For the first entry in my new blog, Books by the Numbers, I have decided to start at the start: the 000s. I am not considering myself locked into tackling the numbers in order, but I deem this as good a place as any to start out. The 000s is indeed a diverse division, having subjects ranging from the Loch Ness Monster to computer programming to book collecting. It is also contains some of the most quickly dating material in the collection.
For instance, we recently withdrew a book titled The Internet for Dummies, 7th ed. copyrighted 2000 (004.67 LE). Then, I found the 1st ed. from 1993 classed at 384.3 (in 1993, the librarians probably did not know what to do with it), and I withdrew it as well. The latter book, while being an introductory text to the Internet in 1993, would no doubt bewilder people who today use the Internet quite regularly. Things have changed so much in the past 15 years! This illustrates why it is such a challenge for librarians to keep their computer books up-to-date.
A listing of the newest selections from this area in the Emmetsburg Public Library prove that we are trying to meet this challenge. They are: Amp Your MySpace Page: Essential Tools for Giving Your Profile an Extreme Makeover (006.7 BU), How to do Everything With YouTube (006.7 FA), and How to do Everything With Podcasting (006.7 HO). In the Young Adult section we have The Rough Guide to MySpace & Other Online Communities (YA 004.69 BU). Each of these books deals with a different Internet-based computer application that is currently popular.
While the computer manuals are a very popular group of materials and very current in their area of study, other books classed in the 000s enjoy a more ephemeral popularity. These are works of controversial knowledge, and they include: Into the Bermuda Triangle : Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery (001.94 QU), Atlantis and the Lost Lands (001.94 ST), and The Secret Power of Pyramids (001.94 AK). We also have a set of reference books from the Marshall Cavendish Company called The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time (001.9 UN).
Each month, I will be featuring several books I find to be engaging reads. Rather than how-to-manuals or books that merely lay out the facts, these are non-fiction books that tell a good story.
My first featured read is Aaron Lansky's Outwitting History: the Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books (002.075 LA). No, this is not a story set in the Holocaust pitting a compassionate Gentile librarian shepherding Yiddish books across the border into safety under the noses of Nazi book-burners. Rather, Aaron Lansky was Jewish graduate student in 1980 when he dedicated himself towards preserving the Yiddish language in books.
So, why did Yiddish need saving in 1980, 35 years after the Holocaust? As it turns out, Yiddish, by that time, had become something of an orphan language. Hebrew was the language spoken in Israel. Jewish European immigrants to America were formerly a significant population of Yiddish speakers, but they had largely failed to pass on the language to their children. The Jews that remained in Europe became the victims of the Nazis, Stalin, and other anti-Semitic forces.
Lansky's efforts met with some apathy at first, but the book is chock full of stories of individuals who had kept their cherished Yiddish books for decades and then passed them on to Lansky's National Yiddish Book Center when they had to move on to a nursing home or before.
The book is wonderfully peppered with Yiddish phrases, which are always translated. If you know a bit of German, though, they are a special linguistic delight, for the languages share much in common.
The rather rollicking story of the group of Lansky and his zamlers (book collectors) makes an excellent can't-put-it-down read that can easily be digested in a few sittings. Anyone who has a love for books should fall in love with the man, Lansky, and his cause.
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