When Polly Shulman asked me to create call numbers for the objects in The Grimm Legacy and The Wells Bequest, I was excited but a bit nervous. As a librarian, I had created plenty of call numbers for books, DVDs, and the other things you normally find in libraries, but I had never tried doing it for objects before.
How do you assign a call number to magic slippers or to a time machine?!
Because Polly wanted the repository to work just like a real library, I thought the best approach would be to examine the objects the same way I examine books.
When my library gets a new book, I enter the author, title, and other basic information into a database called a catalog. Then I skim the book to figure out what it’s about. It isn’t always easy to do this quickly, especially if the book is really interesting! After that, I enter three to five subjects—standardized words that describe the topics of the book—into the database.
Finally, I have to decide where the book belongs and assign it a call number. This process, called classification, is the most difficult step. While a book can have many topics, it can only be put in one place in the library. For example, when dealing with a guidebook to London, a librarian has to decide whether to put it with other guidebooks or with books about London. Fortunately, there are systems that help librarians do this. For the repository, we decided to use Dewey decimal classification, the system used in most public libraries.
Dewey decimal classification divides all knowledge into topics and then gives those topics numbers. To determine the right call number for a book, the librarian just has to consider the book’s main topic and then find the number most closely associated with that topic. (For example, in most libraries, a London guidebook’s main topic would be travel and not London, putting it with other guidebooks.)
The problem in the repository is that objects don’t have topics! I dealt with this by giving the objects the same call numbers that a book about those objects would have. Thus, I gave the niddy noddy (I had to look that up in a dictionary) on page 67 the same number Dewey gives to books about spinning yarn (746.12).
The niddy noddy also has a Cutter number (S53). Cutter numbers are based on the name of the book’s author and make sure that two books never have the same call number. I had to play with this too. Here S53 stands for “Shaker” since I decided that this was a Shaker niddy noddy.
The time machine was a big challenge because Dewey decimal classification doesn’t provide a call number for books about time machines. In the end, I decided to use the number for relativity theory (530.11). I don’t know how the Wells time machine works, but I figured it must have something to do with Einstein’s theory of relativity! The Cutter number for the time machine (Z8485) is a code that tells the pages and librarians in the repository that machine is in the oversize collection (indicated by Z) and comes from Wells’s Time Machine (84 = We; 85 = Ti).
If you want to create call numbers for the important objects in your life, check out a book on the Dewey decimal classification in your local library.
I had a great time working with Polly on The Grimm Legacy and The Wells Bequest, and I hope I will get to assign call numbers to all the great objects in future books about the repository.
—Cyril Emery
JULY 2012