Observations: Book-sorting, blogging, reading aloud

[tamaranth]

On Arranging Books By Colo(u)r: "Our bookshelves often take up a good deal of space in the places we live and work, and organizing them by color transforms them from a banal backdrop into a poppy, rainbow-colored focal point."> Includes some treatment of book-arrangement as Art.

Truth hurts! inspiration for a new user icon Real Soon Now

Audioblog -- Short Stories To Go (do let it load first, the interim colourscheme might distress you). I happened across this site while in search of online short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya, like 'Serafim'. Yes, still working on story recommendations for a friend.

Comments

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

I would have thought that arranging books by colour also made it really hard to find the one you were after.
Unless you know exactly what colour every one of your books are.

Even Foyles never thought of that one!

[abrinsky.livejournal.com]

On Arranging Books By Colo(u)r

There is (or was) a charity shop in Banbury that did just this - shelf of blue, shelf of red, shelf of white etc.

Did look rather attractive.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I recall mocking the charity shop in Greenwich that did this. But it does look good ... not sure that (as per illustration in that blog) it really counts as Art, though!

[avirr.livejournal.com]

Argh, how many things are wrong with that story. First, "serious" libraries do not use the Dewey Decimal classification, they use the Library of Congress system. Also, Dewey was a nut (in the best of ways, eccentric) and did champion a rational spelling system, but that's nothing to do with the library stuff. Also: people have shelved by color and size for centuries, it's not the least bit new.

The main point of classification is some basic way to number books so they are near other books on similar topics. There's never a perfect answer, because the definition of "similar" is wildly fluid But the unique ID number is the most important part, esp. now with online catalogs.

/grumpy librarian

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

There are a great many things wrong with that article, but the wrongest thing is that arrangement of books by colour is (a) attributed and (b) Art

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[grin] Agreed. And I'd never be able to find what I'm looking for, other than my extensive collection of Senate reprints of Victorian books on mythology, which mostly share the same colour scheme ...

[(Anonymous)]

And aren't American spellings like 'color' and 'catalog' the original spellings, the British versions being a 19th century affectation? ISTR hearing that somewhere.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

not sure (do feel free to locate and link!) but shall stick with local affectations <g>

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Truth hurts! inspiration for a new user icon Real Soon Now

[giggle]