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Archive for July, 2007

Shelving science

The Biologists Helping Bookstores blog reports on another in its guerrilla librarianship raids, in which it reshelves non-science books out of the science shelves.

I’m sympathetic. It drives me nuts to see New Age self-help books shelved in the philosophy sections. But…shelving not only expresses beliefs about the topic, it also serves as a non-semantic look-up system. When an employee doesn’t know where a book is shelved, she looks it up in the computer. So, while re-shelving maintains the purity of the topic, it also hides the re-shelved books. And I’m not crazy about that.

Damn first order of order! (Thanks to Brian Christiansen for the link.)

Brand Eins interview

Tagmashes from LibraryThing

Chris Shioyama on the English-centricity of EiM

Akma on the 5% wrongness of EiM

Gartner hype cycle: Tagging

Confessions of an amateur cultist

Facets of reference

Walter Benjamin and the collector

Open Library Project

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