I should probably wait until I've listened to more of this radio play before writing about it, but I'm finding it hard to get through the first five minutes. The play in question was the Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 yesterday and is called "Dewey Eyed". Within 4 minutes of listening to it, I wanted to throw things at the computer screen, although I settled for pulling out my headphones and searching for something else to listen to.
In all fairness, if I had read the summary more carefully, I might have known not to listen to it at all, given it refers to "the Dewey cataloguing system." I'll give the librarians a moment to climb down from the ceiling before explaining.
Dewey is not a cataloguing system. Cataloguing systems are what cataloguers use to create catalogue records of items. They're descriptions of what the item, giving its title and author and usually some keywords to describe what it's about as well (subject headings). They are not what librarians use to work out where on the shelves to put the books. That's a classification scheme, of which Dewey is one. When you look at a library catalogue, that bit at the top where the title and author and all the other bibliographic information is contained? That's the catalogue entry. The bit at the bottom with the apparently random letters and numbers? That's the classification number.
Getting them mixed up might sound minor to someone who doesn't know the difference, but if you do, then it's a major problem. Yes, it's reasonably specialised knowledge, but no more than, say, knowing the difference between a chiropractor and a chiropodist. Using the wrong word jars and jars badly, to the extent that, as much as I want to give this play a chance, I really don't think I can. The really sad thing is that the author probably researched Dewey to write the play and still managed to get the terminology wrong. Commissioning editors, actors, producers and all kinds of other people will have looked at the play and its precis, and not one of them picked out the mistake.
There's probably another post in here somewhere about how people don't really understand what librarians do, and how we don't just stamp books all day, but that will have to wait, I think.
I've got some cataloguing to do.
It goes back to the duty of a writer to undertake thorough research - and then double-check everything before sending it off to a commissioning editor. From what you've said, it would have taken no more than a half-hour conversation with a librarian to discover the issue, and probably not much more than that to correct it... and it is, of course, a classic case of a writer being caught out by what they think they know.
ReplyDelete...and thank you for posting about it, because now I (along with others who read your blog) know that there's a difference :-)