I appreciate any help I can get regarding some (fairly rudimentary) questions about cataloging using Weine. I've recently taken on responsibility for managing my temple's library (as a volunteer). I'm a retired librarian (Drexel '79) with 30+ years of professional experience, mostly in academic libraries, across a wide range of areas, but little that would prepare me for cataloging a small library. (The temple has never had a paid librarian – and no money to hire one; the budget is entirely through donations – and I believe I'm the first person with an MLS to manage the library.)
There is no existing catalog and the collection was organized, many years before my involvement, according to a unique set of categories developed by a temple member. I've spent the past year trying to get the collection in order, using the existing arrangement, and exploring options for cataloging using a standard scheme. We've selected Weine, mostly because of it's similarity to Dewey, which we think will be familiar to most users. It's a small collection: I estimate in the neighborhood of 3000 volumes, occupying shelving along two walls in a multi-purpose room. We haven't selected a catalog host/service yet, but we have a short list we hope to test in the next few months, once we have a sufficiently large sample of records to load. My specific question is about some of the classification categories in Weine but I'd like to get any general help in this area . I've tried to look at the resources provided by AJL but none have helped answer this question and I suspect I'll need to depend on the kindness of colleagues quite a bit. In the current case, I'm holding the 2 vol. *A History of Judaism *by Silver and Martin (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1177000). I've found only one Weine library holding this title so far and they classed it under 205. Looking at the 2013 Weine classification, however, there is no class number 205. Even more confusing, there appears (to my naive eye) to be two sections on "Religion" treating of Judaism within Weine. 200 Religion incl. Philosophy of religion 250 Religion and theology each with subcategories 200.9 History of religion 250.09 History of Religion I can't discover anything that resolves this apparent redundancy. I assume that there is a good explanation that makes sense of this structure. (Something to do with Dewey, I guess.) I wonder if the 205 class number we did find was supposed to be 250. Anyway, help with either the specific issue, explaining where *A History of Judaism* should go, and any general help understanding the difference between 200 Religion and 250 Religion and theology, and any further guidance about sources for help with Weine, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Lee Jaffe, Librarian Temple Beth El, Aptos, Calif.
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