Friday, September 2, 2011

Day 4: Classes? We no need no stinkin' classes!

Off-center day of classes! My class that's normally Wednesday was actually today (a Friday?) because next Wednesday the professor's actually in Greece, so we need to get started so as not to fall behind. Confusing. Following that trend, my lessons today were all about confusion.

Lesson 5) People are generally uninterested in libraries and as a result seem to think they are organized by magic. They are also incapable of understanding interchangeable use of the terms "bookshelves" and "stacks" without a whole song and dance.

Bonus unnumbered lesson for non-library people: you know bookshelves. Bookselves are shelves for books, you've seen them in the library and you probably have at least one in your house, even if you don't use it for books. Point of interest though, when we have bookshelves in the library, we also tend to call them "the stacks". I don't want you to be confused when we refer to "that stack over there". We aren't talking about a pile of books, that's just what we call the shelves. Same thing when we refer to entries, we're talking about catalogue entries, usually on the computer, not entrances.

I feel that sometimes we can be confusing without meaning to. Just remember that we are professionals, experts if you will. Just like I wouldn't necessarily understand if you started talking about things from your field with the terms you use with your colleagues, we will use our terms when talking with you because that's how we speak when we're in the library, and sometimes we forget that we're not just talking to another colleague. So please accept my apologies for this in advance.

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