Melvil Mondays: The 400s

It's the last Monday of October! As we move into a new month, we also move into a new Dewey range: the 400-409s.

The 400s are for Language.

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind
by George Lakoff
401.9 L19

• 400: "Class here interdisciplinary works on language and literature." (I love librarian instruction manuals and guidelines; so reminiscent of "here there be dragons.") 

• 401: Philosophy and theory

• 402: Miscellany (I also love that we have these metaphorical "junk drawers" in our Dewey classes... though 402.85 is called out specifically for computer applications)

• 403: Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and concordances

• 404: ...Nothing to see here! It's "Unassigned." Move along, move along!

• 405: Serial publications

• 406: Organizations and management

• 407: Education, research, and related topics in linguistics

• 408: Groups of people (408.9 is "treatment of language with respect to ethnic and national groups")

• 409: Geographic treatment and biography

Friday Reads: Misery

Is there anything more suited to October than a Stephen King novel? Adam Pellman tells us about Misery this week.

Adam Pellman with Misery by Stephen King

I was really into Stephen King during my junior high and high school years, but at this point it's been close to two decades since I read one of his novels.  I'm very much looking forward to jumping back into his work, and since this novel was recently recommended to me by horror writer (and Seton Hill professor) Michael Arnzen, it seemed like the perfect choice.  It also counts toward my reading challenge for the year, which is to read one book published each year since I was born.  This will be my choice from 1987.  Here's an excerpt from the book's publisher description:

"Paul Sheldon, author of a bestselling series of historical romances, wakes up one winter day in a strange place, a secluded farmhouse in Colorado.  He wakes up to unspeakable pain (a dislocated pelvis, a crushed knee, two shattered legs) and to a bizarre greeting from the woman who has saved his life: 'I'm your number one fan!'

Annie Wilkes is a huge ex-nurse, handy with controlled substances and other instruments of abuse, including an axe and a blowtorch.  A dangerous psychotic with a Romper Room sense of good and bad, fair and unfair, Annie Wilkes may be Stephen King's most terrifying creation."

Melvil Mondays: The 300s

Monday, Monday...

It was too hard to pick one book from the 300-309 range, so we have a variety. The 300s are for the social sciences. You'll find "philosophy and theory" in the 300.1s, "miscellany" in the 300.2s, and "sociology and anthropology" in most of the rest of this range. This includes topics such as "Social interactions" and "Culture and institutions," so lots of good stuff in here.

Honey, I'm Home!: Sitcoms Selling the American Dream
by Gerard Jones
302.2345 J77

A Natural History of Love
by Diane Ackerman
302.3 A18

Why Empathy Matters
by J.D. Trout
303.372 T86

Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion
by Randal Marlin
303.375 M34

Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women int he Twentieth Century
by Betsy Israel
305.4896 I85

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
304.28 D53

History of Prostitution Among All the People of the World
by P.L. Jacob
306.7409 J15, vol. 1&2

Friday Reads: The Great Lakes

Do you need a vacation... or at least a virtual one? Join our Serials Librarian, Judith Koveleskie, on a mental trip to the Great Lakes region with The Great Lakes by Pierre Berton. We hear the lake country is lovely this time of year. 

Judith Koveleskie with The Great Lakes by Pierre Berton

"The Great Lakes have always held a particular fascination for me, so finding this book on our shelves was a delight.   Although it is over twenty years old, I found it interesting because it was published in Canada and offered a somewhat different perspective on the lakes.  It included history, culture, geography and many other fascinating features along with gorgeous photographs.  One of the items on my bucket list is to take a cruise on all of the Great Lakes and this book has whetted my appetite for that adventure."

Melvil Mondays: The 200s

Happy Monday!

We are already to the 200s! The 200s collect the religion books. The 200.1-.9 section contains "standard subdivisions" (ask our cataloging librarian, Adam Pellman); 201-209 are "specific aspects of religion," as well as "specific topic[s] in comparative religion, religions other than Christianity."

South and Meso-American Native Spirituality
edited by Gary H. Gossen
200.98 S72

Can Christians Be Educated?
by Morton Kelsey
207 K29

The Wild Goats of Sin Gedi
by Herbert Weiner
209.5694 W42

Friday Reads: Mister Rogers Talks With Parents

Happy Friday! This week, public services librarian Kelly Clever shares her recent read, Mister Rogers Talks With Parents by Fred Rogers and Barry Head:

Kelly Clever with Mister Rogers Talks With Parents

"Since having my son (who had a meltdown in Rite Aid this morning, by the way), it has become very clear to me that no parent actually knows what they're doing. If anyone ever got close, though, I'd say it was probably Mister Rogers.

"Like nearly every other 80's baby in America, I grew up watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. This year is the 50th anniversary of the first episodes, and since I live near where he grew up as a boy, there have been a lot of celebrations going on. When I found out that he had written a book to parents, I knew I had to read it.

"I've been so impressed by Mister Rogers' deep study of early childhood development and education. The book is written in his trademark easy-to-understand style, but it's obvious from the front matter and many of the examples he uses throughout the book that he used the best available research and consulted with leading experts of the day as he developed his television episodes and other materials.

"While I usually tell our education and psychology students to look for more recent publications than a book from 1983, I think most of Mister Rogers' observations and advice stand the test of time. (Just make sure to also use plenty of more current stuff to see how the fields have progressed in the last 35 years.)

"If you're a Mister Rogers fan, you're in a great location; he grew up in Latrobe, just down Route 30 from SHU. Why not take an afternoon to go visit Adams Memorial Library (which has plenty of Mister Rogers and Daniel Tiger stuff throughout the building), walk over to Fred Rogers Memorial Park and take a selfie with the statue, stop by the Fred Rogers Center at St. Vincent College, and wrap up with a quiet visit to Mister Rogers' final resting place in Unity Cemetery?"

Melvil Mondays: The 100s

Welcome back!

This week we move on to the 100s. Hope your brain is warmed up and ready for this, because the 100s hold works on "Philosophy, parapsychology and occultism, [and] psychology."

The 100s are books about philosophy in general. The 101-109s hold philosophical theory, "miscellany of philosophy," reference materials for the study of philosophy, and more.

Plato's Sun: An Introduction to Philosophy
by Andrew Lawless
100 L41

Friday Reads: Night Film

Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian Adam Pellman is reading Night Film by Marisha Pessl. Here's his take:

Adam Pellman with Night Film

"On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova--a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years."--Publisher description.

I initially picked this novel up because it is, in part, about a mysterious film director, and I'm a big film buff.  It seemed right up my alley.  It's a really engaging mystery, and it's pretty spooky, too, so it was a good reading choice as we get close to Halloween.

Hours for Extended Weekend

EXTENDED WEEKEND HOURS

October 7 (Sunday)                 CLOSED
October 8 - 9              8:00 a.m.  -  4:50 p.m.

Introducing Melvil Mondays: The 000s

Aliens in the Skies:
The New UFO Battle of the Scientists
by John G. Fuller
001.9 F96

We're starting a new blog and social media series! We're going to be exploring some of the books in our print collection. (Yes, we still have a print books collection.)

We're calling this series "Melvil Mondays" in honor of Melvil Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification System, which we use here at Seton Hill to organize our collection.

We'll be working our way through the different "hundreds," one "ten" at a time. So this week we'll look at a book located somewhere between 000-009, and next time we'll peek at a book from the 100-109s, and so on. Eventually we hope to wrap back around to the "zeros" and go through the "zero-tens" and then to the "one-tens," etc. We'll see how it goes. It's an untraditional way to meander through Dewey, but this path will let us explore different fields of knowledge without getting too bogged down in any one discipline at a time.

First up are the Zeros! Here you'll find "Computer science, information, general works." And weirdness.

001-006 ambitiously attempts to house "knowledge, the book, systems, computer science." The 007-009 have not been assigned anything.

Amusingly, "knowledge" includes .9, "Controversial knowledge." So you'll find books about UFOs smushed up against programming manuals for Linux.