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UDC and other curiosities

Our home library is our little corner of the world that we have brought into our home. Come to think of it, the books we have at home are (to some extent) a slice of our world as individuals - that is, the information we've absorbed, the interests we have. There's an awful lot of information, in all sorts of formats, that we take in and absorb over our lifetimes, but the books we've invested in (money, time, shelf space) have been important to us in one way or another. I think that who they are and their arrangement says a lot about us.

I remember in school we were told that our notebook was a look at ourselves - whether we wrote beautifully, neatly, in detail. Eh, mine were always chaotic and I wasn't proud of them. See now I get a big kick out of thinking that my home library is actually a look at myself.

A lot can (and should) be written on this topic, and we need scientific articles on the subject, statistics, but this is beyond our modest means. So in the week we've called, "Home Library Week," I'd like to talk to you about my scrapbook corner of the world that I keep at home.

Filed under

Back in university, I became very passionate about Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine's creation, the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC). The UDC is a classifier of all the world's knowledge. Yes, everything that is known (at this point) by humans can be divided into 10 major divisions with multiple subdivisions. So every datum of information has a place somewhere. This is the system that librarians around the world use today.

The UDC was developed in the late 19th century. It represents a further development of Melville Dewey's decimal classification. It uses additional characters to indicate various special properties of the classified object or to indicate interrelationships. Over the years, the UDC has been modernized and extended. The UDC is universal because it covers all human knowledge and activity. This makes it convenient for a variety of purposes and especially for libraries with universal holdings. Objects subjected to classification according to the UDC may have any type. Usually these are written documents (books, articles, etc.), but the UDC can also be used to classify films, video and sound recordings, illustrations, maps, museum exhibits, etc. The full version of the UDC includes over 220,000 sections.

Cool, huh? I started stacking my books against it in third year, with great enthusiasm and curiosity. Today my library has grown quite a bit, but my enthusiasm is still there.

I've seen a lot of interesting ways to arrange the library at home:

- By colour

- By publisher

- With the spines of the books, inwards towards the wall

- By size

- By cover

Each has its own charm, and I definitely enjoy being inspired, but the UDC remains a favorite of mine for the basic arrangement of my books. As sometimes inside certain sections I also sort by visual features. 😊

Decoration

Decoration has become a key element for me. At first I avoided putting any items on my bookshelves because I wanted the books to be the focus, however, little by little I started piling knick knacks in there that I don't have room for and noticed that I actually like how certain things complement my books. Now I quite enjoy finding the right (for me and my books) items to form mini accents.

Bonus treats

Something I've also been keen on for a long time is ex libris. We'll talk about them at length in a separate piece, so now I'll just try to pique your interest in them by showing you mine. It was given to me for a birthday and is a combination of my name and a picture of my Hogwarts patronus. Yes, I know, and that's a story for a separate post, so I won't go into it - I'm a Ravenclaw after all, and I keep everything in order. 😉