Humor: The New Alphabet

Biblia, the Warrior Librarian writes “Warrior Librarian Weekly is the first to break the news on the New Alphabet and the implications for libraries. See: The New Alphabet online.”

May 22, 2004 by Dan G. Uncategorized 6

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Fang-Face says:

May 23, 2004 at 2:59 am

I don’t get it.
But what does this have to do with libraries? There isn’t any mention of libraries anywhere in the article, or even of books, for that matter. It’s all about the alphabet, and books are not shelved in alphabetical order, they are shelved by Dewey number. So this story is completely irrelevant to libraries and librarians.

Now, it is relevant to me as a writer, but I don’t imagine that I’m going to get a contract to rewrite the spelling in all those books.

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rochelle says:

May 23, 2004 at 6:17 pm

Re:I don’t get it.
Obviously you’ve never had to alphabetize catalog cards. The implications for off-the-grid libraries are staggering!

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Dan G. says:

May 24, 2004 at 12:03 am

Re:I don’t get it.
From the article (it’s at the end)

“The Board of Education acknowledges that these changes to the alphabet may impact slightly on school library collections, and has therefore enclosed a book voucher for materials to the value of $10.00 to assist in updating the print resources.”

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Brian says:

May 24, 2004 at 4:40 am

Dewey or don’t we?
Not everyone uses Dewey. This new alphabet could have a huge impact on libraries that use LC classification!

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ChuckB says:

May 24, 2004 at 9:08 pm

And don’t forget fiction

I don’t know about Canada, but many U.S. public libraries shelve prose fiction in alpha order by author last name, author first name, title. Trying to squeeze all the popular fiction into the 800s would be ugly, especially if building the longer sorts of class number after the decimal.

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Biblia, the Warrior says:

May 25, 2004 at 12:29 pm

Re:I don’t get it.

Fang-face is completely correct. The New Alphabet will not have any effect on libraries that do not use any form of text (print or digital). One example might be a video library, providing they didn’t need to use titles written in western English. Or carry any letter-defined rating system. Colored dots on spines would get around this.

Also, The New Alphabet will not effect libraries that only carry information/literature in Chinese, Japanese, Cryllic, or any other non-Western English writing format. The Original Library of Alexandria would not have had to do very much … except with maybe Alpha, Beta, etc.

With respect to Fang-Face’s writing as a career, it might indeed have an impact on his contract as most of the letters will disappear off the page. 🙂

So, the New Alphabet will only impact on libraries where words written in western English are used either within the resources, or in any form of metadata.

I hope this clears things up for those who might have been confused.

Biblia

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