Thinking aloud

but i do really feel like (especially in my experience english-only) monolingualism is such a scourge. the homogenizing effect this has on culture and what there is to see and do is devastating.

i feel like, once i started actively speaking french again (a language i grew up with and had basically no use for as an adult except a couple easier college credits,) i returned to having such a richer inner world that i had forgotten was there.

the expectation that anyone coming to an international stage speak english to be able to interact with the english-only monolingual bloc makes me so mad, *and my other language is a mainstream western language.*

i just go completely insane thinking about how much is lost culturally. i think it's easy not to realize how rich things are if you don't expose yourself to the diversity that's really out there.

i just think it's so valuable to be in a position to restructure the building blocks of how you think and put yourself in the position of someone with a different perspective because the range of tools i have in english is not the same as i have in french and i often prefer one language or the other for certain expressions, certain topics, etc

i just feel like the great evil of society today is homogenization and assimilation, and i think we badly need more cultural focus on language education; imo classroom-setting/homework assignment teaching is not sufficient; more immersion programs and robust study abroad are vital i think.

That's it. That's my answer. Endor.

you would receive the supply once a month

the brand/type will vary so you could

me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect

When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t 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 “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and 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 it’s 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. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s 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 doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, 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, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s 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.