Librarian Ire

Shelving

It always amazes me that people who supposedly are the nation's best and brightest do not know the alphabet and cannot count to 20.
I mean, how did you people get into college if you flunked kindgarten?!
I was in the stacks looking for books to send out on ILL (see ILL musings 12/22/04 for my thoughts on that) when I noticed books in the wrong sequence. In what alphabet does N come before E? And why does volume 10 have to come before volume 6? And why did you put the book back upside down so that no one else can see what it is?
Is this some secret shelving ritual that we as professional librarians are not privy to? Are you trying to start your own call number system and this is the Beta test on our books? Or are you just morons?
I know you know how to speak English. In some cases they speak several languages. Shelving is not a hard job. In fact it is pretty mindless.
Maybe that's the problem. They are so far advanced they have forgotten the basics. They don't know how to do mindless anymore.
Hire all stupid people for things like this. Wait, no we tried that once too. They really couldn't read at all. Everything was messed up for years.
I like shelving. It can be relaxing. No one bothers you when you buried in books. I just don't like it when something so easy is screwed up so badly.
A co-worker of mine commented that we should just have everything in the stacks. No special locations, no multi call number systems. It would make his life easier. And he doesn't shelve.
So it's not just me.

posted by Nike at 3:21 AM