The Marriage of Call Numbers

Well, maybe not exactly, but close enough.  What do I mean by the marriage of call numbers?  I mean the sheer fact that for some reason some call numbers end up with other call numbers about 95% of the time if they are miss-shelved.

A perfect example of two such call numbers, are ones that begin with PN/PQ.  For some reason one is always in the other.  Another is PR/PS…must be something with the P’s!! 

Case in point, it is always important to check the other letters on the floor as if they are supposed to be shelved in that letter section.

Example for today’s post: PQ2605.A3734 E813 1989 shelved as PN2605.A3734 E813 1989.

Hide and Seek

Every now and then books like to hide behind the shelves or sometimes in between them.  However, on rare occasion, they like to play hide and seek with you and what I mean by that is that they like to hide in other books.

Example: Book LB2331 .G7940 1997, a mere 97 page book, was found within 392 page LB2331 .G78 1999.

While this is rare and curious as to how books really end up in situations like these can be theorized by that someone shelved a larger book and being lazy about it didn’t allot for enough room to put it back properly when spacing out the books.   Of course there is always the possibility that this was intentionally done by a patron, but who knows? 

FYI the above examples were paper/soft bound and can happen anywhere (Plays especially come to mind here).

A Random Find

Today while I was searching for some other items, I spotted a few items miss-shelved between the PN3355 and the PN3453 sections. One of those was a long missing PN3448 .A3 G73 1991 shelved with the PN3355 and not even close to the A’s in the cutter. Now, I know I recently posted about a book in this section (see Number Scramble post from March 27^th), but really what is up with this section?! I’m starting to believe that there is something in the air in regards to books on fiction as well as books on the types of fiction!

I’m not sure how exactly this could have been miss-shelved other than a patron randomly placed it on the shelf after deciding s/he didn’t really need it after all. Lately, I have been making such discoveries and only after I’ve given up all hope of finding it by scrambling around letters and numbers and simply starting to peruse the shelves to see if I can spot it. Nine times out of ten, I find such items on the same row where books would be if shelved properly.

So, a lesson for me (especially when training new assistants) and a lesson for you the reader, is to scan the shelves on the row because you never know where you will find that missing book.

Happy Searching folks!

Where O' Where have the Popular Checkouts Gone?!

Recently there have been some interesting ways books have been shelved: this week is no different and perhaps not very surprising…especially with books that have been used a lot.

I’m not sure if it’s because folks are afraid to check things out so they read them in the library and stash them in interesting locations, or they pull books off the shelves, think they are going to check them out, change their minds and decide to help library staff by re-shelving books.

So here the two examples I’ve found today whilst looking in the stacks:

PS3554.I319 P57 2008 shelved as PS3559.I319 P57 2008 –I’m not sure how a 4 looks like a 9, but I guess it just goes to show that anything is possible. (could be of course that this particular book has had 44 checkouts and 4 times marked as used)

F394.G2 L37 1999 shelved as F592.G2 L37 1999 and checked out at least 22 times–The missing book was supposed to be shelved with the Texan history section but instead it was hanging out with the Missourian. At least the 9’s are correct right? F’s are always interesting to search for since the numbers are almost always mixed up, you will most likely always end up virtually shelf-reading the whole F call number ranges to find them…or they could be with the oversized (labeled in our library as "f" and "ff").

Happy Searching folks!