And Another Thing ...

Let's have a frank talk about Dewey decimals (yes, another one).  And let me head off any dispute by saying, "Yes, it does matter."  I'd rather starve to death (after working my way through all my savings at various Indian and Thai restaurants, perhaps) than work in a place where fundamentals like how Dewey decimal works does not matter.
I just spent an hour or more reading the non-fiction shelves in the Children's Room.  I know things cannot be perfect here.  Kids yank a book off a shelf and do one of the following:

• Just jam it back anywhere
• Just jam it back at the front/back of the line of books
• Just leave it lying somewhere
• Just jam it back in spine-first.

I was guilty of all of these as a child.  I clearly remember my sister explaining to me how the spine was supposed to face out.  This made no sense at the time because if you jam books back in pages-first, you inevitably imbed another book inside them and crumple the pages. 
So, when I see J 398.209H shelved between J 398.2H and another J 398.2H, I suspect an adult was responsible.  Let's not get into why we have 398s, 398.2s, 398.209s, and 398.21-256s.  Let's just accept that we have them and if 398.209 is mixed in with the 398.2s, then it's two whole stands of shelves away from where someone would be looking for it.  Yes, we have a lot of books of folklore.  It's a Children's Room.  But the system works the same from 001 to 999.  So let's learn it, shall we?
Imagine you have money (this may take some doing if you work in a public library).  You have $1.20 and I have $1.25.  Who has more?  Imagine you made interest on this money in a bank (cue hollow laughter) and at the current lousy rate (1%) you ended up with $1.212.  Who has more?  If you're shelving in our library, I bet you'd be wrong. 
How can you tell?  It's simple.  You add some extra zeros to the end to make both numbers contain the same number of digits after the decimal point then compare them: $1.250 versus $1.212.  Now which one is more?  Easy-peasy.
There now.  Do I feel better for venting?