Libraries should host the peoples websites/videos/games/art online for free. To be against this is to be against the original purpose of Libraries.
Well said! Libraries have always been about sharing knowledge and resources. Hosting websites, videos, games, and art online for free is just another way to continue that mission.
Unless the library is tracking book reader stats or you actually check out the book, maybe remember how the classification system works like they were supposed to teach you in school?
Half the time I’m literally standing in front of the shelf perusing the book, it would be dumb to throw it in the book return unless I don’t know or can’t find the exact position where it came from.
If you know how to properly reshelve the books on your own, you know who you are. Just do it. No one will care nor will anyone bother you if you aren’t causing a problem. For everyone else, there is the dump cart.
I see these messages more as being aimed at those who don’t even know there is a system, those who do but don’t care to learn it, or some other combo of known or unknown unknowns. When books are returned improperly, it creates a moment of unnecessary work at best. At worst, it causes things to become harder for patrons and staff to find, improperly recorded, or “lost” in the system, and those types of mistakes have a tendency to add up/compound with a large enough collection.
It takes way longer to unfuck that kind of mess than to have it be put back correctly in the first place, so let the pros handle it if you’re not 100% sure – there’s absolutely no shame in that.
For those that want to learn, its the Dewey decimal system.
How can it be difficult to put something back where you found it anyway?
Turns out that, taken as a typical behavior across the general population of library users, it’s really fucking intensely difficult.
Idk. I think it’s just easier to rely on a specific someone whose job it is to put shit in the proper place than to hope every random person who takes a book off the shelf can put it back in the proper place. Like, I get what you’re saying. It isn’t a big ask to have people return a book after looking at it. But it’s so easy for them to put it in the wrong spot. And once it’s on the shelf, it’s much harder to notice that it’s out of place. It seems counter intuitive, but it’s more efficient to simply leave the book out after looking at it
Nah, libraries are theft. When you borrow a book from a library and you read it, then you have stolen a book from the publisher. Then you give it back and the next person comes along and reads the same book, stealing even more from the publisher.
Somebody just got promoted at the ACS. ;p
Yup. Tbh, memory in general is theft. You should not be able to have the memory of the book you read unless you keep paying for it. Really should be introducing subscription models for memories of experiences, like reading. Otherwise it’s lobotomy for you.
Please…please don’t give them ideas.
If you read the book really fast, you can read it multiple times, costing the publisher even more. If you read it enough times, you could even force the publisher into bankruptcy.
Stallman would be proud lmao.
Your meme has inspired me to renew my library card.
We should all aspire to be the Oceans 11 heist of having a library card.
You wouldn’t download a
carbookWaow based
This is wholesome.
i work at a library. please put the books in the spot labeled book return. it may not seem like it but because there are so few people working there just a few people in the library can keep us so busy we will miss the books you put down. also, check if your library has an ebook/audiobook thing like Libby. the wait times can be long but it’s still pretty cool if you’re into those.
Out of curiosity do you have a routine to periodically (annually, quarterly, I don’t know) to re-arrange books put back in the wrong place?
I know they do it in warehouses to verify like “system says we have 500 of x but we have 495. System says we have 1100 of y but we have 1132” and they correct all the counts annually.
My (academic) library does. We send out a student worker with a laptop on a book cart to scan all the books on a shelf, then the next shelf, etc. The system flags if anything is missing or out of order, so the student can fix the order right then.
When I worked in a public library, every librarian sleeper adopted a section of shelves and, when it was quiet, went and made sure it was in proper order.
That’s actually really cool…
Warehouse ops manager here, we call our process scheduled counts & invoice counts.
We have about 25,000 locations for parts. We count a few sections each day for our scheduled counts, and we count the entire place 3 times a year by doing it.
That helps us find and address things that may be misplaced lost or just wrong but that haven’t been an issue for about 4 months.
Alternately we have a process that we used to count every location we picked parts from the day before.
The combination, when done correctly and not just fucking the dog, definately keeps you good.
I’m sad we no longer do the daily counts as it makes bigger problems than being able to check on incorrect orders within a day or 2 and not months later when no body can remember anything.
I might actually like working in a library now that I think about it
Yeah, my previous employer had shutdowns on the week of July 4th and Christmas so the production operators on contract(aka not paid for holidays) could volunteer to help in the counts.
I was curious if libraries have a similar system…
The librarian at my grad school had a book cart in her house and would not let her husband put a book anywhere but on that cart once he was finished with it. Power move.
Why’s that? Is it just in case you put it in the wrong spot?
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Primarily, yes. But also most libraries run a book through the check-in system when they pick it up. This marks in the system when and where the last time a book was touched was, which can be useful if it were to go missing. But mostly it’s so it doesn’t go in the wrong spot.
Who is running check on on the return cart? Who has time for that?
These a check in box in the back room. If it isn’t in there, and it has a label then It’s assumed to be part of the collection.
Was a literal librarian for 6 years. Pay was shite so I left.
Do they track the number of times a specific title was checked out?
I’m sure that info is pretty valuable to track reading trends.
I suspect that depends.
At least at finnish HelMet libraries, you can just walk in and take any book out of any shelf, and sit down to read it. Once you’re done, you put it back in the exact same spot.
If you don’t remember where that was, then you can hand it to a librarian to re-shelve. They will check the inventory to see where it should go.
You can actually also do that yourself, since the same system is available for finding any given book currently in the library, but it works just as well for putting something back.
All of the above is allowed without signing up for a library card.
If you want to bring a book home, that’s when you go to the checkout, scan your library card, and the barcode on the book. This removes it from current inventory and logs you as the current borrower.
When you bring it back, you scan the book again and leave it on the shelf by the returns scanner. Because the book was removed from the inventory, it wont have a place on a shelf yet. Also, because the inventory of any one library here is everchanging, things may have moved around.
This system also allows you return books to a different library from where you borrowed them. Since the HelMet libraries in the capital city region all interoperate, they share collections, and the location and lending of every individual item is tracked across them all. Across four cities and 66 libraries, and even a couple library buses that visit schools and more remote spots on a schedule.
You can even browse the inventory online. See where copies of what are available, what’s available but currently lent out, request something be moved to a library close to you so you can read it, or reserve a spot in line to borrow something popular.
Kinda just gushing about our libraries. If they don’t have something, HelMet does intralibrary lending. They will get a certain book or item for you from another library network entirely (even from abroad), lend it out to you, and once you’re done, return it back to the providing network.
They do their darndest to make physical media as accessible as the internet, and it’s freaking free (for the most part, some things have a fee).
That’s how it should work everywhere.
That’s all exactly the same here in the US, except I’ve yet to come across a library that let patrons operate the scanner.
No, we definitely have them, even as far back as when I was a teen. But like most things, it varies…
I haven’t encountered it, so I am absolutely sure it doesn’t exist anywhere in America.
Damn. Over here we have self-service hours.
Library card holders that sign up for it can get into a library building using their library card, outside normal opening hours, when the staff isn’t even there.
That’s neat. I guess American society is too low trust for that, sadly.
Our little local library uses RFID chips in the books. It is all self checkout, you just place it on the scanner and done.
In a comment, OP provides the other reason that libraries may not want you to read a book and return it (other than putting it in the wrong place, which occurs). Libraries may be collecting data on usage.
I assumed the OP is about returning books you’ve checked out. If you just come in and put them back on the shelf, the system will still think they are checked out since they never got checked in.
This is essentially the same as in the US. But one question
When you bring it back, you scan the book again and leave it on the shelf by the returns scanner. Because the book was removed from the inventory, it wont have a place on a shelf yet.
Do you not have a classification system that determines where a book should reside? US libraries (and others, I presume) use the Dewey Decimal System, which groups books into categories and such, and then finally alphabetically by author. So every book would have a general place to go, and then the specific place would be determined by the author’s last name.
Sure.
Items are grouped by type (games, video, music, tools, devices, fact, fiction, for adults, for kids, comics, audiobooks) etc. Each library may subdivide things in slightly different ways, due to the fact that they vary massively in size. I think some do use DDC for some subset of their inventory. But HelMet has a lot of media and items that do no fit into the DDC system.
You can certainly find something based on how things are sorted, and if you know its there.
But since the collection is region-wide, you don’t necessarily know that. Step one to finding a copy of something is to look up what libraries currently have any. When you look that up, the shelf location is right there as well.
Many locations simply number their shelves, and then further subdivide them by a point value, and then sort alphabetically.
A Harry Potter book for example, could be on shelf 86, section 11063, by “HAR”.
Each entire shelf is usually in alphabetical order overall, too, but the numbers make it really easy to zero in on exactly where a given item can be found.
But since any book might move to any other library, at any time (due to requests or due to borrowers returning books to a different library to where they picked them up), there is the simple problem that a location can run out of space in a given section. Hence they need to be able to put items on any shelf, and still have it trackable by the system.
Otherwise they can end up having to shift hundreds of books over to make space for just a couple more items to go in the right spot in the order.
Interesting! When you return a book to a different in-network library it stays there? In the US/at my library, if a book belongs to library A and a patron returns it at library B, it is sent back to A.
Depends.
Items get sent around all the time. In-network, copies are interchangeable, and the system balances them out among the libraries. AFAIK there’s no particular need for a copy to go back to the same shelf, so it doesn’t happen.
If no-one is looking for a certain item, it wont move again unless someone asks, or if the library needs space for something else.
It’s kinda nice. Every time I visit a library it can have an entirely new selection. With recent requests to that location which have been returned again, or just returns, appearing on the shelves.
Ah, I can see how shelving limits could cause problems. Most libraries I’ve gone to only fill each shelf about 3/4 full to account for that. Thanks for the insights!
i can’t, it makes me feel so guilty whenever I make someone else when😭😭
This isn’t a thing. Stop making things up. You’ll ruin this thread.
Are you a librarian? What kind of library do you work in? I think academic and public libraries probably operate slightly differently.
As a former public librarian. I prefer you put it on the cart if you don’t know how to put it back. I am a lot faster than you are at putting it back so let me. But that goes everywhere there is shelving - which is a lot of places.
There’s no other special reason why.
On occasion I like to identify as a historian.
On what dates, if you don’t mind?
Holidays only.
