in either DDC21 or DDC22, but it was the call number specified in that book's CIP data (©1987), so it must have been phased out long ago.

And so, I get that these books are each about specific kinds of literature. But come on - a book about the Holocaust shelved between two books about imaginary things? It really is like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other fool Holocaust deniers got into OCLC and caused this to happen - a cataloger sleeper cell.

I'm going to talk with my Head of Technical Services to see how we can fix this.

Posted under Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Bookshelves of Librarians

Librarians are social creatures, right? Despite dowdy stereotypes, many of us are out there Web 2.0'ing it up - among other things, we like sharing our photos on flickr and our books on LibraryThing.

So, I thought a fun meme would be to combine the two - show photos of our personal books and bookshelves. I spied one of Jessamyn's, and uploaded photos of all my bookshelves.* I'm curious to see how other people organize books in their own space.

My Bookshelves (click for descriptions)
Non-fiction	Reference
Fiction

And since timing is everything, this is doubly fun considering LibraryThing's announcement this week about expanding LT's photo capabilities.

So upload photos of your own shelves (librarians and non-librarians) to flickr or LibraryThing or somewhere and share your personal organizational system.

*I didn't photograph all the books in places other than shelves: coffee table, bedside table, bathroom bench, car, piled on the floor, etc. I tell myself those are all "temporary shelving locations."

Also: I can't decide if "bookshelves" should be one word or two - so I use both.

Posted under Uncategorized | 25 Comments »

Library Staircase, and Bookends

It's been a busy week. This is vacation week for the schools, and a lot of kids have been in the library working on their projects. During their vacation. Imagine.

I feel bad that my postings lately have just been repeating things I've seen elsewhere, but it's just been that kind of a week. However, this is neat:

A friend of mine forwarded me a link to a "library staircase" built into a London apartment. I want to build a second floor on my house just so I can have one of these (more photos.

And here's a few more interesting book-related oddities, from growabrain:

• World's Cutest Bookend
• Photographic Cut-Outs Appear to Prop Up Book Ends (Feb, 1940)
• Alphabet Bookends
• Elaborated bookends by Timothy Richards
• The New Jersey Repertory Company has a new musical called Bookends, about the bookish friendship and partnership of rare book dealers Leona Rostenberg (1908-2005) and Madeleine B. Stern. (From Fade Theory)
• Books To Go

I especially like the last one. I tried to build something like that myself once, but it didn't come out nearly as well or practical.

Posted under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »