June 18, 2001

librarianship and the usual training report


Well, yesterday’s relaxation was nice. We also ended up eating fairly well this weekend, which, come to think of it, we often do. Maybe this is why we’re usually okay on Mondays and get dragged out over the course of a week? I actually had red meat both Saturday and Sunday plus a little bit of (supermarket) sushi on Sunday, so my protein levels should be high enough for a change. With having races on two consecutive weekends, I really do want to eat well this week.

Egret and I had our first and possibly only pre-race outing in the double today; T and T2 need to train in it too, and after all, it’s their boat. I admit to having had thoughts of scratching the race at first, but after a while we smoothed out, and it wasn’t bad at all. We even practiced some racing starts. If we do get to row that boat again, I’d like to do a couple of short race pieces (say, 250 meters) because I think one thing that hurt us in the quad during Saturday’s race was that we had practiced our starts, but not the actual rowing together at a race pace. It was very splashy.

By the way, I’d laugh at all the people complaining about the heat (expected high here today: 111 F ... and let me tell you, at that temperature, "dry heat" doesn’t make nearly enough difference) but I have to admit, there’s no way I could live out here without air-conditioning.

Just so no one will think rowing is the only excitement in my life, yesterday I started putting together an Access database so we can catalog our books (Yes, that was sarcasm.) Rudder[1] wants to do it for insurance reasons, so if the house ever burned down, we’d have a record. That’s not my reason at all; we’ve estimated the numbers of hardbacks and paperbacks and figured an average price for them, and that’s good enough for me.

I just want a catalog to satisfy my inner librarian. I like the idea of being able to look back and see when I bought this one, or if that one’s a first edition (even though I buy them to read, not to invest). I hope someday our collection will be big enough that it will be useful to have something listed which book is in which bookcase. (I’m not currently planning to go down to the shelf level; my anal-retentiveness has its limits.) Also, I want to use the Library of Congress system to catalog them. It’s not always clear now where a book should be; for example, is Le Ton Beau de Marot about poetry, translations, or cognitive linguistics? Is Ogden Nash poetry or humor? That’s not a problem now, while my books on poetry and on linguistics are only a couple shelves apart, wih humor across the room, but it could get more awkward when we buy the additional 2-3 bookcases we need.

I want to research the LOC system further, anyhow, to see more of how its details work (or I could be lazy and just ask Caerula). I understand the general grouping, though I need to get a detailed listing, but I don’t understand how the part after the dot is arrived at. That is, if Glenford Myers’ The Art of Software Testing is QA76.6.M888, well, the QA is the broad subject grouping (QA, or Quality Assurance in this case, conveniently), the 76.6 narrows that down further (to software testing, I presume), and the M is for the author’s last name, Myers. But what is the 888 for? And why does this one not end in 1979, the year it was printed? Also, why do both the Calvin and Hobbes book I checked yesterday and Jakob Nielsen’s Designing Web Usability have their LOC numbers in completely different formats? Nielsen’s book is 99-63014.

Inquiring aspiring librarians want to know.

[1]T and I had a long discussion the other night about what he should be called here. He suggested Rudder; he likes the idea of steering from the shadows, being the small factor that changes the direction of a large vehicle. Also, both rowing shells and aircraft have rudders , so it’s appropriate for both facets. It doesn’t quite feel right to me, but that may be lack of familiarity, so I’ll try it for a bit and see.

Posted by dichroic at June 18, 2001 08:31 AM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?