Cataloger's block

I think cataloger's block is similar to writer's block.  You just hit a wall where you can't do anymore.  Today I hit it, but luckily I only have 30 minutes left of work, and I'm not going to be here for the next three days.  Hopefully I'll be able to recover.

What brought on this malady?  Well, I was picking books to catalog from the boxes and shelves surrounding me, and I came to a book "From Qumran to the Rabbinic Revolution: Conceptions of Impurity."  I'm not so sure it really fits with our collection as a history library, but I decided to see where it fits in.  So from my friends at Beit Berl, I see that the call number they gave is 296.561.  That is fair...it is squarely in the category of Judaism. So I look at my lovely chart provided by E (previous librarian).  There are two sections which cover this call number.  Here is a nice mini translation of what I have:

NA...........Judiaism (Philosophy, Halacha, Mussar, Kabbalah, Customs)  296.1 - 296.6
and further down
ND...........Judiasm (All subjects, located in the warehouse)  296.1 - 296.8

AAAAGHGHGHGHGHGHG

I know there is no space on the shelves, but how do I decide what goes on the shelves, and what goes straight to storage?

And what else is in storage?

O...................Hebrew Literature  892.4
......................General Literature 800
Q....................Hebrew Language  492.4
R...................General History.
S......................Bibliographies
V510-V609 & V632-V643...................Random chunks of the Biographies

And this doesn't even cover T (textbooks) which was supposedly in someone's office,  but she no longer works here.

And one other note, there are a few O,Q, R and S books on the shelves, because they were cataloged after the books were moved. Strike that S1 and S64 are on the shelf.

I have to keep repeating to myself "I am the librarian, I make the decisions..."  Hopefully I can convince myself of that!

Things that could make a cataloger cry

The little orange folder on my desk which was left by the previous librarian from here on forward to be known as E (more than seven years ago) is my key to the library.  It contains the call number as connected to the subject, as connected to the Dewey number.  It has information about some cataloging tips and other pieces of information.

On the first page of this fourteen page bible of mine are instructions about how to catalog something that is in both Hebrew and English.  Here is a translated quote from the book "When there is a book written in two languages, you don't want to catalog the book twice, you want the searcher to be able to find the book in two languages."  Ahhh E, how right you are.  I tried and tried to follow your instructions, but I couldn't get it to work.  The book is sitting on my desk waiting for me to get a spark of brilliance, or new software to get it right.

So, I decided to try to find another book which was in two languages that E previously cataloged.  And I found one! Browsed the shelves until I found something clearly in English and Hebrew.  I searched for the record by title, opened the record....but no Hebrew.  Then I got concerned.  Did a search by call number, and what do you know?  Yes, E cataloged the record twice. I guess I'll just put it in once and make a note when we finally get the software updated/changed I will add the second language and clean up all the double records in the catalog.