A Teach Me How To Dewey production
The Rundown:
- 090 Manuscripts & rare books
- 091 Manuscripts
- 092 Block books
- 093 Incunabula
- 094 Printed books
- 095 Books notable for bindings
- 096 Books notable for illustrations
- 097 Books notable for ownership or origin
- 098 Prohibited works, forgeries & hoaxes
- 099 Books notable for format
We made it to the end of our first 100 of Dewey! #WeDeweyedIt! And if it wasn’t totally evident by now that the Dewey Decimal Classification is about books, allow it to remind you one more time with this 10-spot dedicated to the things of books themselves: manuscripts, incunabula, and the kind of rare books only super-booksellers dare deal with. My closest encounter with this material happened in a Preservation & Conservation class in library school, wherein we learned about the history of paper, bookbinding, and conservation techniques, and also got to make a few books from scratch (one of which I won in a lottery at the end of the course – still a life highlight). To cap the course we had to write a research paper on any topic course-related; I chose to write a brief history of incunabula (early books) and titled the paper Dream of the 1490s: Gutenberg and the Birth of the Printed Book, a title fans of Portlandia and books will be able to appreciate.
With the exception of the lacuna of despair that was the 040s, this section (in my library at least) has had the slimmest of pickings. The highlight would probably be the legendary Book of Kells (about which a delightful movie was made). Anyone else find something cool in the 090s?
The Dew2:
The Book of Kells
By Bernard Meehan
Dewey: 096.1 MEE
Random Sentence: “According to Pliny, the chief characteristic of the panther was that its sweet breath attracted and stunned other animals.”
Literary Hoaxes: An Eye-Opening History of Famous Frauds
By Melissa Katsoulis
Dewey: 098.3 KAT
Random Sentence: “Abraham Lincoln is famous for many things, but being a great and passionate lover is not one of them.”