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Another librarian here, with comments and questions.
I, like many others, indeed walk to the shelves and pick out books on the topic I am interested in. But, I always find that, after checking the catalog, there are 2 or 3 places to walk to even for simple topics like, say, French grammar.
A large library, perhaps, can't shelve items at random because finding 10 books on the same topic may involve walking 100s of yards. But what is the problem with a personal collection, even a large one, shelved randomly, if it's well indexed on a computer?
I have a SONY "jukebox" CD player that holds 400 CDs and allows a minumum of indexing that then shows on a small display. I can enter author, title and one subject. At first I tried to place CDs in the machine by some logical arrangement but I soon found it didn't serve any purpose. After 2 years of use I find adding CDs randomly to the jukebox and relying on the minimal indexing serves my needs fine. (Which means that the liner notes are also stored randomly in a drawer. No problem.)
I look forward to your ideas on using the computer to store information about personal items, but I see no reason not to store those items in a random (accession number) order. Unless, of course, I want to find an item not using the computer (that my memory alerts me to) but even then if I store items by subject I may not get the subject right off the top of my head. (See French grammar above.)
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