Dewey mysteries & treasures in the stacks

Last week a patron visited our room & asked if we had any books on the computer programming language COBOL (an acronym for "common business-oriented language"). Initially designed in 1959 (as you can see in the linked Wikipedia article), it has largely gone out of use except in "legacy" applications on mainframe computers - so not a subject for which we get a lot of requests here at St. Louis Public Library.

As you may imagine, when Melvil Dewey created his eponymous cataloging system in 1873, he did not specifically save a slot for computers that may some day be invented. He did, however, build a certain amount of flexibility into the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, including creating a "General Works" catch-all class (now "Computer Science, Information and General Works") where we now find our computer books in the 004 & 005 range (004: data processing and computer science; 005: computer programming, programs & data). In fact that is where one of the COBOL books (Nancy Stern's Structured COBOL Programming at Dewey 005.133) should have been, but it was checked out (OK, maybe COBOL does get some requests). The catalog showed two other COBOL books, but with a different Dewey number: 001.6424. Apparently before revising the DDC (the DDC is continuously being revised) to plug computers in at 004 and 005, they were classified at 001 with the heading "knowledge". 

Our older computer books are located "in the stacks" where we store the bulk of our collection, particularly materials that are out of date or not heavily used, but that we think are still important to keep in our collection. The pictures above show some of the classic computer books we have in the stacks in the Dewey 001.642 sequence - this is where we located the book (Robert C. Nickerson's 1977 COBOL Programming: a Structured Approach) for our patron. To the right you can see where 001.642 would fall on our "current" shelves - smack between books on Nobel prizes and conspiracy theories.

A final helpful hint: as noted above, most of our books are NOT out on the shelves where you can browse them (though that is where we try to keep the most current and called for books); if you ever see the word "Stacks" on the slip of paper you print from the SLPL catalog (see below - arrows added for emphasis), find a librarian and ask him or her to go retrieve the book for you. Watch this space for future installments about other cool things hiding "in the stacks" - and happy reading all!