the dewey decimal system gone terribly wrong...

   My husband and I moved to Minot two months ago and as of yesterday I had not yet ventured into the venerable Minot Public Library. We had passed the building countless times on the way to and from work and the building's notable size had often caught my eye. 
   "There must be a decent book supply in such a large library," I thought day after day.
   Finally, today, I asked Jon to drop me off at the door, as I wanted to get a few history books on World War II.
   (Aside: I am very aware that the general historical overviews  provided to me in highschool did not stick, and I am fairly ignorant on huge swaths of world history. For a long time, I've meant to remedy that, so I finally went to Hobby Lobby and purchased a massive spiral-bound sketch book so that, as I read historical nonfiction, I can make scatterplots of the endless characters and hopefully remember the plot lines better. Anyway, back to the library...)
   I walked into the library and up the stairs, and relatively quickly found the history & biography section. I walked around the unlabeled shelving units for a minute until I found some WWII titles and biographies and started searching for the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. (Jon and I had listened to the audiobook over Christmas and I knew the story was absolutely fantastic. I'd been wanting to read the hardcopy for some time so I figured that would be a great place to start with my scatterplotting.) 
   I scanned over the titles in this WWII section and was surprised that Unbroken wasn't there. 
"This is a New York Times Bestseller...it'd be absurd if they didn't have it..." 
I started walking in circles around this area, feeling like I was missing something. This was the history section. How hard can this be? But the more I walked the more I realized that there was NO rhyme or reason to how the historical periods were organized. Right next to WWII was politics and to the left were books about the American Indians... 
   So I headed to their online catalog. I typed in "Hillenbrand." Nothing. I typed in "Unbroken." Nothing. I typed in WWII. Four books popped up. I decided to remain undeterred.
   Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a bent, laminated, clipart-laden sign pointing out that the section for biographies was over to my left. (I guess the biographies in the history section were just bonuses.) My hope renewed, I started walking my way through the dewey decimal system until I got to HIL. Nothing. Just some books about Joe Hill. 
   "Wait," I thought. "The DDS is supposed to be categorized by author's last name. This isn't right." 
   I looked through all the HI's and soon realized that some of the titles were indeed categorized by author's last name, as in Joseph Hillcrest. But other books were categorized by the name of the book, as in Hillard: A story of a small American town, by Joseph Steig. I couldn't figure out why they were mixed when each book clearly had an author but I went to the U's anyway. I found three books under the letter U and none of them were my book. At this point, I'm getting pretty distressed.
   But THEN, I notice that while some of the books are categorized by author's last name, and others are shelved by the title, still OTHERS are organized by the name of the main character the book is written about. For instance (speeding back to the HI's) The Story of an American Revolutionary: How Jim HILL brought peace to the Sioux Indians, by Elizabeth Craught 
   "You have got to be kidding me," I thought. People, I kid you not.
   So, I think back to Unbroken and ta-da! remember that the main character of that book is Louis Zamperini. I go with the absurdity and find the Z's. I look down and there! THERE is Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, categorized under Z. The dumbest thing about this is that Louis Zamperini's name doesn't appear in the book title anywhere, so if you didn't know the book was about him, you'd have no clue where to find it. Why Minot Public Library decided to forego the universally acknowledged Dewey Decimal System and forge a new path in library cataloguing, I have no idea. But just as the pioneers in their thinly-covered wagons died in the bitter North Dakota winters as they forged their way slowly to the West Coast, so the lonely reader may die before ever finding the book they need in the MPL. 
   After 45 minutes of searching, I took my book triumphantly downstairs, checked it out with my new library card, and asked the librarian for a map of their shelving system, to which she shrugged. Afterward, I happily walked the four blocks home and into the kitchen with my prize, at which point Jon took one look at the title and said, "You know my parents have that book in the basement, right?"