???

The first book I picked up at work this morning gave me a bit of a shock.

How was I supposed to classify that? Some years ago, I learned the Cyrillic alphabet (a long story), so I tried to sound it out. “Snekmro-phomo-memrucheskee camalog zvezd.” No help there.

I tried looking inside.

“Spektro-photo-metreecheskee catalog zvezd.” Spectro-photometric Catalogue Something-or-other. OK, so catalogues go under “Table and Data Books” – 522.0212. So far so good. But putting it in the database was going to be slow going. I didn’t have a Cyrillic keyboard. All I could think of was to use the word processor to “insert symbol” one letter at a time, and then cut and paste.

And then I tried the next page:

Duh!

I think tomorrow I might have a coffee before I start putting books in the database.

Posted by sheila

Sheila came to La Palma with a six month contract and has stayed 24 years so far. She used to work as a software engineer at the observatory, but now she's a writer and Starlight guide.