Nice people thread part 6 - thrice by twice as nice :)

Nikkster

Phone call over, could have been better but could have new worse. Failed at not getting upset. Must do better

lostinrates

Dewey doesn't help much.

http://bpeck.com/references/DDC/ddc.htm#table600

Anyway, i am done for the night its full.

lostinrates

Nikkster wrote: »

Phone call over, could have been better but could have new worse. Failed at not getting upset. Must do better

But succeeded at being human.

Nikkster

lostinrates wrote: »

But succeeded at being human.

Sometimes I'd rather be less human. At least I'm now a human with a big glass of wine and a nice bowl of cherries and strawberries.

vivatifosi

lostinrates wrote: »

Vivafitosi!!

Please may I get some professional advice, and other people's input welcome too!

I got a bookshelf today (hurrah) and am getting two more this week, so i am taking bos off the floor and starting to get them on the shelves.

I started thinking dewey was not necessarily appropriate for home shelves, and decided to dive ion with cookery and food books. But things just aren't right. Foratly, inlike a library, home bookshelves have an annoying foxed shelf, so mixed heights cause a problem, but size order is obviously useless (or is it, when i cannot find a book i say...its a book this size and green'). I think if i were cooking vegetarian food i would loook for a section of veg books on my shelf, so that seems clear, like wise, indian food withing indian collection in a larger ionternational section...so what is 'indioan vegetarian cooking' veg or indian??.?

Like wise...i thought food courses are a good plan, canapes, starters, fish etc etc, so what is tapas.......spanish within international, or somewhere between canapes and starters? Maybe international os a silly division?


Should i look up dewey after all?

I think you've already discovered this as I went to the end before diving back four pages earlier where I needed to start. However Dewey is not good for collections that are not broad. Think of Dewey as a way of classifying everything. Therefore if you don't want to have books about everything, then why do Dewey? I used to run a specialist library and we didn't use Dewey. The reason being that we would only have had four classmarks, and those that we did have would need to be to the umpteenth decimal in order to encompass the different facets of that subject.

So what works practically at home? In my house we have our fiction separate from our non-fiction. We also have a separate section for biographies because they don't sit well in non-fiction either. I read a lot of travel writing too, so they can stay together too. In reality in Dewey they'd be all over the place in the 900s, depending on whether they were mostly geographical or historical in bias, heaven help you if you wanted to go on a cookery trip as that would dive off into the 600s and a trip to CERN and other sites of scientific interest would shove down into the 500s. Then just keep broad collections together. It makes sense for cookery to be together, and gardening. But under Dewey, gardening is 635 and garden design is in the low 700s (712?), yet between the two lie pet keeping, cookery and running a business. Now where's the sense in that? Noooooo don't do Dewey! I'm going to have cataloguing based nightmares now:eek:.

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

Edit: Now Markyate, St Albans.

What TV twonk thinks Markyate is in St Albans (shakes head)...

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

Fat and squattish, white cover with red/black text/line drawing?
If so, that's one of the ones that we sent to the charity shop last year.

There are 1-2 I'd have liked to have kept, now I know how things have ended up .... but I'd have just ended up lugging them about forever .... and not using them. The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook is one we chucked... and some 1960s ones, including the Dairy Book of Home Management, that the milkman sold in the early 70s, I still remember when my mum bought it. All went to the charity shop though.

Ihave checked. I have the dairy book of home management. If its the one you want when you visit you may have it.

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

I think you've already discovered this as I went to the end before diving back four pages earlier where I needed to start. However Dewey is not good for collections that are not broad. Think of Dewey as a way of classifying everything. Therefore if you don't want to have books about everything, then why do Dewey? I used to run a specialist library and we didn't use Dewey. The reason being that we would only have had four classmarks, and those that we did have would need to be to the umpteenth decimal in order to encompass the different facets of that subject.

So what works practically at home? In my house we have our fiction separate from our non-fiction. We also have a separate section for biographies because they don't sit well in non-fiction either. I read a lot of travel writing too, so they can stay together too. In reality in Dewey they'd be all over the place in the 900s, depending on whether they were mostly geographical or historical in bias, heaven help you if you wanted to go on a cookery trip as that would dive off into the 600s and a trip to CERN and other sites of scientific interest would shove down into the 500s. Then just keep broad collections together. It makes sense for cookery to be together, and gardening. But under Dewey, gardening is 635 and garden design is in the low 700s (712?), yet between the two lie pet keeping, cookery and running a business. Now where's the sense in that? Noooooo don't do Dewey! I'm going to have cataloguing based nightmares now:eek:.

Ok, i am yet t finalise and may change my mind, but this is how its looking atm.

Cocktails and wine. Cookery 'courses' ...like delias cookery course and nigellas how to eat a d leiths, then general recipe collection books ( these two are still mixed up) then vegetarian, then, bread, appetisers, soups, salads, fish, meat. Bizarrely then food history ( books are smaller and fit on that shelf) then a muddle.

Then puds and chocolate, then cheese, then eating for health, then international cuisines.

Obviously flawed. Choclate books have savory recipes in,tapas is international, not just starters.

I have all the catering for christmas books on top of the book shelf, so maybe all the other books called feasts should be there too?:eek:

Its not simple.

I so far have found six books i have two of:o:o

silvercar

Personally, cookery books should be in the kitchen.

Other books should be strategically placed, so those you want easy or frequent access to are accessible. That means easy to find/ easy to extract from shelf without causing the domino effect and without causing the book shelf to collapse. So a set of tall books that occupy the full height will be put in the middle of a shelf below one that is bowing.

vivatifosi

Dewey's not great for cookery. As you say, it could be vegetarian Indian cookery or Indian vegetarian cookery. I'd be inclined to put how to books first (like the Pru Leith and Delia how to cook books, which are as much about how to use a particular pot or pan or choose ingredients as anything else), then general cookery books, then organise the other ones as you will use them. So:

If you're the sort of person who goes out, buys a leg of pork and then thinks "how can I cook this"? Then organising by ingredient may be the way forward.
If you're the sort of person who thinks "I think I'll cook Indian tonight", then organise them by food ethnicity, with a separate section for things that don't fit, such as puddings and drinks.
If you're the sort of person who thinks "I may have a vegetarian round, or someone who is on a low fat diet" then you might want to put the requirements of the eater first.
These are not mutually exclusive of course, they just mark where you starting point is: by ingredient, by "food genre" for want of a better expression, or by the needs of the eater.