Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts

Friday, 18 April 2008

The rewards of cataloguing

One of the big ones is being on the cataloguer's mailing list for emails like these:

Dear colleague,



On lcn 10109488 (The Complete tales of Henry James), which is a
twelve-volume work, you have a piece linked to a part record for a v.13:

XXX Main Libr 813.46 13 v.13 Available

Please could you check your copy and amend the holding? Thanks.

Best wishes,

S.

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Cataloguing god of one of the foremost university libraries in the world.
Get it? Good. Now FIX it!

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I couldn't stop laughing, and as S. is a friend, I emailed him back with:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Maybe it's the very rare v. 13 out of 12 that very few people know about... a ghostly one...
Ixx

(Think "Turn of the Screw")

His response?

Now now. We mustn't mock those poor people who never learnt to count beyond the number of their digits.
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I'm sure that's in the 11th commandment somewhere ("Mockest not those who should be lost to natural selection"), but as I'm already coveting Ruth's pencil skirt, I might as well keep heading down that slippery slope...