More on Colours, Library, and Order

Jay Fienberg at the iCite net gives a couple comments from a librarian / information architect about Library book collection sort orders. Actually, he gives a detailed account of how to sort books. And so, since I have thought a lot about book sorting. [i haven't had a choice, if you sort 900 books by colour you think about it a lot. When David saw my books while he was at Seabury he remarked, without missing a beat, "O, well that's obsessive"] I think it probably is. But that's not what I want to talk about in this post. I want to talk about why it makes sense to sort books by colour even though in the end I do think that it only makes sense for personal libraries. However, I think that it makes as much sense for a personal library of 10 books as for a personal library of ten thousand books.

Firstly, it doesn't make sense to organize a public library this way because of the pernicious problem of publisher's inconsistency with colour across editions (or even worse when a book is reissued) A book should have only one colour! We don't tolerate a change in title or author across editions.

Jay notes that, "book cover color (like page count and physical dimensions) is actually useful information to have in a library catalog!" against his friend who, "organizes his book collection by the height of books, from tallest to smallest, from left to right. The reason he does this is that it makes his bookshelves look incredible neat and tidy—it has nothing to do with providing any kind of utility in accessing the books." I totally agree on both counts. I think that it takes a special mind to remember a book by its height. I don't think that you could think I want a copy of the Cyborg Handbook - its one of the taller books on the shelf - that's fairly easy. But many many book have a standard height. And height doesn't have any gradations. In my library there are 300 black, 300 white, and 300 coloured books, but the black and whites divide into two shades each and then have further division among the colour of the lettering.

Finding books by colour is as easy as finding them by letter or by subject if you remember a book's spine's colour. And, I think many people do. Take the test yourself. What colour is your copy of Yoder's For the Nations, Adam's What is Postmodern Biblical Criticism, Farley's Personal Committments, or Weinberger's SPLJ. In fact, I'd hazard that many people memory of the colour fo their books is as good as their memory of titles and author's. Jay's story of the Big Red Buddhist book is a good example.

The big place where I disagree with Jay is in colour's inadequacy as an ordering system against the alphabet or the order in which it is discussed in the bible. Colour is in many was perfect as an ordering system because not only are their many shades (want a simple system - roy g. biv, want something more complex pantone to the rescue) but the shades make sense next to each other on the shelf. If I want to find a book by [will finish later - its getting out of hand and i need to sleep] Posted by Trevor at June 21, 2003 09:56 PM | TrackBack