Random Thread

[chris_notts]

One thing that frustrates me is when people file everything beginning with "The" under T, e.g. "The Police" in the case of bands. I follow a policy of normally ignoring articles when sorting CD collections etc. because otherwise you end up with a very swollen T section.

EDIT: I missed that on your list before, but you're wrong that people don't do it. My father has always filed things beginning with "the" under t, much to my frustration.

[zompist]

I'm not sure that these are so hard... I'd agree with alice on almost all of those.

The real puzzler on that list, though, is... do people still actually listen to Wings?

[Linguoboy]

I'm not sure that these are so hard... I'd agree with alice on almost all of those.

I think what she describes is pretty close to what we do at the library, though I'd have to double-check to be sure. But it's not necessarily what I've encountred elsewhere. In record stores in particular, it's quite common to group together different musical projects with a common core member or members. A somewhat extreme example is the music of J.G. Thirwell, who over the course of his 40-year career has used a variety of aliases (e.g. Frank Want, Clint Ruin, Philip Toss) and a varied array of band names (e.g. Foetus Under Glass, Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel, Foetus Interruptus, Steroid Maximus, Manorexia). Since his early band names tended to incorporate the word "Foetus", that eventually became his moniker, though he himself didn't start using it until the 90s.

IME, most record stores file everything he's done under "Foetus"--often with an explanatory note that it includes all associated acts. That's because most of the record stores I've been in make use of plastic dividers to flag their most popular artists. That is, if you look in the "B" section, for instance, you'll see labels for "Bauhaus", "Beatles", "BeeGees", etc. Underneath the main heading, they may include additional information like "also see Peter Murphy, Tones On Tail, Love and Rockets" for the benefit of buyers who don't know about these artists' successor or predecessor groups or side projects.

With the kind of bibliographic records I maintain, this is done by means of "See" references and "Related" headings. The assumption is that our patrons' primary means of locating items is not going to be via browsing but by performing an online search and then accessing a work by means of a call number. Therefore, it matters less what Thirwell's work is filed under as long as the main record includes references to his other names and the records for those name refer back to the main record.

Which is more useful for a personal collection? Unless you have your own online catalog (and some people do--there's a dedicated piece of software called "LibraryThing" for this very purpose), I would expect something closer to the record store categorisation. Even there, only someone with a truly huge collection would need to be particularly consistent or comprehensive. The rest of us could get away with something more informal and intuitive. I could simply have a category (a drawer, a cabinet, a section of the shelf) called "happy music" where I put records by artists I reach for when I want to be cheered up, and it could be small enough that there's no need for any internal ordering.

[Nortaneous]

I normalize band names in my collection to keep alphabetical order useful (so "The Wailers" would go under Bob Marley) and ignore given name/surname distinctions (so Patti Smith would go under P) but I agree with everything else

[Moose-tache]

You raise a good point, linguoboy, that the most logically consistent system may not be the most accessible or transparent for a newcomer searching for their desired content. If you're trying to sell a wings album, will more people go looking for it under M, or W? Or even P? If they don't find it quickly, you've lost a sale. It's almost like using search tags, but every item can only have one tag.

I used to work at a library, and we always filed fiction alphabetically by author. But now I'm wondering if people made exceptions for aliases that patrons might want to find alongside each other. For example, if someone is looking for a Robert Galbraith book, it's probably because they know that's actually J K Rowling; they're more likely to remember her name than the alias by the time they get to the library. So filing it under G might bury what would have been a popular title.

[alice]

All this said, I once heard of someone who filed records and CDs by the dominant colour of the front cover.

[Linguoboy]

I used to work at a library, and we always filed fiction alphabetically by author. But now I'm wondering if people made exceptions for aliases that patrons might want to find alongside each other. For example, if someone is looking for a Robert Galbraith book, it's probably because they know that's actually J K Rowling; they're more likely to remember her name than the alias by the time they get to the library. So filing it under G might bury what would have been a popular title.

Perhaps, if you have only a single sequence for all fiction. But in bookstores (as in music stores), titles are often grouped by genre before being filed by author. So J.K. Rowling is most likely in Young Adult while Robert Galbraith is in Mysteries. (I mean, this was part of the reason why she used a pseudonym in the first place: Because she knew that fans of one series wouldn't necessarily be interested in the other.)

[alynnidalar]

One time when I was a kid, I got bored and reorganized my bookshelf by last letter of the title.

...I wouldn't recommend it as a standard strategy, but it worked surprisingly well given that it was a small bookshelf and I knew every book that was on it.

[MacAnDàil]

When I started buying CDs, I used to arrange them by date bought. As I was the only person using the collection usually, it worked best.

[Linguoboy]

When I started buying CDs, I used to arrange them by date bought. As I was the only person using the collection usually, it worked best.

This isn't unusual in libraries either. Closed stacks (either because the entire collection is paged or for portions of the collection which haven't been catalogued yet) are often ordered by "accession number", which is typically an arbitrary string of digits assigned chronologically.

[Raphael]

When I started buying CDs, I used to arrange them by date bought. As I was the only person using the collection usually, it worked best.

This isn't unusual in libraries either. Closed stacks (either because the entire collection is paged or for portions of the collection which haven't been catalogued yet) are often ordered by "accession number", which is typically an arbitrary string of digits assigned chronologically.

The one major library where I occasionally borrowed books for a while (a major university library) did seem to physically sort books by date of acquisition, although of course people usually searched for books in the computer catalogue, anyway, so it didn't matter much where they were physically, anyway. Sometimes, it was fun to walk along the shelves and try to find random books that might interest me, though.

[WeepingElf]

When I started buying CDs, I used to arrange them by date bought. As I was the only person using the collection usually, it worked best.

This isn't unusual in libraries either. Closed stacks (either because the entire collection is paged or for portions of the collection which haven't been catalogued yet) are often ordered by "accession number", which is typically an arbitrary string of digits assigned chronologically.

The one major library where I occasionally borrowed books for a while (a major university library) did seem to physically sort books by date of acquisition, although of course people usually searched for books in the computer catalogue, anyway, so it didn't matter much where they were physically, anyway. Sometimes, it was fun to walk along the shelves and try to find random books that might interest me, though.

As a library employee, I have something to say about this. In our library, books in the magazine (i.e., the closed space where users may not access the books directly, but have to order them on the catalog system, such that one of us retrieves them) are shelved by order of accession (as long as they are in the same size class; in our library, there are four size classes, such that small books can be put on shelves that are closer together, which saves a lot of space - otherwise, you'd need space for the tallest books everywhere); the catalog computer knows what is found where. In the free-hand section (where users can directly access the books), the books are ordered by subject matter, using a classification scheme. This is AFAIK the usual scheme in large libraries.

[Linguoboy]

In our library, books in the magazine (i.e., the closed space where users may not access the books directly, but have to order them on the catalog system, such that one of us retrieves them) are shelved by order of accession (as long as they are in the same size class; in our library, there are four size classes, such that small books can be put on shelves that are closer together, which saves a lot of space - otherwise, you'd need space for the tallest books everywhere); the catalog computer knows what is found where. In the free-hand section (where users can directly access the books), the books are ordered by subject matter, using a classification scheme. This is AFAIK the usual scheme in large libraries.

Perhaps in Europe. IME, closed stacks are unusual in North America apart from special collections (i.e. rare and valuable materials). I remember well my first experience with paging materials from a university library in Germany. In those days, you had to fill out slips by hand and submit them. I meant to request three books on the Catalan language; I got back one book on the Catalan language, one on Fasnacht in Basel, and one entirely in Polish on I don't know what subject. After that, I spent most of my time browsing the reference collection or the small "Freihandmagazin".

[Moose-tache]

All this said, I once heard of someone who filed records and CDs by the dominant colour of the front cover.

I knew a woman whose bookshelf was organized by color. At first I thought it was stupid, but once I looked closer, I realized that it perfectly sorted the books by theme. Publishers and marketeers really know what they're doing.

[alynnidalar]

The one major library where I occasionally borrowed books for a while (a major university library) did seem to physically sort books by date of acquisition, although of course people usually searched for books in the computer catalogue, anyway, so it didn't matter much where they were physically, anyway. Sometimes, it was fun to walk along the shelves and try to find random books that might interest me, though.

I used to do this in libraries, but somewhere along the way, I lost the ability. Now I get too stressed out trying to pick something "good". Anymore, I rarely venture off my "to read" list (a mix of suggestions from people I know, new works by authors I like, etc.).

I can't decide if this is a good thing or not. On one hand, it means I don't waste time reading things I don't enjoy, and am rarely swayed by an attractive cover hiding a stupid or badly-written book. It's rare for me to read a book and not like it these days, because I spend the effort up front to filter through them*. On the other hand, doesn't this limit my exposure to new ideas, genres, and authors? If I only read things I already know I like, am I ever going to challenge my beliefs or expand my perspective? (on the gripping hand: it's not like books are the only way to challenge oneself; I enjoy learning about a wide variety of topics, I interact with people of different political and religious backgrounds, and I've changed plenty in my life. So who cares what books I read, anyway?)

* pertinent example: I put off reading Brandon Sanderson for literally years because I knew I would love his books and would get obsessed with them, and I wasn't sure I wanted to make that sort of commitment. I finally got around to reading them and, as predicted, am obsessed.

[Raphael]

Does anyone here know enough about geophysics to tell us whether the reports about an unusually high number of earthquakes near the Yellowstone Supervolcano are anything to worry about?

(And no, this post is not an April Fools' Day thing.)

[Pabappa]

I have always been very disorganized. The music I have on my computer is stored so messily that I've lost track of songs for years and only stumbled upon them later by random clicking. Part of this is that I like electronic and other nonverbal music, so the title isnt much help in identifying it, and partly because I've always used short filenames anyway so I can see more of them on the screen at one time. A lot of the filenames are in conlangs, with the choice of language depending on what the music sounds like ... e.g. Poswa and Pabappa are for happy music, Andanese for "robotic" sounding music, Leaper for anything that sounds angry. Other than that, I only vaguely organize the music I have by theme, and I make new folders when one gets full (i.e. cant see them all on the screen at once), and so I have a lot of redundant folders that are organized by time and theme rather than just by theme.

I wasn't even sure what you guys were talking about at first since the idea of organizing CDs in any fashion only makes sense to me if I own or work at a record store .... my CD collection was even more disorganized than my MP3 collections. Yet all of this works out just fine for me because I am the type of person who can listen to the same song thirty times in a row and not get tired of it.

[malloc]

Does anyone know how to identify the brand and pattern of flooring? I recently ruined the floor in my new apartment because I didn't realize how much my chair was scratching it. Replacing it will depend on me figuring how exactly what product to buy. Quite honestly, I know absolutely nothing about this sort of thing. The best I can say is that it looks like wood but seems like plastic with some sections sand-colored and others more mocha-colored and the panels are 6 by 36 inches. I could hardly tell you what kind of wood the paneling is supposed to imitate or who manufactured it. Now admittedly, this probably seems trivial given the current situation with the world. But fixing this problem is critical for me to develop the good rental history needed for getting an apartment elsewhere.

[Pabappa]

Calm down, youre going to be OK. I stained the carpet and that's OK. Please, just stop worrying about what color flooring you have or whatever.

[malloc]

It's a long shot, but any ideas on the brand and product for this flooring or even what kind of wood it is meant to imitate?