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.
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
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