When assembling Skuvnar, it is best to be two people

[vovat]

Yesterday, I went out to IKEA with bethje to get a new bookshelf. I ended up getting a silver Billy shelf, which fit more easily in my car than Beth's Tunhem did. Beth did pretty much all of the assembly, for which I am grateful. I'm basically helpless when it comes to putting things together. My XY chromosomes have betrayed me in this respect (and, come to think of it, in many others as well). I've been putting some of my books on it, and there's plenty of extra room so far, but I can't quite remember how many other books I have left to bring over. I might not end up putting all of them on the shelves. I mean, does anyone think I'll actually need to access my old textbooks on a regular basis? Right now, I have some CD's and DVD's on there as well, but I might eventually have to move them.

Organizing my fiction books is a simple matter, but I'm not sure what to do about the non-fiction ones. Right now they're just thrown on the shelves in any old order (or, to be more accurate, no order at all). I could utilize my training in cataloging to put them in order by the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress System, but is it really worth it? I'll probably just arrange them roughly by subject (mythology, music, television, reference, etc.). I'm probably putting way too much thought into this matter, aren't I? {g}

Let's see. What else have I been up to? Well, last night, I went out to Red Lobster with Beth and Dorothea. There's a Tuesday shrimp special that Beth and I both got, and for which we were almost overcharged. The waitress claimed she wasn't used to working on Tuesdays, but I had specifically asked about the Tuesday special when ordering, so I'm not sure that's an entirely valid excuse. Still, it worked out all right, so there's no reason to be concerned about it now. It was just lucky that we'd come on a Tuesday, since we didn't know about the special beforehand.

Okay, I'd better post this and take a shower.

Comments

[l8erngr8er.livejournal.com]

Isn't Red Lobster wicked expensive anyway? Like, more than it should be (generally speaking)?

And I've never been in an IKEA store, but they seem huge from the outside (okay, I think I've actually only been by one)...what are they like? Very expensive?

Your posts make me quite inquisitive. Thank you. It's keeping my brain from turning to mush.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

The other day hubby was asking where something in our house was and I very nonchalantly said "it's over by the nonfiction section," and only after I said it did I realize that MOST people do not have a clearly designated Nonfiction Section in their home and it should probably be considered odd of me to take it so for granted.

But, yeah, I took the "sort nonfiction roughly by subject" approach to my shelves. I figured it wasn't a fully-rounded enough collection to make Dewey worthwhile. Besides, Dewey would put every single one of Jason's entire bookcase of roleplaying manuals under the same number, which would probably also be the same number as, I'm guessing, books about every other kind of pencil and paper game, so it would render itself rather useless there.

In other words, maybe you are putting way too much thought into it, but you aren't the only one. We MLISes must stick together in our obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Library of Congress system!

(actually, I prefer Dewey Decimal too.)

And Nathan, I use old textbooks on a regular basis. However, since I am still in school, it's a little different.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I STILL can't figure out Library of Congress, even after having had actual lessons on it in library school! My brain blocks against it somehow. Although it would be much more useful in a non-well-rounded collection, that's true.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

I've got the basics, but not the specifics. It's a lot more expandable than DD, but how you classify the books beyond the first two letters is beyond me. (While I am not a librarian, I am a library geek in my own right. It was either librarian or social worker. I went with the latter.)

[not-glimmer.livejournal.com]

i sort my books by color.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Isn't Red Lobster wicked expensive anyway? Like, more than it should be (generally speaking)?

I've never actually done a point-by-point comparison. I can say that I usually end up spending more money at Red Lobster than I do at most other restaurants, but I pretty much always get shrimp, which is pretty expensive anywhere.

And I've never been in an IKEA store, but they seem huge from the outside (okay, I think I've actually only been by one)...what are they like? Very expensive?

Nah, it's affordable Swedish crap. {g} Seriously, the fact that their furniture isn't that expensive is one of their main selling points.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, I wasn't considering using actual numbers so much as just putting the subjects in Dewey or Library of Congress order, rather than random order. I'm not planning on printing out spine labels or anything. {g}

[vovat.livejournal.com]

You mean you use old textbooks in new classes?

Whether or not I ever go back to school, I seriously doubt I'll ever have another use for ten-year-old computer science textbooks. And if the ridiculously improbable ever happens and I DO need them, I could probably take the few extra minutes to get them out of a box. {g}

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think the LC system is confusing because the first number is a whole number, while the Cutter number is a decimal. With Dewey, the whole thing is a decimal (hence the name "Dewey DECIMAL System" {g}). Aside from that, though, I don't think they're all that much different. The library where I do actual cataloging work uses Dewey, but the one where I do reference work uses LC, so I like to think I'm at home with both.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think telling that to a librarian is tantamount to telling a zoologist that black cats, black bears, and black ants should go into the same taxonomic family. {g}

Seriously, though, I know some people sort their books based on how they look, but I kind of LIKE the look of a shelf with a lot of dissimilar books on it. I do understand why people like getting uniform sets of series books, though. With my Oz books, I have an old hardback stuck in the middle of a bunch of little paperbacks, and it looks rather out of place.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Didn't figure you would. Just pointing out that when you have a lot of books on what-to-the-outside-observer-appears-to-be-the-same-subject, it's probably better to use your own organizational method as opposed to one other people made up to cover as many different subjects as possible.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have had to use textbooks from previous classes for new classes several times. Sometimes they were required, and sometimes they were just suggested. And I'll need to use them ALL for my comps next semester. Whoo hoo!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes sense, and is probably what I'll end up doing.