Hooray for productivity
The stack of readings and assignments I have due tomorrow and Thursday? Done, all but for the last five or so pages of a chapter from Thomas Mann’s* Library Research Models that I didn’t quite finish on the train. (I’m finding it surprisingly engrossing. The bit I was reading on the train elucidated why encyclopedias and bibliographies appear under A and Z in the LC classification: it’s a system that dates back to the days of closed stacks, when patrons only had access to reference books to help them figure out what they were looking for. So encyclopedias and other "general" works act as "tables of contents" for the library’s collections, and bibliographies are analogous to indexes, which is why they’re organized using very easily recognized schemas like the alphabet and the continents. I was strangely pleased to learn that.)
Anyway: I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to finish one’s homework early. Now I can spend the evening watching Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries with a clear conscience.
* No, not that Thomas Mann. One of our assignments last term included the task of distinguishing Thomas Mann, the Library of Congress reference librarian, from Thomas Mann the depressing German novelist.
Comments are closed.