to the or not to the - that is the question

my rss feed reader delivered my some news this week that i wish to share to anyone who cares about catalogue records and indexing, especially margaret who may be reading it because i am sure that she would understand, being the dedicated and thorough cataloguer that she is.

The annual Ig Nobel Prizes are meant to honor scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to the founders at science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

What grabbed my attention this year was this year’s Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize, which was awarded to a Japanese (who else) scientist for developing a method for extracting vanillin from cow dung. Previous society-changing award-winning achievements from Japan include the invention of karaoke, which received the Peace Prize, and the Tamagotchi, which received the Economics Prize. Imagine a life in Japan with NO KARAOKE.

But onto the library related information which is the point of this post, the ig noble award for literature this year went to Glenda Browne of NSW Australia for her study of the word “the” and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.

I think we have all encountered this problem when trying to find DVDs for patrons...

To be more informed, read the article, which examines rules and practice relating to the filing of ‘The’ at the beginning of index entries. It recommends that the definite article should be accorded ‘more respect’.

I used Technorati to find 59 posts on the ig noble awards, which are all very deserving.