Beauty Culture

This one was submitted by a reader (Thanks, Marc) who was searching our library's catalog for books on cosmetology, and not finding much with a subject search. With a more inclusive keyword search, he found that the LC Subject heading used for many of the cosmetology books is Beauty Culture. Yeeah, can't see anyone searching for that particular subject. Let alone the narrower term Beauty Operators, which was mentioned over at From the Catalogs of Babes.

False personation

There are currently 63 (!) records in our library's catalog with the subject heading of "false personation." (Wow, spell check doesn't even recognize "personation.") Now - I realize that it's a legal term, but wouldn't "impersonation" be a bit clearer?

Mensuration

Ooh, vocabulary day at LCSHWTF! Have you ever heard the term Mensuration? Yeah, me neither. I happened across it, though, n the record for the book "The Facts on File Chronology of Science." A bit of searching around internet-wise tells me that mensuration has something to do with measurement - but honestly, It's not much clearer than that. A trip to an unabridged dictionary, and I guess it has to do with measuring things indirectly using algebra or geometry. Well, yay! Glad that was clear to everyone...

Drinking of alcoholic beverages - Anecdotes

So - drinking stories? I suppose this really does need its own subject, but it sure seems silly...

Pyrography

Yeah. Pyrography. Really? Wood burning.

I remember my dad having one of those things, which was basically a nail attached to a power source, with some cork around it as a handle. He would use it to put a name on things, like a baseball bat that he didn't want me to lose.

Granted, the designs in this book are a lot fancier than he managed back in the day, but still. Pyrography?

Orgonomy

OK, this one is maybe just something I wasn't familiar with, but - Orgonomy? A little research illuminates that Orgonomy is the study of Wilhelm Reich's theory of basic cosmic energies.

From Wikipedia: "Orgone is blue in color, he wrote, omnipresent, visible to the naked eye, and responsible for such things as weather, the color of the sky, gravity, the formation of galaxies, and the biological expressions of emotion and sexuality." Yikes.

How that fits into Reapers: A Botswana mystery by Frederick Ramsay is unclear...