1793 Need a memory refresher
Conservator had a link to a group that reshelves books from fiction to some other category at book stores. CNET article here. It seems to me that back in the days when I was a contributor/reader of misc.writing (Usenet), there was a plan whereby we were supposed to move the authors we knew (members of mwville) to the front. Somebody help me out here. . . Hip, Billo, Gekko, Doyle. . . I've forgotten the routine.BTW, don't ever reshelve a library book (as this site suggests for bookstores). It throws off statistics and you'll probably do it wrong.
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3 comments:
Really and truly?? Don't reshelve? Seems like that creates extra work for the librarian.
YOu must tell us more about this...
Keep in mind, I was an academic librarian, not public, but I think the reasons are the same.
Even if you are standing in the stacks and you've pulled the book out to look at it, if 3 others have taken a book from that shelf, you may not get yours back in the right place. OK, only 3 or 4 off, right? Well, if you've carried it to the table and used it for awhile, you may not even walk into the right row, and totally miss the shelf. Well, if the shelves are "read" once a week, no big deal, but in the meanwhile, you've "lost" a book as far as the next person is concerned.
Most people can read a classification number, but are confused by the second line, which is the Cutter number based on the author's name and another code. Not all libraries use that, but ours did.
Then there's stats. Librarians have tight budgets which they are always being asked to cut or justify. You'd better be able to show that books or serials in that subject field are needed by your users, and just saying, "I think so," isn't going to cut it. Books and journals are counted before they are reshelved, at least they were in my library.
Our computer recorded the use with the swipe of a barcode reader for every reshelved book or journal. Some libraries are so overwhelmed with reshelving, they don't take the time to keep accurate statistics. But I only had about 50,000 volumes. Before that, we used a date stamp to indicate the book's use. At budget crunch/cut time I could sample a range and determine use.
But that swipe also turned up lost books, or books that users claimed they'd returned, when in fact they'd just laid it down somewhere.
Also, unless you live in a town of 1,000, the librarian probably doesn't reshelve, the teen-age page who is paid minimum wage does. But it is the librarian or the chief clerk who uses her/his time when someone complains she can't find a book or that the shelves are a mess. Then, the labor costs are more serious.
Also, once a book gets misshelved, sometimes the shelvers (the paid staff) start in the wrong place and you end up with a dual group of call numbers--all because a sweet, kind lady thought she'd help out by reshelving her book!
If the library has really good reshelvers (it's not a thrilling job) they will also check the reshelved books for damage and items that need repair.
There may be other reasons not to reshelve a book, but that's what comes to mind.
It seems to me that back in the days when I was a contributor/reader of misc.writing (Usenet), there was a plan whereby we were supposed to move the authors we knew (members of mwville) to the front.
That's a blast from the past.
I think it was called The Book Turner's Club. It wasn't moving the books of authors we knew to a different location, but turning them so that the cover (instead of just the spine) would be exposed.
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