I spent the afternoon arranging our books by size and color (and itβs so satisfying and looks amazing) and my partner came home and stared in shock at the bookcase and then said βiβm a librarian, you canβt do this.β
him: you split up all the song of ice and fire books
me: yeah i know, theyβre all primary colors, itβs perfect
him: [self-destructs]
Youβre a monster
As a former bookstore employee, this hurts my soul. I mean, sure it looks nice, but how do you find anything?
it has occurred me during this process that apparently not everyone thinks about books by what color they are? like, literally when iβm looking for a book, i picture it in my mind. i have a veryβ¦tactile experience with the books i read and idk! i thought everyone did that lol.
my partner was likeΒ βhow will i find [this book] for instanceβ and i repliedΒ βeasy, itβs purpleβ and he looked at me like i was a witch.
OP your brain is neat and I love you for it you funky little color-coded cupcake. But youβre still a monster.
This actually is interesting in terms of information-seeking behavior, which is a thing librarians think about a lot and often actually study (some library jobs require you to publish, and academic librarians, for instance, will often use the students at the college they work at to study how they search for information in order to figure out how to best provide them services).
When you go for an MLS (Masterβs of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for βprofessional-levelβ library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I wonβt go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is βabout"βa concept we tongue-in-cheek call βaboutness"βand how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in itβs own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.
OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OPβs partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because itβs their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.
In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesnβt work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesnβt know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, theyβre lost. Thatβs why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what itβs βaboutβ, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.
Basically, OPβs system works for their own personal library, because itβs best suited to how the primary userβOP themselvesβlooks for books. OPβs librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.
And also, OP is a monster.
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