Author: A Burdett

Welcome to Marginalia. While our stated goal is to keep everyone up to date with the services we provide here at the circulation desk, the general idea is to present that information in a light-hearted, but relevant manner.

The Diana Priestly Law Library was designed to promote a positive and inclusive environment for everyone who walks through the door. To that end, we offer multi-functional classrooms, enclosed study spaces (both individual and group) as well as one of the finest collections of law books in all of Canada.

The reserve room, located next to the circulation desk, is where we keep our high demand material along with various other items of interest (including Professor Ted McDorman’s famous rubber chicken).

If you’re feeling the pressure of post-secondary stress, or just need a place to chill out between classes, you’ll want to visit our Relaxation Station on the first floor. We also have a single-occupancy respite room for those individuals who require something a little more private, but you’ll need to pick up a key from the circulation desk to access the space.

As for locating particular items, we operate under the Library of Congress classification (LCC) system. It may sound challenging, but it’s really not all that different from the Dewey Decimal arrangement they use at the public library (simply put, the LCC is alphanumeric in nature and ‘Dewey’ is not).

Although the LCC is fairly easy to navigate, every now and then someone will ask us why we don’t organize our material like they do over at the campus bookstore. It is an interesting idea, but we require a more precise method of organization – especially when the item in question is needed for more than one course or covers additional topics.

Just the same, if you ever have a problem finding anything – from a simple citation guide to Ted’s mystical chicken – feel free to stop by the loan desk and we’ll be more than happy to help.

With that in mind, I remember being asked by a graduate student if I could help them locate an item known as ‘The Red Book’ (which was all they could offer in the way of identification). An author, title or call number reference would’ve helped, but we eventually figured it out.

On a lighter note, the system can also be manipulated in some rather interesting and often entertaining ways. For example, I once thought it might be fun to use a LCC call number (in this case it was ‘KF259/C35/2014/c.3’) as a password for a ‘junk’ email site I was accessing at the time.

A few years later, a faculty member brought his Labrador retriever to the library in an effort to help students deal with exam stress by taking it for a walk. To make this work properly within the confines of the LCC we created a temporary call number that started with K9.

To this day patrons still ask us where we keep our copies of ‘The Red Book’, but thanks to the Library of Congress classification system they remain shelved under the same call number I once used for a password (a.k.a. ‘The McGill Law Journal’s Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation’).

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll join us for our next installment of Marginalia where we’ll take a look at the 1919 World Series and how a simple reliance on hearsay, rather than hard evidence, forever damaged the reputation of Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey.

by
david eugene everard

Editorial assistance and advice by Alex Burdett and everyone here at the circulation desk
Photo and art direction by Paul Totzke