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"the library"

I love having a library. I love it even more because it is a Sherlockian library. My library it located on the second floor of my house. The stairway leading up to it goes up halfway and makes a ninety-degree turn to the right. By the time one gets to the turn, it begins to smell like a used bookstore. I also love that smell.

Once at the top of the stairs, you must take another right-turn or be lost inside one of those war-zones -- a teenager's bedroom. We won't go there (pun intended). Now one just has to cross a small landing/hallway before entering "the library." I like to refer to it as "the library" because to me John Bennett Shaw's library will always be "The Library." My library is patterned after "The Library."

Traveling clockwise the arrangement of the books follows some kind of Irregular logic. The first section is where one finds the Sherlockian publications. This area includes scion and non-scion newsletters and journals and Sherlockian magazines. There are about 2,700 of these publications located in this part. They are all organized alphabetically according to a three-letter abbreviation I have created for each publication. Some of the abbreviations are easily understood such as "BSJ" for The Baker Street Journal but other are a bit more obscure such as "SSP" for Scuttlebutt From the Spermaceti Press.

I have worked in radiology departments for more than 25 years. Radiographic film comes in a variety of sizes and is packaged 100 sheets of film to a box. To maintain its rigidity the film is packaged between two pieces of pure, stiff cardboard. These pieces of cardboard have become an essential part of "the library." My wife once asked me if anal retentive was a hyphenated word. This was due in part to my constant cataloging and refining "the library." I found that the 14 x 17 inch pieces of cardboard could be cut into 3 pieces, each one measuring 7 X 10 inch.

What does this have to do with a Sherlock Holmes library, you are now probably asking.

Well, I will tell you. I place every book, newsletter, magazine, journal, or whatever in polypropylene bags to protect them from the dust. I found that by using the cardboard and golden age comicbook bags, I could shelve all 2,700 scion, non-scion newsletters and journals uniformly. They fit nearly onto shelf after shelf.

Using the same cardboard, I cut some pieces 2 x 8 inches and using stick-on lettering, I made dividers to place between each different publication. This is where the anal-retentive come into play. Carrying this theme of 2 x 8-inch dividers ahead, I made ones form all of the different languages. On these I have devised a four-letter abbreviation. I have done the same for the Sacred Writing using Jay Finley Christ's four-letter abbreviations. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I had my shelves built, I chose to have them 8 inches deep. The dividers being 8 inches as well, come out flush with the shelf. The cardboard supports are 7 inches wide so there is a nice one-inch recess, making the dividers easily read. The Baker Street Journal and many other publications measure 6 x 9 inches. When a 7 x 10 cardboard support is place with it and then bagged for protection, the end result is very workable. When a newsletter is printed on a 8 x 11 inch piece of paper and folded in half, the resulting dimensions are 5 x 8 inch. This too can be bagged with the cardboard backing. Whew, there goes that anal-retentive stuff again.

I have had to expand and make large pieces of cardboard and buy different sizes of bag to fit all of my various needs. Magazines tend to over hang the shelves slightly.

Moving along "the library" to the next section that is for Higher Criticisms followed by other non-fiction works such as cook books, humorous books, quizzes, and picture books. There is a section that is related to magazine articles and bibliographic works and finally stage, movie, and television books. I also have a place with about 150 Sherlockian related videos, DVD's, and CD's. That is the south wall of "the library."

The west wall begins with pastiches, again all in alphabetical order by author. Lillian Africano's The Return of Sherlock Holmes Again starts this section and the poem "A One-Minute Hound" by Donald A. Yates ends it. I have a separated section for the Solar Pons series. This being a long wall, we move next into the Foreign Language section of the Canon. The first divider sticking out is "AFRI" for Afrikaans, the "ARAB" for Arabic and right on down the line for each of the 65 different languages that I currently have found.

The north wall is where the Canon is found. Once again, the dividers start with "ABBE" and every anthology or short story collection or magazine I have with ABBE in will be found here. This section is very large and it follows De Waal's bibliography as to the way they are arranged on the shelves. Those items not found in De Waal are at the end of each division. Following the individual stories are the collections. The various editions of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and so on are next. Then the collections of books that feature two or more stories come last.

The east wall is open, over looking the atrium, down to the first floor. My desk and computer face out from here. There is a long shelf run along the top of this wall. This is where many of the three dimensional objects are place. In front of my desk is several bottles of single malt scotch, two comfortable chair covered in a Sherlock Holmes motif fabric and a coffee table. I have a cutting board I use on all of the cardboard; I have about a three-year supply of cardboard and bags. I also have a large stash of tape to seal the bag. It looks like I can continue collecting for quite some time to come.

Finally, I began listing my books by hand many, many moons ago. In 1989 I transcribed all of the listing into a Word Perfect document, which was later moved into a Word document. Every item I add to my collection is numbered. There is no special numbering system, I just started with 1 and all these years later I am at 6,334. The next thing I add will be 6,335. It is real easy to place a number-label on my books because they are all inside of bags.

Every item in the Word document contains pertinent information regarding that item. A typical entry looks like this:

5928. SHERLOCK HOLMES' BRAGDER (Malmo -1930) Swedish translation: "FIVE" "BLUE" "IDEN" "BERY" "NOBL" De Waal #C4084 hc.

The only problem I found that with this Word document was it could not be sorted. So, I created an Excel spread sheet with multiple tabs for the Sacred Writings, Pastiches, Higher Criticisms, etc. and now I can sort and look up items with relative ease. Yet I now have to maintain 2 separate databases (there's that anal retentive thing again). So with keeping with the theme of these articles, I have it all worked out. I am going to call on all of my Sherlockian friends, sell all of my books on e-Bay, buy a motorcycle and explore Europe.

NOT!! I gotta go login some new books and rearrange my shelves and . . . well you get the picture.

Happy collecting!!!!