The Hogwarts Library and search engine...

[Anne]

No: HPFGUIDX 47558

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Grey Wolf" <greywolf1 at j...> wrote:

> The easiest way to find anything in a library is something that we 
have 
> yet to see Harry doing: asking the librarian! That is what Pince is 
> there for, after all. However, Harry and co. seem possesed by a 
latent 
> distrust towards figures in authority and prefer trying to find the 
> info on their own (I can't blame them... I used to feel the same at 
> their age). ....
> Now, how does Pince find the information herself? We should ask 
Lexicon 
> Steve this (he should know, if anyone), but I have the feeling that 
a 
> librarian's job is to know where everything is. And there could be 
> spells for searching books by content, only they don't come in the 
> reglamentary school books, and are relatively unimportant, and thus 
> Hermione has not heard of them yet.
>
Hogwarts appears to be completely free of *almost* all Muggle 
conveniences and inventions-- with the notable and noted exception of 
bathrooms! -- so I think we can assume it's also free of the
Internet, the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress 
classification system ;-) That being the case, it would definitely 
fall to Madame Pince to know exactly where to find every bit of 
information in the library...which would require her to have both 
instant recall and an encyclopedic memory. So perhaps Professor 
Flitwick is responsible for charming her with such knowledge? Or 
perhaps, just as Hermione will one day do, she has read and memorized 
every book in the Hogwarts library.

Anne U
(who used to think the traffic on my 700-member lists was bad...)