Don't forget the Dewey Decimal System is your friend!

The most helpful library assistant

Summer has finally arrived after a not very fun semester of school. Since I'm out of school I've finally been able to tackle two projects I've been meaning to do-- translate a volume of Middle English poetry and organize all the books and media at my house. I'll talk about my progress and experience on the translation front soon, but today I want to talk a little about the Herculean task of cataloging every book, video, CD, vinyl record, and cat we have (fortunately we only have two cats).

The first part of the collection, books in order from right to left

This is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. My father and I are bibliophiles and have amassed hundreds of book (with a strange lean towards the 900s...) and we also have a lot of VHS tapes, some of which are off-air recordings (and a couple of those were staples of my childhood). Most important are the books and at this stage I've been entering them all into a spreadsheet and preparing to make spine labels with the DDC calls. 

DDC, or the Dewey Decimal Classification, is the most familiar organization for libraries. It's based on sets of three-digit numbers, called classes or schedules, each one for a general topic. In case you were wondering, here's the breakdown: 

000 - Computer science, information science, and general works

100 - Philosophy and psychology

200 - Religion

300 - Social sciences 

400 - Language

500 - Science

600 - Technology

700 - Arts and recreation

800 - Literature

900 - History and geography

A lot of our books are in the 500s and 900s, and at the library you can usually find me in the 200s, 800s, and 900s. 

Then the calls get more specific, each number after the main class (like 900) narrows it down, and after the decimal point it gets even more specific. For example, we have a lot of books on the American Civil War, which is 973.7. 900 tells you it's history, 7 is North America, 3 is the United States, and .7 is the Civil War.

...When I say we have a lot of books on the Civil War, I'm not exaggerating.

Here are some pictures of this last couple of weeks' progress

Remember: labeling books is good, labeling people is bad.

I started by taking the books we had on our dining table and entering them into a spreadsheet. These were then crossreferenced with our local library's catalog to find the DDC. After doing that I made simple labels that I printed and affixed with some library-like tape my mother found... which I'm now out of. You can see the label-affixing progress to the left here. When done, I shelved them and they look very professional and not at all like I stole them from the library. You can get all the supplies needed for managing your own home library from thelibrarystore.com, which is accessible even by civilians. 

A day's worth of work

 Next time I'll talk about some cataloging and organization methods for books and media. Also coming soon, since this blog is a mess of topics, will be a report on the translation project I've undertaken, which will include a hopefully amusing rant on Middle English.

Until then, take care of yourself and may the good news be yours.