Friday, September 29, 2006

Mr Dewey, You Are Wrong, Sometimes

Friday is my day to be the Library Aide at the angelbaby's elementary school. The Media Specialist (Librarian to us old fogeys) is a wonderful woman who is slightly younger than I am and we get along great. We have an awesome time talking when there aren't any kids in the library, and I have a way of giving her perspective when she feels overwhelmed.

Today we were trying to get the non-fiction books back into some sort of order. It would really be nice if just for one week or so we could ban all kids from the library so that we could actually get things organized like they were at the start of school six weeks ago. No such luck sadly.

Anyway, the books may be on the shelves, but they aren't in numerical order anymore. I kept finding books that had been put back close to where they belonged, but off by a few points. As I was doing this though I kept coming across anomalies in the Dewey Decimal System that were about to drive me crazy.

Like there is a decimal category for Football, but not one for Soccer, so the soccer books end up being mingled into the football section for no apparent reason.

The other is that there are some books that come under one category, but a very similar book comes under another category and the two are not even close together. What is up with that?

If he weren't dead, I think I would have a sit down with Mr Dewey and give him a thing or two to think about. But as it is I will just shelve books where they belong in his hallowed system and keep my annoyances here on my blog.

Maybe I would understand it better if I were a Media Specialist. Nah I think this is one of those times when nothing will make this make sense.

Pax

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