railway and rail modelling library classification

[runs as required]

There seems nothing at all indexed on this so I'm jumping in with a new Topic.

I'm clearing up my end of the house. I have piles of books relating to past work and teaching and even untidier much larger heaps of my rail 'porn' that go back to 1946 LNER pre-renumbering ABCs and even inherited dead rail enthusiast's treasures !

Smug booky wife working from the other end of house files her stuff under the Dewey system and it now seems sensible to fall in with this.

 

Problem is that within 625 Railways it is unclear how the sub classification works (eg 625.261 steam locomotives).

Apparently the NMRA uses such a Dewey sub-classification but I can't seem to access it; Blaydon Library used to have a much larger collection (sub classified) than the dozen or so rail books it has on the 625 shelf now.

 

Can any more knowledgeable rail modelling librarians or booksellers help please?

dh

[Gibbo675]

There seems nothing at all indexed on this so I'm jumping in with a new Topic.

I'm clearing up my end of the house. I have piles of books relating to past work and teaching and even untidier much larger heaps of my rail 'porn' that go back to 1946 LNER pre-renumbering ABCs and even inherited dead rail enthusiast's treasures !

Smug booky wife working from the other end of house files her stuff under the Dewey system and it now seems sensible to fall in with this.

 

Problem is that within 625 Railways it is unclear how the sub classification works (eg 625.261 steam locomotives).

Apparently the NMRA uses such a Dewey sub-classification but I can't seem to access it; Blaydon Library used to have a much larger collection (sub classified) than the dozen or so rail books it has on the 625 shelf now.

 

Can any more knowledgeable rail modelling librarians or booksellers help please?

dh

Hi DH,

 

I can't help at all and the linked video is of even less use but at least, unlike me, it is funny;

 

 

Sorry, couldn't resist it,

 

Gibbo.

[Steamport Southport]

That Two Ronnies sketch reminds me of the young lad that volunteered in my charity shop. Not exactly the brightest spark, but he meant well.

 

 

He was asked to sort the books out and remove all the scruffy and "yellow" ones. Meaning get rid of the ones with discoloured pages.

 

He went through them and sorted them out into cover colours and binned any that had yellow on the cover.   

 

 

 

Jason

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Can any more knowledgeable rail modelling librarians or booksellers help please?

I don't own to either of these, but through being married to a librarian am acquainted with no fewer than four railway enthusiast librarians (three of whom have long ago morphed into Information Scientists) who have had lifelong employment variously in the cataloguing operations of academia, County archive and British Library collections. Safe to say that none of them is in complete agreement with another, this being the essential characteristic of science, doubt and debate is all.

 

In short, get the Dewey classification, and make your own decision based on the primary content of the book.

[Steamport Southport]

I always find it a bit strange that there is two railway book sections.

 

625 and another one which I think is in the 300s.

 

 

 

Jason

[AncientMariner]

I always find it a bit strange that there is two railway book sections.

 

625 and another one which I think is in the 300s.

 

 

 

Jason

 

If I'm correct, section 385 covers transportation.  I've often found railway books in this section.

 

John

[runs as required]

You will all be delighted to hear that above mentioned b####y wife really enjoyed your answers to my question about trying to get 'my head around my piles'. She is still going around laughing about it.

 

I've already downloaded the Dewey Classification: railway books in the 300s are '385 rail transportation'

 

I just continue re- arranging my piles - convincing myself this is 'self improvement'

 

For example I've never thrown away timetables: Italian, Portuguese, Cooks Continental, LSWR working timetable, GCR 1903, 1914 Bradshaw.

I shall sleep on the matter....

[Pacific231G]

I came upon this in the 1980s when I worked in Southampton and Winchester Library had a wonderfully enormous railway section. 385 covered railways as transportation while 625 covered them as engineering with model railways as a sub-classification of 625. The problem was that in a library with a whole lot of books on say American railroads you were dealing with quite small sub-classifications several places beyond the decimal point and the Dewy distinctions often placed books that did relate to one another on totally different shelves .

 

I found this on a blog which illustrates the problem rather well.

 

"The “serious” literature on model railways and trains is classed in subdivisions of 625 Engineering of railroads. For example, The model locomotive from scratch is classed at 625.1961 Models of steam locomotives (built with 625.19 Model and miniature railroads and trains, plus 61 from 625.261 Steam locomotives, following instructions at 625.19); it should be noted that 625.19 is a displacement from 625[.100228].  Models and miniatures of a specific kind of special-purpose railroad are drawn off from 625.19 to 625.3-625.6; for example, Scale model electric tramways—and how to model them is classed in 625.60228 Models of surface rail and trolley systems (built with 625.6 Surface rail and trolley systems, plus T1—0228 Models and miniatures)......" and so on. I got lost after "displacement"

 

The real problem, it seems to me, with using a standard calaloguing system for your personal library is that it may well not tally with your own interests. For example, does a book about early French electric locomotives that worked in the south west oif the country  belong with other books on locomotives. railway electrification,  French railways or the Chemin de Fer du Midi. Three different people may well have five different answers to such questions depending on their current context and their own specific interests.  We're probably dealing here  with a multi-dimensional matrix.

 

Informally, I suspect the answer is that so long as you know how your books are sorted and know your own library there's likely no need for any other cataloguing system. Though my books are generally sorted into rough categories there is effectively a superarching categorisation which is how often do I refer to them with the most referred to books being on a separate and easily accessible shelf.

 

The formal answer is probably to generate metadata about each book and use that to find what you need. I don't know if there is any free software to do the searching but you can get some way with a spreadsheet.  Ask your wife to explain metadata in terms of information retrieval. She may well take your piles of books rather more seriously. 

Edited September 15, 2018 by Pacific231G

[kevinlms]

There seems nothing at all indexed on this so I'm jumping in with a new Topic.

I'm clearing up my end of the house. I have piles of books relating to past work and teaching and even untidier much larger heaps of my rail 'porn' that go back to 1946 LNER pre-renumbering ABCs and even inherited dead rail enthusiast's treasures !

Smug booky wife working from the other end of house files her stuff under the Dewey system and it now seems sensible to fall in with this.

 

Problem is that within 625 Railways it is unclear how the sub classification works (eg 625.261 steam locomotives).

Apparently the NMRA uses such a Dewey sub-classification but I can't seem to access it; Blaydon Library used to have a much larger collection (sub classified) than the dozen or so rail books it has on the 625 shelf now.

 

Can any more knowledgeable rail modelling librarians or booksellers help please?

dh

I would suggest forgetting about using the Dewey system (as others have pointed out, some are in the 385 section),

 

A sub list of 625 does exist.

 

625 Engineering of railroads, roads 

625.1 Railroads

625.2 Railroad rolling stock

625.3 Inclined, mountain, ship railroads

625.4 Rapid transit systems

625.5 Cable and aerial railways

625.6 Surface rail and trolley systems

625.7 Roads

625.8 Artificial road surfaces

 

I suspect that much of your collection will technically come into the first two.

 

instead come up with a system that suits you. I'm probably guessing that your wife never looks at them anyway, so you don't need to make them logical for her to find!

 

Perhaps by Publisher or even the ISBN system.

 

Or something easy for you to visualise. For example, my late Canadian aunt had a large collection of maps from all over northern America. They were arranged geographically in the book shelves, so British Columbia maps were in the top left. the Atlantic provinces top right, Florida bottom right etc.

 

So Scottish railway topics would be at the top, GWR to bottom left etc.

[south_tyne]

To reiterate some of the above,625 is normally used as the default classification for most railway books but 385 is also used. I have worked in libraries where all railway books (no matter the subtleties which are highlighted in the Dewey system) are filed under 625. In reality to have them all in one place is a more sensible and practical approach, making life easier for both borrower and staff!

 

Much of that will be down to each local authorities approach mind and often is the decision of one indvidual as the person responsible for classification of new books. Speaking very personally, before retirement my Dad was a librarian for Gateshead Council and tried to ensure that all railway books were filed under 625 wherever possible! Ultimately however, if you are browsing then it is work looking under both 625 and 385 to see what is available.

[Fenman]

... I have worked in libraries where all railway books (no matter the subtleties which are highlighted in the Dewey system) are filed under 625. In reality to have them all in one place is a more sensible and practical approach, making life easier for both borrower and staff!

 

...

I was lucky enough to inherit responsibility for a small (c.10,000 volumes) research library at a membership organisation. We used Dewey, but the previous team had rather faithfully followed the system, so classifications like this were not uncommon: 625.60228

 

But that implies at least 100 million classifications - or, pro rata, roughly 1,000 classification options for each single volume, which suggested to me an overly complicated structure for that number of volumes.

 

In practise, even though the collection was much stronger in some areas than others, we rarely went beyond one decimal place.

 

Many British non-fiction books now helpfully carry British Library catalogue information somewhere near the title page, which also took the burden off some poor non-specialist trying to classify the entirety of human knowledge.

 

As you suggested, a moment’s thinking about the scale and nature of the collection, and how users might search for books, is probably more sensible than slavishly following Dewey’s multiple levels of decimals.

 

Librarian has always been my alternative fantasy career. I now feel like sorting my books out.

 

Paul

[laurenceb]

As long as you can find the book you need any system will do

[hmrspaul]

This is a subject that is of immediate interest as I'm librarian of the Ebor Group of Railway modellers and we are moving 600 books (as well as a considerable stock of magazines). From my working life I was well aware of how difficult Dewey was as it separated science (500s) and applied sciences (600s) So a book about insects was in the 500, one about insects being pests was in the 600s.

 

Railways - you haven't mentioned railway modelling books. Where do they go? Within some space constraints I've tried to separate the modelling books from the prototype. But for the prototype do I continue to go with use the big 4 as the main split (to include their predecessors and BR regions) and then to group books on locos from rolling stock and architecture etc. Where do the general books go? And is this split sensible or do I put all the loco books together, all the wagons, all the carriages etc.

 

I really would welcome some advice for Ebor! Unlike a personal collection all the members have to be able to use it when I'm swanning around the Amazon.

 

My own library tends to be split between the books I refer to regularly, those used occasionally and those that were an interesting purchase/gift but rarely looked at! Not good but I usually know where something is!

 

Paul

Edited September 16, 2018 by hmrspaul

[kevinlms]

This is a subject that is of immediate interest as I'm librarian of the Ebor Group of Railway modellers and we are moving 600 books (as well as a considerable stock of magazines). From my working life I was well aware of how difficult Dewey was as it separated science (500s) and applied sciences (600s) So a book about insects was in the 500, one about insects being pests was in the 600s.

 

Railways - you haven't mentioned railway modelling books. Where do they go? Within some space constraints I've tried to separate the modelling books from the prototype. But for the prototype do I continue to go with use the big 4 as the main split (to include their predecessors and BR regions) and then to group books on locos from rolling stock and architecture etc. Where do the general books go? And is this split sensible or do I put all the loco books together, all the wagons, all the carriages etc.

 

I really would welcome some advice for Ebor! Unlike a personal collection all the members have to be able to use it when I'm swanning around the Amazon.

 

My own library tends to be split between the books I refer to regularly, those used occasionally and those that were an interesting purchase/gift but rarely looked at! Not good but I usually know where something is!

 

Paul

As for where to put modelling books.

 

168

Argument & persuasion?

 

More seriously.

• 793.9 Other indoor diversions

[melmerby]

What happened to the 621 classification?

IIRC some railway books were there as well.

 

Keith

Edited September 16, 2018 by melmerby

[Alex TM]

That Two Ronnies sketch reminds me of the young lad that volunteered in my charity shop. Not exactly the brightest spark, but he meant well.

 

 

He was asked to sort the books out and remove all the scruffy and "yellow" ones. Meaning get rid of the ones with discoloured pages.

 

He went through them and sorted them out into cover colours and binned any that had yellow on the cover.   

 

 

 

Jason

I once had a summer job in a local public library.  One of the university students, on a summer placement, managed to 'lose' a huge chunk of the audio cd section.  At a glance we could see that the racks were fairly full, yet we would often fail to find things.  One day, by chance, we solved the mystery when we found The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc all filed under ...... 'T'!

[melmerby]

I once had a summer job in a local public library.  One of the university students, on a summer placement, managed to 'lose' a huge chunk of the audio cd section.  At a glance we could see that the racks were fairly full, yet we would often fail to find things.  One day, by chance, we solved the mystery when we found The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc all filed under ...... 'T'!

I've got a music book listing all the hits from the year dot to about 2000* (*I think)

Unfortunately they do the same thing with proper names as well.

e.g. all Johns are listed in order of their second name under "John" .

As an example you will find Art Garfunkel before Bryan Adams.

Most confusing.

At least ZZ Top is at the end

 

Keith

Edited September 16, 2018 by melmerby

[Steamport Southport]

I once had a summer job in a local public library.  One of the university students, on a summer placement, managed to 'lose' a huge chunk of the audio cd section.  At a glance we could see that the racks were fairly full, yet we would often fail to find things.  One day, by chance, we solved the mystery when we found The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc all filed under ...... 'T'!

 

I spend ages sorting out the DVDs, CDs and books in my charity shop. Not that I mind as it gives me something to do.

 

I'm the only one that does it, everyone else just slings them on the shelves. We are supposed to have a system.

 

They should at least put the kids DVDs separate from the 18s though. Of course little Billy wants a film called Zombie Flesh Eaters or Zombie Strippers but he can't have it....

 

 

 

Jason

[NorthBrit]

I gave up going to the library.  Books were everywhere.

 

I just have my own system

 

Top right  --  Model Railway Modelling

Top Middle  --  Bradshaw's

Top Left  --  Local Railway interest.

 

Middle Right   ---    Northumberland, Durham and North British Railway.

Middle Remainder  --  Railways in General.

 

Top Left  --  Road Transport,  Trams and Canals

Top Right  --   General Books

Middle Shelf  --  Shipping

 

Enough reading matter there for me and easy to find.

Edited September 16, 2018 by NorthBrit

[Steamport Southport]

The problem with most systems is books are all different sizes.

 

I try to keep them together with say wagons books, then carriages, locomotives, etc. But most of the time they just get put where they fit.

 

 

 

Jason

[runs as required]

What happened to the 621 classification?

IIRC some railway books were there as well.

Keith

The catalogue I have downloaded tells me 621 is applied physics.

 

I would suggest forgetting about using the Dewey system (as others have pointed out, some are in the 385 section),

A sub list of 625 does exist.

.... something easy for you to visualise. For example, my late Canadian aunt had a large collection of maps from all over northern America. They were arranged geographically in the book shelves, so British Columbia maps were in the top left. the Atlantic provinces top right, Florida bottom right etc.

I used to do  exactly this with a huge collection I built up of colour slides (now all up in the attic) and still do with all our maps in the shelves behind me.

 

Once again thanks so much for your contributions.

I used to rely just on recall, but age is fogging up my once reliable memory.

 

I'm going to put all the piles into 3 main groups centering on 625

624 Civil Engineering (for stuff on stations as well as civ. eng); 625 Railway Engineering, 627 Hydraulic (canal) Engineering

I notice 720 Architecture does it by age (and building type)

 

I'm about to start using the stairs to classify piles sorted by (say):

1. date: General history/early/victorian&pre grouping/Big Four/BR/post BR (including Bios? e.g.Stephensons/Brunel/Bulleid/Cox/ Cook
2. geog: world/Eur/African/Americas/Asian
3. General Management
4. Publicity/poster literature
5. timetables and ephemera
6. spotter books
7. modelling
8. photo albums
9. gifts from well meaning relatives

I'm not going to mark the material with a classification, but just label the shelf e,g,

 625.104 (BR period material); 625,201 (European); 626.9 (gifts from well meaning relatives)

 

This is the current idea; tomorrow is another day

dh

Edited September 16, 2018 by runs as required

[Nearholmer]

Once your book collection gets to a certain size, it is necessary to devise your own system that works for you and your ‘specialisms’.

 

Mine, which would work for nobody else, goes roughly as follows:

 

- light and narrow gauge (public)

 

- industrial railways

 

- military railways

 

- southern railway and constituents

 

- technical and historical (electrical)

 

- technical and historical (internal combustion)

 

- history of model/toy trains

 

- trams (not electrical)

 

- other things

 

Of course, many things cross categories - those are the ones I lose most often!

 

A friend of mine is a serious LNWR enthusiast, who shelves his books from Euston northwards, with carriages at Wolverton and locos at Crewe. I forget where wagons go.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Rivercider]

My system has sort of evolved over the years.

 

My 200 or so 'commonly used' books are in the lounge arranged so they look fairly tidy.

Hence the Middleton Press, Bradford Barton, Ian Allan, OPC, Past and Present series, etc, are all grouped together.

I have the modelling books, rail atlases, diesel books, freight train books, together.

I try to keep the GWR and LSWR separate (!). 

 

Large books are separate in the hallway, while my WTTs and other BR publication hide away in the train room,

 

cheers

[Kingdom2]

I faced this problem with collections of railway (1500 vols) and military (1000 vols) books, so having been a librarian all my wortking life, I devised my own scheme based on the Universal Decimal Classification - a BSI update of Dewey which is available for free download on-line

 

The railway classification, which reflects my own interests in GWR, military, industrial and modelling is:

 

Main Headings

 

000 General

010 Railway History - general

011 " " - UK

060 Photographic collections - general

061 " " " - UK (Company specific in 100-150)

 

100 British Railway Companies to 1948

110 GWR & predecessors

111 London - Bristol

112 Wales

113 S West

114 Midlands

120 LMS & predecessors

121 London

122 Wales

123 Midlands

124 Scotland

130 SR & predecessors

131 London

132 South East

133 Central

134 South West

135 IoW

140 LNER & predecessors

141 London

142 Midlands

143 E Anglia

144 N East

145 Scotland

150 BR 1948-1996

151 London

152 Wales ) Western

153 Central S & S West ) Region

154 Midlands ) Midland Region

155 South ) Southern

156 IoW ) Region

157 E Anglia ) Eastern Region

158 N East ) NE Region

159 Scotland ) Scottish Region

160 Private Companies 1996 -

161 London

162 Wales

163 S West

164 Midlands

165 South

166 IoW

167 E Anglia

168 N East

169 Scotland

 

200 Industrial & Narrow Gauge

210 Industrial - general

211 Mining

212 Docks & Harbours

213 Other industries

220 Narrow Gauge - general

221 Narrow Gauge - UK

222 Narrow Gauge - other

 

300 Military Railways & Railways in wartime

310 UK

320 NWE

330 Med

340 Middle East

350 Far East

360 USA

 

400 Model

410 Layout Design

420 Layout Construction

421 Baseboards

422 Track

423 Electrics

430 Stock

431 Locos

432 Passenger stock

433 'Brown' stock

434 Wagons

440 Scenery

441 'Landscape'

442 Buildings - Railway

443 Buildings - Industrial/Commercial

444 Buildings - private

445 Lineside equipment

446 Street furniture

447 Road vehicles

450 Painting/Lining/Lettering

460 Operation

 

Common Sub-divisions

Added after the classification number in brackets

B Biography

(005) Catalogues/Lists/Bibliographies

(010) History

(020) Management/Operation

(021) Accidents

(030) Locos

(031) Design/Construction/Livery

(032) Maintenance/Workshops

(033) Operating/MPD's

(034) Disposal

(040) Passenger & 'Brown' stock

(041) Design/Construction/Livery

(042) Coaches

(043) Parcels stock

(044) Horse Boxes

(050) Wagons

(051) Design/Construction/Livery

(052) Vans

(053) Open

(054) Flats & Bolsters

(055) Tanks

(056) Specials

(057) Service stock

(058) Private Owners - Coal & Minerals

(059) Private Owners - Tanks & Others

(060) Signalling

(070) Civil Engineering & Buildings

(071) Bridges, viaducts etc

(072) Buildings - Railway

(076) Lineside equipment

(079) Road vehicles

(080) Track

 

I tried to keep it simple (unlike those I used in work which could run to four decimal places plus two bracketed sets), so most subjets could be covered by one main number and one bracketed number, EG

 

a photgraphic collection of wagons  060(050)

 

LMS locos operating in Wales    122 (030)

 

John

[runs as required]

Can't believe how lucky I am to have more suggestions roll in (while picking up and puzzling over my much loved large format book 'Compounding' and which pile would best harbour it.)

Unlike most, I am rather ashamed of my 'porn' and would not dream of having it anywhere near the front door in the hall! I have a rather high profile extrovert ex-colleague (with a 1:1 scale layout) who hits every visitor hard with his enthusiasm down a long entrance hall lined with shelving at his converted station.

 

On the contrary - what do I have reachable in the wee small hours from my bedside?

Very well thumbed pre grouping atlas from late 1950s with my colouring in of LCDR, S&D and East Lancs. and Irish pre 1922 as a taped in photocopy, Cooks Continental reprint of 1914 ( my fave), Bradshaw of 1922, some WTTs, and a couple of bound Railway Magazines being re-read for the umpteenth time; perhaps some old mags someone has dashed me recently.

dh

Edited September 16, 2018 by runs as required