No geek
is an island

Last Day is a track by obscure indie band Silver Sun, but not the subject of this post.

Today is my last day at Napier, my last day working in Edinburgh, and my last day in the library world. (Fear not, the much loved Dewey Decimal posts will continue as infrequently as ever.) As alluded to recently, I am following in the footsteps of Richard and Steve (who has made a welcome return to blogging) by getting myself a new job. Like Mr Kitchen, I am heading to The Smoke.

That’s four years in libraries, moving from customer services to electronic resources to cataloguing to IT and encompassing such new terms as III, CLA, FOI, HERA, AACR2, MARC21, DDC22, RSS, OPAC, SDI, EDI, RFID, OCLC, LoC, BLDSC, NLS, SQL, PHP, ILLOS… But it’s time to move on to pastures new.

More on that story later; first I have a desk to clear, files to sort, papers to bin, etc. For the time being, have a look at today’s remarkably prescient Dilbert.

Yesterday took me to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for a visit to their library and museum organised via ELISA. The college itself is on Nicholson Street near Edinburgh University, its pillared frontage opposite the Festival Theatre standing out amongst the banks and restaurants.

The very enthusiastic librarian kindly showed us a number of very old books including a Book of Hours and a Nuremberg Chronicle, both from the 15th century and in Latin. The latter is an early printed work, full of marvellous wood-cut illustrations and charting the history of the world up to 1493 (though omitting the discovery of the New World). The library also holds the College archives, which include letters leading up to the 1505 formation of the college (as the Craft Guild of Barber Surgeons) written in Old Scots.

We were treated to a visit to the Surgeons’ Hall Museums. The pathology museum is well worth a visit, but is not for the squeamish or for the hypochondriac: there are plenty of human remains, assorted tumours and kidney stones, plus battlefront injuries in the form of damaged bones and paintings of the victims. Like the photographs on European cigarette packets, there were plenty of images and objects to put you off an unhealthy lifestyle (or going to hospital…). There are also displays about Joseph Bell, a Fellow of the College and the main inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Burke and Hare, and the history of the College.

For more information, see the College’s website.

Believe it or not, I was asked at the recent Scottish blogmeet by a fan of the irregular Dewey Decimal updates on this blog if we weren’t overdue for a new post. Well, fans of three digit numbers optionally followed by a decimal point and more digits, you’re in luck today!

There’s plenty of source material from here, here, here, here, here and indeed here, so let’s get started with a bumper selection.

• The Democrats retaking Congress: American Dream - 306.0973
• Most delicious number: Bakeries - 664.752
• What top-up fees don’t help: First-generation college students - 378.1982
• “And then it hurt a bit more, but then it hurt a bit less”: Headache patients’ writings - 808.89207
• New word for your vocabulary: Txalaparta - 786.843
• “My name? J. R. Hartley”: Streamer fly fishing - 799.124
• Most like a Doctor Who book: Father Time (Symbolic character) - 398.33
• Inking about inking: Tattooing in literature - 808.803559
• John Reid’s wet dream: Youth curfews - 364.4
• **Most “I’m Spartacus” number: Chariot racing in literature - 808.803579
• Soap operas, basically: Interpersonal relations on television - 791.456552
• Sportiest number: Strikes and lockouts—Hockey - 331.89281796962
• A big one for Julia Goldsworthy: Moor (Falmouth, England) - 711.55220942378
• “I buy it for the crossword, dear”: Women athletes in literature - 808.803579
• New word for your vocabulary: Klebsormidiales - 579.83
• Number you have to get permission to protest in: Parliament Square (London, England) - 711.550942132
• “Is that an original Diebold?”: Voting-machines in art - 704.94932465
• Kids getting high: Adolescent psychopharmacology - 615.780835
• “Yes, Muffin, I’m sorry too“: Muffin the Mule (Fictitious character) - 791.4572
• Readers of this blog: John Q. Public (Symbolic character) - 306
• Funniest number: Satire, Colombian - 867.00809861
• Most comical number: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Fictitious characters) - 741.5942
• Where the rangers come from: Sloane Square (London, England) - 711.550942134
• Where the rangers come from: Spermatozoa–Physiology - 571.8451
• People who don’t pay enough attention to the Dewey Decimal System (”That means you, McFly*!”): Slackers - 174
• Long number: Caregivers’ writings - 808.899213620425

** Update: It has been pointed out to me by a local Smartacus that I perhaps meant Ben Hur. And perhaps I did. Alas, I seem to have mislaid my collection of Charlton Heston’s back catalogue.

*Not the band

It’s the Dewey Decimal Classification number for Pluto, sitting happily in the “Planets of the Solar System” schedule. So there are more implications of Pluto being demoted to dwarf planet. The folks are Dewey Towers have noticed:

We’re still looking at what this means for 523.4 Planets of solar system and for 523.48 Trans-Uranian planets in Dewey. In particular, we will need to decide exactly where Charon and other KBOs (”Plutonian objects”) go in the classification, and whether “Trans-Uranian planets” is still the best caption.

Of course, Trans-Uranic Heavy Planets may not be used where there is life.

To celebrate the successful completion of the latest major software upgrade of our library management system, my boss brought in a cake. But not just any cake…

If you want one for yourself (and who wouldn’t?), they’re apparently available at Asda. The object at the top right is a little sound box - no prizes for guessing what it says when you press it.

I ate the eyestalk and the “ears”. Mmm, eyestalk.

Of course you are - it’s been almost a week since he popped up on The Ultimate West Wing Challenge.

Fear not - your Oaten appetite can be sated via a podcast. Not his own, thankfully (although I confess some surprise that he and his wife aren’t running a Darbyshire style blogspot confessional) but a British Library panel discussion entitled - surprise, surprise - “Prurience or privilege: are politicians entitled to a private life?”

Now don’t all download it at once…