railway and rail modelling library classification

[melmerby]

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

 

dh

Correct

But some aspects of railway operations could feasibly be included in some subsections (Electric Drive?)

 

Keith

[melmerby]

My bookshelves:

 

 

 

On Top: Mainly atlasses including some none railway and "From the Air"

Top shelf: OS 1:50000

Next: Old OS Maps + mixed

Next: Large Books, none GWR

Next Large Books GWR

Bottom: OS 1:25000

 

 

Travel Guides

 

 

Various railway including more atlasses

 

Keith

Edited September 16, 2018 by melmerby

[runs as required]

I cannot approach the neatness of your shelves Melmerby, but I’ve had an exciting time today beginning in the wee small  hours  ransacking  my untidy shelves – and in doing so , as you can see, I’ve buried the far end of the big  11 ft x 5ft  roundy-round under a whole lot of dusty non-railway stuff indignant about being turfed out after a quarter of a century or so.

                               Dewey 625 railway engineering shelves taking shape                      the whole far end of my work room

 

What I am pleased about is the beginnings of an emerging structure to the railway ‘library’ centred upon Dewey 625. I’ve got about a third ‘placed’ and realise I shall have take over the full 7 shelf high bay. The distance between shelves I set at 300mm when I constructed them around the room 30 odd years ago and they still seem to accommodate all but the grossly oversized material that has to go up on the top shelf.

The immediate objective is trying to get my head around what I’ve accumulated and be able to retrieve it as my memory is worsening noticeably as the seasons pass.

 

I’ve found some wonderful stuff: the best  I swear I have never seen before: the published script (fully illustrated) of a BBC 1944  60 minute Feature Broadcast  JUNCTION ‘X’ by  Cecil  McGivern.

I’ve frequently  cheated in  my classifying: for example LTC (Tom) Rolt properly gets filed under early railways with his biographies of Brunel and the Stephensons but I put all the other books I have of his at the same place: Red for Danger as well as his autobiog and canal books.

 

Interesting when I Iook over it all, that I don’t appear to have pet hates or particular favourites – so evident among real experts in this Forum.

Conclusion: I’m nobbut a boringly empirical magpie.

dh

Edited September 18, 2018 by runs as required

[BR60103]

I have also seen some railway interest books filed under "local history".

 

Anne Fadiman in her book Ex Libris talks about merging her husband's library with hers. One filed by topic and the other by author.

[Old Gringo]

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 (David?),

 

I've also spent years collecting books and over the last five or so attempted to put some of them and associated printed items into a computer spreadsheet.  Whilst engaged in this, I've also tried to sort by category and have begun to use George Ottley's classifications suggested in the 'Bibliography of Railway History', the first volume of which was published in 1965.

 

The general area classification runs from A (General History) through to T (General Directories, Atlases, Gazeteers, Timetables, etc.).  "George Ottley's Bibliography was conceived within the book-stacks of the British Library, where he spent most of his working life".  The Bibliography now runs to three volumes (1966, 1988 & 1999), covering almost 20,000 British railway publications and is the best reference work of its kind..  The Railway & Canal Historical Society have continued to add to the Bibliography with annual supplements.

 

For my own collection, I've considered adding a couple more classification areas for Worldwide railways and Childrens books, but Ottley's system caters for almost every area encountered in the railway spectrum.

 

IMO, it's well worth a look at.

 

All the very best,

John. 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Dewey is pretty rubbish for classifying "Railways", as many have outlined above.

 

In a previous life as a chartered librarian I made a separate section in the library for all "Railway Related" books. The Dewey classification was

on the spine (and in the catalogue), but I put stickers on the books and put those of railway interest into one section.

 

As might be imagined, my railway books at home are in a complete mess.....

One day I'll sort them; one day.

[57xx]

In my local library, the railway books were filed up the stairs, 3rd isle on the left.

[RichardT]

 

On 19/09/2018 at 12:14, Old Gringo said:

I've also spent years collecting books and over the last five or so attempted to put some of them and associated printed items into a computer spreadsheet.  Whilst engaged in this, I've also tried to sort by category and have begun to use George Ottley's classifications suggested in the 'Bibliography of Railway History', the first volume of which was published in 1965.

 

The general area classification runs from A (General History) through to T (General Directories, Atlases, Gazeteers, Timetables, etc.).  "George Ottley's Bibliography was conceived within the book-stacks of the British Library, where he spent most of his working life".  The Bibliography now runs to three volumes (1966, 1988 & 1999), covering almost 20,000 British railway publications and is the best reference work of its kind..  The Railway & Canal Historical Society have continued to add to the Bibliography with annual supplements.

 

For my own collection, I've considered adding a couple more classification areas for Worldwide railways and Childrens books, but Ottley's system caters for almost every area encountered in the railway spectrum.

 

IMO, it's well worth a look at.

 

All the very best,

John. 

 

Incredibly late to come to this topic, but just in case anyone is still interested, the library at the National Railway Museum classifies and organises its collection using the Ottley classification.  A simple running number is then added to the Ottley classification code to identify a specific book, but for a home library you probably wouldn't need this - just use the Ottley classes to organise your shelf runs.  If space efficiency is an issue have two parallel runs - one for normal sized books and the other for "oversize" - just like a public library.

 

The NRM library catalogue can be searched by anyone via the link on this NRM webpage so you can see how the classification works.  To take a random example, a search for "border counties railway" brings up "The Border Counties Railway through time"  by Perkins, Roy G. ; MacIntosh, Ian.  The NRM reference number for this book is "C1/103", meaning it's shelved in Ottley class C1, and it's book number 103 within the C1 class. 

 

C1 in Ottley, by the way breaks down as:

C = "Rail Transport in particular areas of the British Isles"

Subdivision 1 = English localities (London; regions of England; the ECML and WCML routes to Scotland and the "Railway Races to the North")

 

C2 is Scotland; C3 Wales etc. etc.

 

It's not perfect - nothing is.  But George Ottley has done most of the monumental legwork of classification for you, and you are free to add your own twists, twiddles and extra sub-divisions as you see fit - it's your library.  For example many here might want to add some extra subject subdivisons for particular aspects of model railways to the broad brush Ottley class Q2 (Q = "Appreciation of Railways"; Q2 = "Model Railway Engineering).  Ottley originally excluded "indoor model railways" from Q2, but it's the obvious place for them to go, and anyway the index entry in Ottley vol.1 for "model railways" refers you to class Q2.

 

And of course, for a small home library you only need a broad-brush classification just to narrow down your search.  After that you just look along the shelves for a specific book.

 

Hope that is of some use to someone after all this time,

Richard

 

Full disclosure: for eleven years I was first Archivist and then Senior Curator for 2D collections at the NRM, working closely with Phil Atkins and Karen Baker in the NRM library.  So, I'm very biased, although most of my time was spent raising funds to build Search Engine, and then managing the actual build project, not reading books.  More's the pity.

[Old Gringo]

16 hours ago, RichardT said:

 

 

Incredibly late to come to this topic, but just in case anyone is still interested, the library at the National Railway Museum classifies and organises its collection using the Ottley classification.  A simple running number is then added to the Ottley classification code to identify a specific book, but for a home library you probably wouldn't need this - just use the Ottley classes to organise your shelf runs.  If space efficiency is an issue have two parallel runs - one for normal sized books and the other for "oversize" - just like a public library.

 

The NRM library catalogue can be searched by anyone via the link on this NRM webpage so you can see how the classification works.  To take a random example, a search for "border counties railway" brings up "The Border Counties Railway through time"  by Perkins, Roy G. ; MacIntosh, Ian.  The NRM reference number for this book is "C1/103", meaning it's shelved in Ottley class C1, and it's book number 103 within the C1 class. 

 

C1 in Ottley, by the way breaks down as:

C = "Rail Transport in particular areas of the British Isles"

Subdivision 1 = English localities (London; regions of England; the ECML and WCML routes to Scotland and the "Railway Races to the North")

 

C2 is Scotland; C3 Wales etc. etc.

 

It's not perfect - nothing is.  But George Ottley has done most of the monumental legwork of classification for you, and you are free to add your own twists, twiddles and extra sub-divisions as you see fit - it's your library.  For example many here might want to add some extra subject subdivisons for particular aspects of model railways to the broad brush Ottley class Q2 (Q = "Appreciation of Railways"; Q2 = "Model Railway Engineering).  Ottley originally excluded "indoor model railways" from Q2, but it's the obvious place for them to go, and anyway the index entry in Ottley vol.1 for "model railways" refers you to class Q2.

 

And of course, for a small home library you only need a broad-brush classification just to narrow down your search.  After that you just look along the shelves for a specific book.

 

Hope that is of some use to someone after all this time,

Richard

 

Full disclosure: for eleven years I was first Archivist and then Senior Curator for 2D collections at the NRM, working closely with Phil Atkins and Karen Baker in the NRM library.  So, I'm very biased, although most of my time was spent raising funds to build Search Engine, and then managing the actual build project, not reading books.  More's the pity.

 

Thanks for posting this extra information, Richard - and adding the link to the NRM website.

 

All the very best, John.