The first executive decision

Women, yes it all comes down to women.  Where do they fit in a Jewish history library?  Those nice ladies hanging out at 305 were causing me some distress, you see, they don't exist in my catalog.  That is right, nowhere.  My catalog has two fields for cataloging location.  One is the call number field, which is Dewey/Scholem and the second is "Shelf  Number."  Any number can appear in the Dewey/Scholem space, but then I need to figure out where to squeeze it on the shelf.

My first questions were whether these books do really apply to Jewish History.... and yes, they do.  Female Immigrants to Israel, and the Women's right to vote  in Israel during the 1920's should be in the catalog...but where? The only other 305 book was placed with 320(9) and 330(9) which are Political Science and Economy in Eretz Yisrael.  Meh...doesn't work so well for me. So, I looked further... 301.2, 370, 200  are all hanging out together (Education, Culture, Religion in Israel).  And now, so will the ladies...hanging in KD (the shelf number).  I hope they enjoy themselves there.

More cataloging quandries..

Today, I've decided to "prep" a bunch of books and then do the actual cataloging within the computer tomorrow.  I've picked a random bunch of books, and am determining the Dewey/Sholem number and then the "shelf number" as it is called in my Orange Bible.

The challenges of today:

Life in the 300's.. in my catalog there are very few 300's that are used...a few regarding Arabs in Eretz Yisrael, some in the area of Education, Culture and Religion in Israel,  and that is about it.  I picked up a book about Holocaust Survivors living on kibbutzim, and the first number I picked was (9)972...which covers types of settlements in Israel....then I checked another library, and they used 307.776--the standard Dewey number for Kibbutzim.  So, on one hand, I have it right, but on the other, that number doesn't exist in my world.  Searched until I found another library who cataloged it with the (9)972.

Holocaust survivors, not living in Israel.  So, where is the home for survivors of the Holocaust who are living post-war in Bergen Belsen and the area which was occupied by the British in Germany post WWII?  Do you put it in the category of Holocaust, or is it about Jews in Germany?  Still puzzling that one out. 

So readers, would you like me to include book titles when I give my stories, or is it unnecessary additional information? (Seriously, we are librarians, is there such a thing as unnecessary information?)

Stay tuned for another exiting episode of the Dewey diaries....