Pleasant tasks

Erin and I just finished one of the more pleasant tasks around here: cataloguing and shelving the books acquired over the course of the past semester. Cataloguing? Yes, all the books we acquire get a record, are assigned an LC call number, and receive a slip of paper with the call number on it. I enjoyed my job in the cataloguing department at the Yale Divinity School Library and was loathe to give up the pleasure of finding the precise slots for books in a grand classification scheme. The LC (Library of Congress) system is certainly grand, at least if sheer complexity and size count for grandeur. The print guide to assigning call numbers runs to 42 volumes. Anyway, I quite enjoy finding out where books fit into this scheme and so am using it for our home library. And I recently heard Erin say that I am unorganized and messy …

With the box full of books that we bought at Loome Booksellers (newly added to my list of favourite bookstores) in Minnesota last week, we now have 1174 books. In case you really don’t have enough to do, you can browse the list of our books here.

Now, all I need to do is to find time to read a few more of these books.

Sydney