Classifying: permaculture home garden

Librarythinging still: grateful to Libraries Australia for sharing records.

So, tonight I shelve indoor plants at 635.915 having checked that is the number for indoor plant cultivation; only to see that I had shelved
The permaculture home garden by Linda Woodrow at 635.987 (as given by Libraries Australia)... hm but a 30 seconds ago I was reading that 635.9 was floriculture.

Clearly when I checked it the first time I went straight to that number in the schedules, read "organic gardening" and didn't even read a little upwards, or I would have seen that .98 is "special methods of cultivation in floriculture" - not the subject of this book. So, I read backwards a little further... ah there is a .04 *Cultivation, harvesting, related topics to which I may add as instructed under 633-635... like with 84 organic farming.

Yes I like that better 635.0484, and I'm not the only one: Libraries Australia tells me that is its DDC at Armidale Dumaresq Council War Memorial Library, Clarence Regional Library, TAFE SA O'Halloran Hill Campus Library and University of Adelaide Roseworthy Campus. Of the other libraries who show their DDC most have 635.987, although some have 631.58, 631.5825 (neither of which I would use because this book is specifically for the home garden, not a work on permaculture in larger-scale agriculture like Graham Bell's The Permaculture Garden).

Aside: just because I learned from it: Libraries Australia listed the book at Rockdale City Library with DDC: 636.987 which is not a valid number (the closest being 636.9865 or 636.988 baboons as pets or great apes as pets respectively). I wonder why they don't appear to have the book anymore was it weeded as never having been borrowed?

:inner screams of joy: I love this!

Now that I think about it I'll have to see whether I took any photos of the garden I made back in 1999ish following this book.

Royal English history

Some time ago I shelved A Royal Family : Charles I and his family and swore to borrow it when my other reading was finished. Sure enough I've been reading it slowly since (mostly toilet reading :D ), finding it a little interesting (I've never been particularly interested in English history, it was the family angle that caught my interest) and a little horrifying (just like modern history as to the horrible and stupid things that people do to each other).

But that's not why I'm posting. Tonight I caught Monarchy (Dr David Starkey tells the stories of the reigns of William and Mary and Queen Anne as well as other key players.) on ABC - I missed the last episode. Right from the start I was pleased that I could recognise where the monarchs of this episode fit in thanks to Patrick Morrah's biography. The video program was quicker than reading a biography, probably not as detailed, but interesting all the same.

And hm, another classification learning opportunity: SMB has classified the book at 941.062 (I would put it at 941.06) yet the record from Libraries Australia has 929.72. Oh, I see 929 is genealogy names, insignia... oh there is .2 family histories and .7 is Royal houses, peerage etc BUT the class notes say:

...
Class family histories of the nobility and gentry in 929.2; class histories of a royal family that include general historical events or biographies of members of the royal family in 930-990.

Got to go, Son #1 is demanding I see whether there is a new episode up at:



Ask Dr. Eldritch.

Cataloguing ... typos in source

I'm adding the RACV's Victoria State Map First Edition, map 4053 to my Library Thing, and the information about publication reads:

MAP 4053 (c) RACV 1096
PUBLISHED BY THE ROYAL AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF VICTORIA (RACV) LTD,
550 PRINCES HIGHWAY, NOBLE PARK 3174, (ACN 004060833)

At first I read 1096 as 1996, a copyright date. If it is not the date (with typographical error) what other number could it be?

According to Libraries Australia: Monash University Library has a copy on-order with a publication date [1993] and a note quoting "Map 4503 0993". So perhaps my map which declares itself as First edition wasn't published in 1996?

While I recall that a title is to be transcribed exactly from the chief source including typographical errors, does the same apply to date of publication? I'll be looking that one up.

Can you see why cataloguing my own library is so much fun? No sarcasm, I'm serious - I love this.

Visual search engines

Silvia Tolisano's (Langwitches) review of kids Quintura caught my curiosity (thanks Bloglines & RSS). As my only experience of a visual search engine has been Pagebull (which I still love for its superbare search box screen and visual results), I thought I'd see whether there have been any significant developments in visual search engines (as in visual presentation of results of regular textual search rather than engines to find images).

Not with Quintura. Silvia's review: looking cool, and embeddable, with dubious results. MMM, I guess embedability is a desirable feature. But for a supposedly a visual search engine - What is visual about it? Aside from the overly cutesy picture background?

A cloud of words. Hm.


But google's top result (on: visual search engine) was KartOO.

KartOO uses Flashplayer to present the gathered and compiled results in a series of interactive maps - like concept maps. Stronger results (not necessarily most relevant) appear slightly larger. Mouse hovering over results displays lines to, I guess other pages to which it is linked, at the same time displaying more information about the site in the sidebar. Hovering over underlying association terms (eg 'lessons') gives different lines, and changes the sidebar list of associated topics with which you might like to refine your search. Icons you've perused are marked with a "/".

I still love Pagebull (Google's second result).
I like getting a preview of the top 12 results. It allows the resulting pages to speak for themselves - particularly helpful to people who absorb information visually rather than textually (ie people who register logos or icons more quickly than the point in words, or who recognise a word more quickly when in its familiar font/shape/colour)

From wood to joy

First the path:
Sandra Dodd's Wood thinking-stick (my first thought? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? which I think is harder to type fast than say fast. second: mum's old camphor wood chest. third: I want to make a bookshelf for my paperbacks.)
--> Stephanie's post on her son's woodworking (at which I studiously avoid reflecting once again on gunplay)
--> her earlier post about late nights & trying to go to bed earlier (where I commented in sympathy: our nights are late, and I'd like them to be earlier - breathe out regret over the long-term visitors who destroyed our better habit a couple of years ago)
--> subscription to Stephanie's blog, and mildly curious about another post: The #1 song the day you were born discovered from
-->Josh Hosler that on the day I was born Judy in disguise (with glasses) was #1 in the US.
-->But what was #1 here in Australia? According to Oz Net Music Chart it was Sadie the cleaning lady by John Farnham. Lovely voice. Vivid character description - superficial characterisation. Ugh makes me cringe.
-->I did find a video at YouTube of the original performance but I hesitated to embed it here because it pre-dates sympathetic music-video and the dancers made me cringe worse than the lyrics - what a dreadful juxtaposition to the song's theme - so lacking in congruence.

So
<-- however Joy's birthday #1 was "Joy to the world" and that I've added to my happy songs playlist.

Cataloguing ... Derrida

I'm puzzled. A week ago I was to shelve Derrida (the movie) at MPOW, the call number: 801.95092.


Hm, I wondered, isn't 801 something to do with philosophy of literature? But the cover seems to suggest this Derrida (whose name I've only ever seen on a work in the area of art criticism) is a philosopher about everything. DDC: 801.95 'theory, technique, history of literary criticism'. (& I know 092 is persons standard subdivision).

Clearly I don't know enough so I borrowed it to watch for myself. I'm still puzzled. The DVD really seemed to be about the philosopher - a partial biography of sorts, with snippets of explanation about the area of philosophy that he spawned: deconstruction.

So... google 'deconstruction':
wisegeek "Deconstruction is a philosophy applied to literary criticism, as well as to criticism of the other arts"
... okay so maybe deconstruction is principally a philosophy of literary criticism?... No:

Wikipedia says: "Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves."
... which rather suggests, as do the movie and its cover, that this process applies to more than criticism of literature.

I'd be classifying it at 194 (persons treatment in modern philosophy, France) or 149 (deconstruction, modern philosophies).

Maybe the work was obtained (in this TAFE library) for use in the context of literary criticism?

Maybe I'll ask the cataloguers, they've not minded me asking in the past, but I don't want to be a pest.

Search fun at LibraryThing

HUZZAH! I have finally discovered how to search ALL fields of my LibraryThing including comments and review.

all:"xxx"

Yes using "" even for one word searches.

There is a WikiThing FAQ/help page that, although it doesn't make the method precisely clear, probably contains enough that I ought to have been able to make the logical extension.

It has been so frustrating: Stuck without a summary or contents field (why?) I could (though it feels icky) use the comment (or review - but that is way too icky because reviews are shared) fields to add information or keywords (not tags) that would enhance some items' findability, particularly summaries or notes from broad works' contents.

BUT for so long I couldn't work out how to get LibraryThing to actually search those fields.

YAY I know how to 'all search'.