Using Power For...Something

I always start to feel both wildly powerful and semi-incompetent doing original cataloging. It's a heady combination.

We don't do much of it, basically just once a year for the dental school theses, and invariably while I'm doing call numbers there will be a few for which the classification just stalls me.

I mean, if the title is "Evaluation of three types of commerically available dental porcelain," no problem. I can stick that in WU 190 for "Dental materials (General or not elsewhere classified)" without even blinking. Other than to moisten my eyeballs, as one does.

But if it's something like "N-glycosylation of E-cadherin regulation as it impacts cytoskeletal dynamics" I just have to say..."buh?"

So you poke around and try to find something along the same lines that someone else has classified as something, and see if that makes any sense, and eventually you just sort of take a stab at it and figure the important thing is, it's going to be on the shelf somewhere if someone is looking for it.

Oh yes it will. And you know where on the shelf it's going to be?

Wherever I decide to put it, that's where! (Assuming the next people to get it shelve it appropriately according to call number.)

So, not knowing exactly what's going on, but with the power to shape the very shelflist of the library according to my whim? Like I said, it's a heady combination.