The Secret Librarians Don't Want You to Know

Guess what? There is a whole big section of books in the library that are REALLY cool. Like super duper cool, but, the librarians don't want you to know about them. Do you want to know how I know? They file them with big long crazy number strings that make absolutely no sense. UNLESS of course you happen to be a librarian...or you actually paid attention in 5th grade when you learned how to use the card catalog.

The Dewey Decimal system, I have recently learned, was created by Melvil Dewey. Melvil, that's right, sounds like a librarian doesn't he. He wanted a logical easy way to classify books so they would be easily found and returned to their place. I used to think he did not achieve his dream. I remember 'learning' the system and it was usually associated with researching some boring subject and writing a report.

I am guessing that SOME people were not so book snobbish as I was as a child and did venture into the non-fiction section farther than the nearest World Book. But, I was not among them. In my my mind the equation went something like this:

Non-fiction = BORING!!!!

Oh the things I missed out on. I really did not grasp all the great books for kids hiding amongst the numbers until Tim came along. I had to bribe him to read a FICTION book. He was a walking encyclopedia and would camp out in that ever elusive library section.

BUT, now that I get to pretend I'm a librarian, I am actually learning the basics of the Melvil's categorization...and while I'm still not sure I understand his motive for putting things where he did, (See here for an explanation of the categories) I am starting to understand where to look for things.

Despite, my somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach here, it has been fun to really delve more deeply into the gems found in that 'other' corner of the library.

Check out some of the non-fiction nuggets we found yesterday at the library...

For Ethan:

YES! Diggers, dump trucks anything that is big and moves and makes clanking sounds is WAY up there on the favorite list right now. I think these type of books are ones I most often overlooked before. Of course there are similar books in the fiction section, but there is a bunch of untapped resources for even little guys in the non-fiction section.

These books were great because Sierra DID need to do a report on Frogs. We could of course, and did, use internet sources but there is something about holding a book and turning each page that helps the learning really sink in. The book 'Frogs' by Nic Bishop is one we actually own, but it was at the library too. I don't think I have ever seen a nature book with more beautiful photographs. Whether you like frogs or not, want to learn about them or not, I highly reccomend it for the photography alone. And it has great content as well.

Recently I checked out 7 or 8 books on the Grand Canyon for my kids to read, and be read to. It was really cool to have so many books on the same subject to peruse at the same time. Maybe, I'm slow, ok probably, but having multiple books at a time on the same subject really helped us see different dimensions that we wouldn't have seen before. We did the same thing with knots when Savanna learned to tie her shoe. It is a practice that I intend to keep up because it was, in short, a blast.

So...all of you that already KNEW the virtues of the 'boring' section of the library you can stop giggling under your breath now...and those that didn't go check it out! It's alot of fun. And all of you--let me know what you find. :)