This article is classified "Real"
Indexing is a subject close to the hearts of many science fiction fans. A knowledge of how to catalogue books will aid you in obtaining temporary work in any English Speaking Library. Unfortunately, I cannot impart that knowledge to you. In my college days I had the dubious task of stock-taking the ICSF library. This involved the checking of over 2,000 books against a paper list, seeing which ones had been stolen since the year before. Had those books been un-indexed we would have lost books to nimble thieves all the time! There is a second-hand book seller in London who orders every book he gets. He reads them in strict order of purchase. A recent exercise involved sorting around one hundred books into alphabetical order. Certain conventions allow easy decisions. "Banks" goes before "Clarke," and "Pohl" goes before "Pratchett." However, some are less than certain. Does "Orson Scott Card" go under "S" or "C"? Does "Temps" - edited by Neil Gaiman and Alex Stewart go under "G," or "S," or is a separate section for anthologies required? Staying with Neil Gaiman, does his "Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion" go under "G" or next to all the books by "Adams"? (Or perhaps it goes with all the Sandman comics in a box on the floor). Do you place all volumes in the Hitchhiker Trilogy in alphabetical order of title, or chronological order of publication? (You need to be topologically confused to try placing them in chronological order of the events in the story...) Do you place John Norman's "Gor" books between "M" and "O" or in "B" (for "Bin")? You may think that this is not a subject worthy of many brain cells, but consider this: Those hundred books are just the read collection. There is another nine-foot shelf of unread paperbacks, a shelf full of videos including every Star Trek episode in order of first broadcast, two smaller shelves of large non-fiction, a row of boxes with comics, and a final shelf with glasses. Think of the state we would be in if they were all mixed up, un-indexed!