7: Admission

I also did not understand the difference between the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress Classification System until cataloging.

Chapter 8 of my cataloging textbook provided me with that answer, including philosophical differences between the two systems dating back to Aristotle and involving the likes of Ayn Rand and that guy from Pearl Jam that people make such a fuss over (OK, they didn’t actually mention the guy from Pearl Jam). It was way more information than I needed, and still not enough to teach me how to shelve a book in either system. It also helped that my Laid Back But Terrifying Cataloging Instructor explained that for reasons dating back to the Great Depression, basically academic libraries used LC, and public libraries used Dewey (more on that later).

Every once in a while I’ll get a bee in my bonnet about shelving and I’ll contemplate going to the Second Floor of the library where I work and asking the person who trains the students to train me, too. It seems like something I should know how to do as a Real! Live! Librarian!

Then again, I could be like that chemistry professor I once had who was so adamant that chemistry was not about numbers and required no memorization that she refused on principal to memorize her own social security number. One day she was in a grocery store in the days when anyone could, and did, ask for your social, and the clerk asked for hers. The prof had to look it up, and the look of withering contempt she received convinced her to sit in her car and humbly memorize it with her ice cream melting in the back seat.

Perhaps I shall never learn how to shelve a book, giving myself a bit of conversation I can drop into those awkward social situations where you’re not allowed to say anything that matters but you have to say something: “I’m a librarian and I can’t shelve a book. Let me tell you the story” until some day in the future when my boss asks me to return a book when it belongs right beside us and sees me delegate it to a student.