Remember “sassy, unconventional” librarian Ally Sheffield? The heroine of Josephine Carr’s The Dewey decimal system of love (New American Library, 2003)? Well, who knows how much more lucky in love she would have been if she’d known the Dewey numbers for flirting? Which we present to you today, as a public service, hot from the lean mean LCSH/DDC mapping machine that is the Dewey editorial team: works on flirting should be classed at 306.73 (sociology of dating) or 646.77 (dating skills). Flush with this new knowledge, and in a purely professional interest you understand, your intrepid reporter took it upon himself to check the shelves at 646.77. And to think I’d always thought How to hug was volume 8 of the OED. (Okay, okay, it’s back to the Old Jokes Home for that one ...)
On the subject of "How to hug", there is an real Australian encyclopedia, with one of the volumes titled "Marsupials to Parliament". I don't think it was intended as a political statement. (And the Dewey numbers for those encyclopedia entries would be 599.2 and 328.94).
Posted by: Giles Martin | July 13, 2005 at 11:02 AM