Plays and Cutter Mishaps to Say the Least

Searching for plays is a love/hate relationship (well more of a hate relationship, but I love it when they are finally found within the 6 week search window). Unless they are bound together in a collected plays collection, many of them are very small and less than 100 pages. You know the ones I'm talking about, the ones printed by Samuel French in softbound paper covers, and easily bent, torn apart, and damaged. Needless to say, they give my search assistants and me a HUGE headache looking for them.

Today, one of my assistants found one that I had been looking for almost 6 weeks now!! Recent Tragic Events by Craig Wright with the call number PS3573 .R53240 R43 2004 was hanging out with the PS3573.I(insert rest of call number here). Apparently Rs look like Is now and I'm pretty sure everyone is wondering, "Why did you miss this?!" Well friends, it's because plays are illusive, probably because someone looked at it and then moved it, or I was probably driving myself crazy trying to find it in the first place and simply overlooked it (hey, we are all human right?) In this particular section there are several playwrights/authors with the last name of Wright to add to the madness.

So here are some tips I like to use while looking for plays (besides the obvious statement of they could be anywhere):

1. Look along the shelf, section, and sections next to the proper shelving location. It's always a good idea to look behind the books on the shelf too because they could have fallen back behind them (This is particularly true in the PS3600's). Plus, looking along the whole aisle/row wouldn't be a bad idea.

2. Mix up your numbers and cutters (the bits after the decimal). Examples of this are a PS3573 could be a PS3537 or PS3573.R53240 R43 2004 could be PS3573.R43 R53240 2004 (or in the case of this unfortunate play, the R was reinvented into an I.

3. Think dyslexically. Like this play, the R turned into an I. The same can be said of any other part of the call number. PS could be PR (happens all the time), PS3573 could be PS3273, PS3373, etc.

4. Look in places where you know there are going to be a lot of plays. Examples of famous playwrights are Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, August Wilson, Don Nigro to name a few (our library has several if not most of all of these works). Alternatively, you can look to find a group of plays and look at those to see if any are where they shouldn't be (though I tend to do this as a last resort).

5. For our library the key play shelving mishaps are between the call numbers beginning with PS3525-PS3620 (or beyond, I can't remember when it ends though the PS 3600+ are a pain). Therefore, I look at every cutter part that begins with R in the case of Mr. Wright's missing play. (examples: Though Recent Tragic Events begins with a PS3573, I look at all of the other PS's at their R's- PS3539.R53240, PS3559.R53240, etc.).

6. Sometimes patrons are lazy and instead of putting books and plays they are finished looking at on the 'to-be-shelved' cart, they sometimes reshelve their materials at the end of a shelf...no where near where the proper shelving location is. I use this as a last-ditch attempt too if all else fails, but I always keep on the lookout for these items while I'm searching anyway.

7. Even though they take a while to search, keep your cool and don't get frustrated. If the patron needs the play that badly, there is always interlibrary loan.

Anyway, this post has become long-winded enough, so I hope this helps all who are trying to find the missing, illusive, and pesky little plays. If I think of anything else, I'll add it to the comments section.

The Illusive "Vergilius"

As I was searching the stacks for the 24/40 day overdue reports, I happened upon Volume 56 of the periodical, Vergilius (PA6825.A2 V47 V.56). This issue wandered and decided to hang out with some works by Ovid between the call numbers PA6525.M2D6 1979 and PA6537.A5 B6.

I'm guess it confused its 65...with 68...

Classic case of number confusion.