Chapter 18: August 21, 2015 – Library
Chapter Summary: Blair makes a suggestion to make the library more user-friendly.
Challenge: for the livejournal 2015 August Fic-a-Day Challenge
Timeline: Storywise – Any time after Jim and Blair join the staff.
Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy. HP characters belong to JK Rowling. The Sentinel characters belong to UPN, Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.
Hogwarts Library
"I'm telling you, Madame Pince, this will make the library run so much more smoothly!" Blair insisted.
She scowled at him. He had won some favor with her by referring to her as Madame Pince instead of Irma, but she could not allow him to harm her precious books. "You are talking about defacing the books!"
"Just a little sticker that can be held on with magic…not even hurting the books," he pushed some more. Then he came up with the perfect argument, "Once the students learn the system, they won't handle the books as much because they'll do their searching before going to the shelves."
That sounded too good to be true. "Tell me about this 'Dewey Decimal System' of yours again," Madame Pince ordered.
"Well, it's not mine, but okay…we break up the library into different sections – which is already done here, so we'd just have to add a few sections. Start with the big divisions: Reference – books/papers that are not allowed to leave the library at all, fiction and non-fiction. Then they are broken down into further divisions. Fiction would probably be just simple divisions such as: romance, adventure, mysteries…those sorts of things. Reference and non-fiction would be numbered divisions. In the non-magical world, those would be:
1 Class 000 – Computer science, information & general works
2 Class 100 – Philosophy and psychology
3 Class 200 – Religion
4 Class 300 – Social sciences
5 Class 400 – Language
6 Class 500 – Science
7 Class 600 – Technology
8 Class 700 – Arts & recreation
9 Class 800 – Literature
10 Class 900 – History & geography
Since many of the subjects found here are different from the non-magical world, those categories would be different. We'd have to come up with the categories and sub-categories ourselves."
"Sub-categories?" Madame Pince repeated, wondering just how involved this plan was and how long it would take to complete.
"For example, encyclopedias fall under Class 000, but you can break them down further like this:
030 Encyclopedias & books of facts:
030 General encyclopedic works
031 General encyclopedic works in American English
032 General encyclopedic works in English
033 General encyclopedic works in other Germanic languages
034 General encyclopedic works in French, Occitan & Catalan
035 General encyclopedic works in Italian, Dalmatian, Romanian, Rhaetian, Sardinian, Corsican
036 General encyclopedic works in Spanish, Portuguese, Galician
037 General encyclopedic works in Slavic languages
038 General encyclopedic works in Scandinavian languages
039 General encyclopedic works in other languages
Each book is assigned a number based on its category, sub-category, and to make it simple, an identifying number. So an encyclopedia about Quidditch would have a number something like 031.1. The next encyclopedia would be 031.2 and so on. The same system can be done on a smaller scale for the restricted section."
"Just how long do you think this will take?" she demanded.
Blair shrugged. "I don't know…maybe five years or so?" he guessed.
Her jaw dropped in shock. Five years?! "How is this going to help?"
"Sorry, forgot to mention the card catalogue part," he said sheepishly. "In a convenient location, you have the card catalogue which stores the cards which hold the information on each book: its number, author, volume, date published (if known) and a brief description of the contents. Generally, it's a good idea to have at least two copies; one sorted by author or title and the other sorted by a keyword. Maybe three copies," he changed his answer.
"The student comes in, looking for a book written by…Rowena Ravenclaw. Rather than roam the shelves for hours, he goes to the card catalogue and looks under Ravenclaw, Rowena. The catalogue will tell him any books that list her as an author. He writes down the information – or uses a copy spell – and goes to the section(s) of the library where the books are located. Since the books are stored by number, it's fairly simple to locate them without grabbing a bunch of unnecessary books in the process."
"That sounds nice," Madame Pince allowed reluctantly, "But five years?"
"With just the two of us working on it? Yeah, that sounds about right," he theorized.
Months later…
As it turned out, Buffy was able to some part-time help for Blair and Madame Pince. Over the summer, two dozen former students – vetted by Madame Pince – assisted them in determining which books went in which categories, then numbering and creating card catalogues. When the students returned in the fall, they had a class in how to use the new library system.
By the end of the year, it was decided that the new system was a hit with both the students and Madame Pince. From then on, she let Blair call her Irma…as long as there were no students within earshot.
A/N: I assume there was some kind of system in place, but how detailed was it?