Getting Closer

As follow up to the last post, work began anew in December 2009 to fine tune call numbers assigned to the books. With Dewey classification manuals at hand, we concentrated on the library’s church history section. Not a cataloger by profession, this librarian met his learning curve, encouraged by Italian coffee and guided by Br. Peter Damian’s good sense. If I were to state that classification of church history is somewhat complicated, this would be understating things. Illustrating this are the questions that need to be answered (for classification purposes) concerning saints: Are they founders of religious orders? Are they men? Women? Did they live in the apostolic period or after 1054? Were they mystics? Did they also leave a body of writing? These and other considerations would determine an exact call number for each book. This was something of a hair-splitting exercise, but the end result is that church history (approximately 300 books) is in far better shape now than it was before. To further distinguish the topical changes within this section, Fr. Cassian ordered nicely finished blocks of wood to serve as faux books. The current plan is to label these dividers with the subject matter of each sub-section, with the purpose of informing browsers of topical progressions.

October 2010
Most recently, I returned for a few days in October to resume work on the classification refinements. This time, attention was paid specifically to what is being called the “monastic sub-collection”. This is a section of a few hundred books set aside on separate shelving. These texts support the formative development of the community and include books such as the Rule of the Master, commentaries on the Rule of St. Benedict, works by Dom Columba Marmion among other substantial works. Fundamentally, this section is now tighter in focus, with books classed for the most part under 255 (Religious Congregations and Orders) and 271.1 (Religious Orders in Church History). What happened in the initial round of cataloging was that anything resembling monasticism was placed there. The book titled Monks and Wine is one such example. Inasmuch as it is about what some monks do, it doesn’t necessarily fit well with monastic spirituality, theory or philosophy. Also, many books about specific monasteries, beautifully illustrated with photography, were located there. We decided to place these instead in the more appropriate architectural or geographical sections. Historical works on specific monasteries around the world remained in the sub-collection, but these, too, needed further call number refinement. Geographic Cutters (numbers specific to places) were added to the basic call number of each book. It’s now possible to browse this part of the collection and expect to find histories of specific monasteries in a more satisfying, logical order.

Comparisons to more established libraries
I spent a little time in the library at the Pontificio Ateneo Sant'Anselmo exploring the organization of its collections. They use an accession type of classification system to order their materials. Often this means that books are located on the shelves according to broad subject areas. A number is assigned with the lettered prefix. For instance: Mon 1337. The prefix ”Mon” would indicate that the work is generally about monasticism and 1337 simply indicates which book it is in the order of books received or purchased. This makes the backend cataloging process a cinch, but is not much help for someone browsing the shelf, expecting all books on a single topic to be close together. Consequently, one must use the catalog to search for books on a given subject. As a point of comparison, I think our system which strives to keeps books in discrete topical order following a reasonable progression, has greater advantage in terms of find-ability. The monks’ library at Norcia has been organized under the theory that its community members will easily be able to view and select from areas of the collection that interest them. This remains the ideal, of course, and progress is being made toward that goal slowly and incrementally.

If this were strictly an academic library, it's possible that the catalog would be used to a greater extent since important books for scholarship are plentiful, but not always located in obvious locations. This is particularly the case when the subject matter is interdisciplinary in nature. If I were to try to class the library in terms of type, I couldn't say it's a purely academic collection. In a sense it is an academic library since monastic and patristic works are used for the formation of the members who take formal classes and much of the donated material has been based on academic research. And indeed the purpose of the library is to support this. However, the community also tends to view the library as a source for books of personal interest, and so resembles a public library in this sense. Regardless of the type it more closely resembles, it needs to be organized in a way that makes sense and is useful to its owners. The work of correcting the classification numbers will be ongoing, but certain areas will need to be given priority. For personal enjoyment and spiritual enrichment, the monks tend to look for books on spirituality, biography, and literature, particularly fiction. These areas will be given full attention in the coming year.