Random Miss-shelving Woes

Today while I was searching, I found some crazy random miss-shelving errors.       

In our library the call number beginning with S (agricultural history and agricultural sciences) are shelved with the D’s and E’s (World and American history).  Today I found an S in with the E’s.   This further stresses my point of searching all of the different letters on a floor and not just within the beginning letter.  Examples: if  S, U, V, D, E are shelved on a floor and you are looking for a DB don’t just look for it in the wide range of Ds, look in the S’s, U’s, V’s, and E’s too.  Even though a DB would end up in an SB or even an E is a rare occurrence, it has been happening a lot lately.

Further stressing my point of looking in other letters if shelved together on a floor.  See the below picture for the craziness of miss-shelving: 

As you can see there are NA's and PN's mixed in with the LB's.  While the PN's are shelved on another floor (seems as if someone was using them and then just put them back on the shelve...but beginning letters aside, at least they are numerically in order).  NA's and LB's are shelved on the same floor, so it is very important to look in every letter category on a floor.

Happy searching! 

Cutter Scramble

Lately there have been a lot of miss-shelved items that are miss-shelved through their cutters.  I’m not sure what that’s all about, but here are some examples of the latest searches I’ve found this way:

Missing book: HN90.S6 O76 2007 was found shelved between HN90.P8 Z64 2008 and HN90.R3 A5.  The only thing I can think of is that whoever shelved it ignored the “S” and got their alphabet wrong with their O’s and P’s.  O comes after N, not P folks.  Or conversely someone could have decided S comes before R.  We will never know.

The other missing item: BX4827.B57 M48 2010 was found shelved between BX4827.B57 B86 1985 and BX4827 .B57 C36 1999.  Not sure where the logic falls under here other than maybe someone became confused with all the B’s floating around in this call number range, or it could be the dim lighting in this section combined with faded type on the label.  Either way, this book was a couple shelves away from its proper location.

Moral of the story is always check/shelf-read everything within the section because folks get confused with cutters.

Happy Searching!

1’s and 0’s; 2’s and 9’s

This weekend while searching for my newly submitted searches, I found some PN’s out of order once again!  This section of our library is becoming quite the little annoying pest of miss-shelving!

The first miss-shelve mishap was the call number PN6110.C4 U56 shelved as PN6010.C4 U56.  I’m not sure what it is with 1’s and 0’s, but when they are in a combination with each other, they can be rather bothersome if miss-shelved.  It’s always good and prudent to look for everything having to do with multiple 1’s and 0’s especially when they are together.  It’s as if the miss-shelve mistake was speaking binary!

The other ones I found, which I deem a bit unusual (and not even a proper search card request), were several PN1992’s shelved with PN1929’s.  I’m not sure what went wrong here other than a number switch or 1992 wanted to take a time warp trip back to 1929 perhaps in a book truck shaped TARDIS. (Ok, I admit I watched a lot of Dr. Who this weekend…)

Happy Searching!

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!