Floor Jump Bonanza!

With all the book shifting going on in our library, books tend to get caught in the cross-hairs. As a result, it is important to check the floors where books used to be located, especially if the moves have separated some call number letters or worse yet, the book was already miss-shelved before the move.

The example for this post is the call number JF1525.O73 E97 2010 (proper and new location 6^th floor) shelved as JZ1525.O73 E97 2010 (on the old location, 5^th floor).

J’s can be tricky anyway and usually end up hanging out with other J+another letter's (I once found one with the K’s, but that is another post), but the point I’m trying to make here is always check on both floors of the letter split because somehow, some way, a book will eventually end up miss-shelved there.

Happy Searching!

Number Scramble!

Reading call numbers is a science-almost-art like quality that gets lost on many readers. Most folks tend to only read the beginning and the end of something, but miss the middle entirely. However, the middle often contains the most important bit of information. Such is the case with call numbers.

For some reason the beginning number after the letter(s) tend to get read this way. Here are some examples of books I have found located under this logic. First will be the call number I was looking for matched with the call number where I found it. In most cases these call numbers are located a couple sections a part, but others there was quite a bit of distance between the two.

E446 .H27 2007 shelved as E444 .H27 2007

HD57.7 .B373 2006 shelved as HD58.7 .B373 2006 (for some reason this happens all the time for these books)

HX239 .B47 2006 shelved as HX236 .B47 2006

PN3435 .L4 shelved as PN3355 .L4

PS3563.O8749 L68 2003 shelved as PS3553.O8749 L68 2003 (this happens ALL the time for all PS’s)

Of course, it would always be a good idea to look for these sort of mix-ups in other letter ranges as well such as that PS one, look for it in the same way in the PR section because it does happen (though coincidentally, I don’t have a current example…see a future posting).

So, case in point, try to mix up the numbers in between because sadly, those are the numbers that will get scrambled or worse another number will get substituted.

Happy Searching!

PT Number Switch-a-Roo

Ok, so recently there have been a lot of searches in the PT call number range (Germanic literature). So, I thought I would do a post on where I have found them.

Besides the usual hiding places of the PR, PS, and once a PN (!), the numbers in this range frequently get mixed up, like so much that I can’t even discern the thought process of how items were shelved the way they were. The first was a PT2681 (fill the rest in if you’d like, but the beginning is what matters here) and I found it hanging out with the PT2421 books. The only thing I can think of is at least the first and the last number matches…who cares about the in-between? Or it could be like one of those word things you see every now and again about how the brain only cares about the first and last letter (or in this case number) and makes you think the stuff in the middle is right. Either way, this one baffles me and is about a crazy as the books you find randomly on the shelf where it doesn’t even remotely belong.

Then of course I found the book with the call number PT2664 hanging out with the PT2624 books. This happens more often than you think and in many different ways. For example (and this happens more frequently in than in this case), the number 2664 could end up with in the 3664, 3564, 8664, 7564, etc. Usually the mix up happens before the last 2 numbers, but in this case it was the first 3.

How the mind tricks your eyes

Today, I received a search for a book with the call number PR9369.3.C58 Z65 2004, so I check the book’s statistics and saw it was recently checked in…weird right? I go upstairs going crazy looking for it in what I thought was the right call number range. However, what I thought was the right call number range, was really PR9639.3… So I continue looking and sure enough, the book was right where it was supposed to be shelved. At least I have the comfort of knowing that a fellow staff member and a few students couldn’t find it either probably because of the same mistake I made.

Case in point, your mind plays tricks on you especially when there are as many PR9639.3 as PR9369.3 books and if you are suffering from caffeine withdrawal as I was at the time.