RFC05: Encourage the use of OtherCallNumber (OCN) for storing Location

As othercallnumber is user defined field, for a small private user, this could be a single letter e.g. L-Lounge, S-Study, A-Attic etc

For the larger user, e.g. my local library, the bookshelves/bookstands are grouped by a three character code. The three characters are clearly marked on the spine in the vain hope that the public will put them back in the right group even if not in decimal classification order. Typical codes are :-

FOO=Food and Drink, SPO=Sport, HIS=Historical, HEA =Health, MBS=Mind Body Spirit, CRI=Crime, CHI=Children, TRV=Travel etc

A code can span multiple Shelves and Bookcases.

People are free to use whatever system fills their needs. The field is there.

1) why couldn't all of these suggestions be put in one post? They all deal with the same subject.

2) Ew. People use Other Call Number for many different things beyond location. If you want to dedicate a tag or a collection to location, as many people do, you can. But don't force people to use the system your way.

1) I split it up so that each point could be dealt with on its merits.
If it was all one suggestion, it would have got confusing.

2) My proposal does not force people to use it for location.
I am interested in how other people do use it.

Disagree. Your proposal here specifically asks for people to use Other Call Number as a Location.

OtherCallNumber is a user defined field
So it can be used in anyway that the user wants
It does not have to be location

However, I was under the impression that the most common use was for Location
so my example and suggestion is based on optimising that fact.

I have further proposals coming regarding Inventory Status that builds on using OtherCallNumber as location.

>1 JonathonL88: I don't see how this is a site-related issue at all. How people use the filed is an individual decision. It does not affect anyone else how I use it. AND there is nothing LT can do to affect my system of notation. It's a field for people who use their own call number system, which by definition is their own decision.

OK so how do you use OtherCallNumber?

>8 JonathonL88: Why? What does it matter? How does it affect your use of the field or of the site?

>6 JonathonL88: Tell me you don't understand Library terms without telling me you don't understand Library terms.

You are thinking in DATABASE terms.
Not in LIBRARY terms.

A call number IS a location number. It is a shelf location. It is how one finds a book, based on a specific set of criteria.
Other Call Number means it does not relate to a specific already defined call number system like Dewey or LoC.

>6 JonathonL88: Why would I want to optimize anything about my library for someone else's definition of optimal?

How exactly do you propose LibraryThing 'encourages' this? By forcing the field to comply to three characters? By making it a drop-down with codes you approve of? By messaging users who don't comply with what you perceive as optimal and telling them they're doing it wrong?

Some users use the field as you describe here, but the ones that aren't, aren't for a reason, and that doesn't affect you or any other user, so why should that ever change?

I am suggesting that the documentation provided by LibraryThing to someone planning or implementing LibraryThing should say something like

If you need to select books by location and you do not need to store international phone numbers (sic), then the (best) way to do this is to use the othercallnumber field.

I do not use use TinyCat but if you are using it for location then there should be no conflict.

If you are using LT in personal capacity then a single letter should suffice.

More info: https://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/faq/faq18callnumbers.php#:~:text=Each%....

>13 JonathonL88: "international phone numbers (sic)" - that's a double-translation showing an error either to the other language or back to English. "call number" in a library context has nothing to do with phones.

I'm not sure what/how it translates into other languages, but as the site you linked to says, "call number" is a very standard term in libraries and since LibraryThing uses library language, the assumption is that users would understand that it's an alternative to "Dewey Decimal" and "LC Classification". The three fields are also grouped together under "Classification" on the edit book and book details pages.

It may or may not help to clarify that a call number is not quite the same as location although it could be. If you look at the example of a Dewey Decimal number, it tells you how to find a book in relationship to other books, but it doesn't necessarily tell you on which exact shelf it's supposed to be located.

>13 JonathonL88: The documentation already says that https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Editing_your_books
Since help is context sensitive, opening it from 'edit book' page should land one right there, where it says for Other Call Number: Any other tracking ID you care to enter, such as an Open Library ID. Some people use this field for entering their own shelving location.

It's just not as proscriptive as you propose, and for good reason. The field was created precisely so that people can input whatever other classification and shelving notation they want, beside the DDC and LoC which have their own fields. It can be some other standard classification or a system peculiar just to you. It doesn't matter to anyone but those using that library. What system I or any other member uses has no bearing whatsoever on anyone else on LT.

>13 JonathonL88: If you need to select books by location .... (and) If you are using LT in personal capacity then a single letter should suffice (to describe the location). Note: "()" used to enclose imputed text because LT interprets square brackets as delimiters for touchstones.

Nonsense! We've got a few hundred books in the shelves in the dining room. We've got a couple hundred in the spare bedroom, and a few dozen in the living room (that number will increase). We've got at least a few thousand in the main portion of the basement, plus another couple hundred in the formed-by-homemade-shelving carve-out that serves as my office. We have a possibly uncountable number of books in my husband's home office, and that's before he retires and brings his personal work-related books home!

How is a one-letter designation supposed to help anyone efficiently find a book that might be in my office library or on the math shelf in the basement "library" region or in his office? (Where would we put the key to the one-letter system? Because the brains of a 60-something scientist and a 70-something engineer are not going to come up with the same 1-letter code for *any* system, no matter how long they've worked together!) How is he supposed to know whether I've put a book with the field guides in the living room or those in the basement or with the natural history books in the other corner of the basement? For that matter, how will I remember a year from now?

I wrote my first computer program in about 1979, and my latest a couple years ago. In college I was taught not to create write-only code. Yes, I remember 3-letter extensions on filenames and an n-character limit on variable names. 6? 8? It doesn't matter -- those limits have been gone for decades in the languages I've used! And by using more characters, I can more easily write code that a stranger can read ... thus satisfying Hoop's corollary, to "remember, after 6 months, you're a stranger".

Based on the nature of our books and our household and our brains/personalities I decided, after poking around LT for a little while, to use Collections to indicate location (what labelled shelves our books were on). Not how others typically do it, but it makes sense to us and for us, AND me using Collections this way doesn't impede how anyone else uses Collections in their library. So why on earth should other LT users be heavily restricted in the characters they can put into the "Other Call Number" field just because you can see a way to use the field with that type of restriction?

I am not restricting anyone to a single character. It was merely a suggestion. In my case, most of the books are in the lounge, and few that I will not need ready access are in storage boxes in the spare room. So maybe I will implement L for Lounge and B1, B2, B3 etc for the storage boxes. I know that anything more granular will not be kept uptodate.

>1 JonathonL88: RFC = "Request for comment" and you sure got a lot of comments, but I'm sure anyone understands what you are suggesting or why. I'm reading >1 JonathonL88: as just a statement of how one person can use OtherCallNumber and I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But even though I have thousands of books, I don't see the need for using call numbers. I need to spend more time reading and less time organizing my books :-)

RFC is meant to stand for Request for Change but it rather looks that Request for Comment is more accurate :-)

PS I have also just learnt that OtherCallNumber has a very special meaning for Librarians and has nothing to do with telephony.

If you look here, you see that the whole internet is the result of RFC's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments

For internet/comms RFC=Request for Comment
For Project Mgmt RFC=Request for Change
so depends on context. Guess here that means lot of comment.

Found a fun bit of history on RFC here..

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1amiwrg/comment/kpm775u/

On LibraryThing RFC means nothing, but this group is often referred to as RSI. If the recommended site improvements were numbered they'd probably be in the thousands...

>20 JonathonL88: RFC is meant to stand for Request for Change but it rather looks that Request for Comment is more accurate :-)

🤣
Although the Groups *are* all filed under "Talk" ;)

You've also given us all reason to remember to define our acronyms as we use them!