D
by Alex
I visit many call numbers, but D is the only one with an address that I come home to regularly: DU 740 .42: ethnographies of Papua New Guinea. Technically the Ds cover a huge range — Africa, Asia (including South Asia, iirc), and the Pacific. Here in Honolulu, most people head straight for the section on Hawaii, and Hamilton’s public stacks are more than well-thumbed — they are downright ravaged. Dog-earned, underlined, well-thumbed (indeed, over-thumbed, if there is such a word as ‘over-thumbed’) copies of classics, sagging shelves where half of the books have been checked out.
But for me it is the DU 740s that have always been home. It is one of few call numbers I remember from Hauser — in the long, old first expansion of the library, in the basement about halfway through, on the right hand side. It’s funny. I remember the lobby to the library, the stairs up to the entrance, the reading room, and then… I can’t remember where the stairs were. Or are, technically. I even remember the DUs from Portland State University, the summer that I took Intro Bio and skipped all the lectures in order to read in their larger library. I remember the shelves being near a corner of the building, near windows… I wonder if I am right?
I remember the DUs in the Regenstein, up top on the fourth (?) floor, about in the middle of the floor, all the way in the back. It was amazing hitting graduate school and seeing the rows of ethnographies that dwarved Reed’s puny library. I was shocked by what was available for checkout by any old palooka. At one point I checked out a first edition of Luigi D’Albertis’s account of his ascent of the Fly, a book that must have been almost a century old and looked even older. In the Hamilton it’s on the right towards the back as you come up the stairs next to the circulation desk. In fact, it’s conveniently close to the Gs (more on which the day after tomorrow).
DU 740 .42 is such a home to me that, in fact, it is the only part of the library where I can evaluate the depth of a library’s collection just by looking at DU 740.42. When I visit a university I’ll often just head up there to see how they measure up since — obviously — all institutions of higher learning measure their moral worth by the depth of their Melanesian holdings. Sometimes this leads to outrage. Like the time I visited Duke and got a tour of the library only to realize that they — wait for it — used the Dewey Friggin’ Decimal System. Savages.
Of course over time I’ve expanded out of DU. I love in particular the depth of Hamilton’s holdings, including their kick-ass but confusingly positioned arrangement of having a separate ‘Asian’ collection on the fourth floor with it’s copious D section hanging like the sword of Damocles over A-J (on the second floor) and, even more confusingly, the ‘D East Asian’ collection on the third floor. Knowing which floor your D is on is what separates the boys from the men when it comes to navigating the Hamilton. Actually, since only I see knowledge of the Hamilton’s filing system as a sign of masculine competence and integrity, what I am really trying to say is I take a good deal of satisfaction in knowing which floor holds that obscure history of the Jewish community in Burma, or online communities in Central Asia.
I know this sounds weird and possibly even racist, but to me D is a dark, rich brown, almost a rich burgundy, like the leather on an tufted, upholstered chair or pipe tobacco with the scent of cherry.