When we left off last night, I was on my way to the library to pick up a copy of Rachel and Leah (which apparently isn’t on LibraryThing yet, thus no link). And I did. (If you were expecting a really cool story here, something along the lines of “some runaway bank robber sped through campus in a BMW, chased by three police cars, and I barely avoided getting run over, but when I saw the BMW coming my way I remembered I had a box of three-inch long industrial-strength thumbtacks in my front pocket and threw them all on the concrete, along with the glass bottle I happened to be holding at the moment, so when the car passed by the tires popped and the car thudded to a stop, and then the robber hopped out of the car and started shooting at me, so I had to hide behind the concrete pylons until the police apprehended him,” you’ll be sorely disappointed.)
Anyway (phew!), I had another of those ah-hah! moments while walking through the bookshelves, book in hand, experiencing an inordinate amount of joy. (For the more library-minded, I was walking through the Z’s, which are the book books (library science, printing, typography, etc.), and as far as I’m concerned are not sleep-inducing in spite of their LC code. ;)) I can’t wait to be a librarian. Mmm. :)
To that end, when I got home I finally started memorizing the Library of Congress (LC) classification scheme. I’d made the cards several weeks ago, but hadn’t actually gotten around to it. Memorized all the general classifications (A = General Works, B = Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion, etc.) and then finished the subcategories for A and B (AY = Yearbooks, BC = Logic, BX = Christian Denominations, etc.). It’s sticking pretty well, and at this rate it won’t take long to finish off the set.
The only problem with doing this is that I’m finding all sorts of interesting categories that I’d never looked into before — for example, CE houses books on calendaring systems. How cool is that? I had no idea. While I’m familiar with much of the LC (particularly BX, because that’s where most of the Mormon books are, N (arts), and P (languages and literature)), it’s exciting to stumble across heretofore undiscovered country. I feel like a mini-Columbus. (And no, it doesn’t really matter that it’s only undiscovered to me. :))
(PQ is the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese literature category, by the way.)
In other news, this morning I noticed a few dew-dusted patches of spiderweb on the grass, glimmering like a crystal garden. Nature’s great. :)
[tags]libraries, Library of Congress, books, Mormon, Columbus[/tags]