One of the things we’ve tried (and failed) to do in the past is impose any sort of organisation on how we lay out the books in our tents at the Blazing Swan event. There IS a lot to be said for randomness – it creates the opportunity for random (delighted) surprise when people come across a book they didn’t expect to find in that particular place. But since ALL the books are in a place people didn’t expect to find them (a paddock in the West Australian Wheatbelt) then we don’t really need to add to that delight by further muddling them up. There’s a lot to be said for having same-type books together. When you find one you enjoy all the other ones you are likely to enjoy are just nearby. Our library browsers are patient people, but the Blazing Swan event in a hundred siren calls tugging people away to see and do other things. We can help out by making things a little bit easier for people – and for ourselves. Many’s the time I wanted to fetch a book for someone but had no idea where to start looking.
So when a friend suggested adding an indicator to each book (a ‘dot’) to make it easier to see what type of book it was I was immediately dismissive. Before I realized that this would make it possible to quickly sort the 5,000 books between taking them out of the shipping container (where they are stored according to size and all mixed up ‘type-wise’) and putting them in boxes in the tents at the start of the event. All the books of a certain ‘type’ could be put together in the same tent (or the same part of a particular tent). Which is what my friend intended (in making the suggestion) all along. So having seen the light, now I’m seeing dots.
Red for Experience (history and people and places)
Green for Science, Nature and Technology
Blue for fiction
Orange for ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’
Yellow for Art, music, poetry and bookish things.
So we’ve ‘dotted’ our 3,300 books stored in the shipping container. And so far the dots are still sticking to the spines of the books. Since some books ‘hang around’ for up to five years before finding a new ‘owner’ I’m hoping the dots keep on sticking on.
