E’s and Decimals

Another heavily used part of our collection is the E185s, otherwise known as African American history and boy are there a lot of them!  They range from 185-185.98 and beyond. 

Common miss-shelving errors in this section can be found in the E184s, or immigration history as well as a lot of decimal errors such as E185.615 can often be found with the E185.61, E185.86, or E185.68 for example.

Other less common errors are once again the cutter confusion and letter miss-reads within the cutters and rest of the call number.  One from last week that one of my students found, was E185.86 .C58214 1998 found shelved as E185.68 .B58214 1998. 

One time I found one with both a decimal miss-shelve as well as a letter mix up within the cutter as well so it was a combo doozy of a find!

A best search analysis since these can be found anywhere within this call number range, which in our library takes up about a row and a half, is shelf-reading.  I know it’s not everyone’s favorite, but it can be anywhere within this range.

Good luck and happy searching!

R-RA-RAWR!

The common miss-shelvings of the R call number range is that they are either in another R section (i.e. R in an RA: a common occurrence), or the decimals are just ignored or folks don’t know their numbers like they should. 

Such is the case with the one I found this past weekend:
The search was for R727.4 .P375 2012 and it was found shelved as if it were R727.3 .P375 2012.
Sometimes I even find that a missing item is miss-shelved in the wrong letter and has a decimal miss-shelving error. 

Then again less often than not, folks have number placement problems within the R’s too (i.e. a RA448.5 in a RA484.5); however, I haven’t had much of an issue with this since they moved from the basement to the 9th floor.

Happy Searching!