Sample Library Field Trip for 11/17

I swung by Memorial Library to find my Halloween book on Tuesday, on my way to class.  I remembered that that was the library it was in, though not the exact title or author.  So in the lobby of Memorial, I did a search in the catalog for "halloween party night," which I remembered as being part of it.  Bingo, the record popped up.  I scribbled down the call number and checked the directory to the right of the elevators. (There's some new electronic directory thing in the lobby now, as well, but I don't actually know how to use it, so I just used the posted paper one.)  I check my scribbled LoC call number against it, and - fifth floor.  Screw taking that many stairs, my ankle's still busted.  I get on the elevator and push five.

On the fifth floor itself, I know I need the north stacks - the fifth is one of the weird split-level floors in Memorial, where the North stacks are like a half-flight down from the South ones.  There's a little map just at the entry to the stacks showing me where to go, and it doesn't take long for me to make my way to the back of the room.  It took me a little longer to find the actual book, because it didn't have the full title printed on the spine, and I was sort of scanning them in a hurry.  It's in the middle of a bunch of books that all look like they're about Halloween; my favorite title that I spot is, "Death Makes a Holiday."

I finally spot it, and take a quick picture on my phone of the shelves above and below it so I can get out of there.  (After all, I'm not actually writing a paper on Halloween, so there's no reason for me to check the book out.  Otherwise, I would probably check the table of contents and/or index to see if it looked useful for me.)  The shelf below is easy to figure out - it's clearly a whole shelf of books on Christmas.  I'm still not entirely sure, however, exactly what comes just before the Halloween books, because a whole bunch of them were written in languages I do not know.  I picked up some titles in Spanish about festivals and at least one in English saying it was about Chinese New Year, so I'm guessing it was some sort of category of "Miscellaneous holidays."  Looks like that's how LoC categorizes this stuff; if it were in a Dewey Decimal system catalog, the foreign language books would probably be in a different section.  Trip done, I go forth in search of coffee.