Not quite. Imagine you’re writing a research paper at the library. You take some books off the shelf to study from while you’re there. Then, before you leave, don’t reshelve the books. It’s because the library tracks metrics of which books are being used and if you put it back yourself it doesn’t get counted.
We had all books stickered on the spine though, with the shelve/genre (for novels) or number (for educational books) and the first three letters of the author’s name. So it wasn’t overly hard and mostly worked out. People can mostly manage to match the picture and then alphabetise “DUM”, so the Three Musketeers would generally find it’s way back alright.
We still had walks to check though, and that’s probably where my lifeling obsession with alphabetising and straightening shelves comes from. I do it even when i’m in a random bookstore, just alinging the spines with the edge of the shelve after putting a book back.
Not quite. Imagine you’re writing a research paper at the library. You take some books off the shelf to study from while you’re there. Then, before you leave, don’t reshelve the books. It’s because the library tracks metrics of which books are being used and if you put it back yourself it doesn’t get counted.
For an academic Library, absolutely. But I worked at the local library here, and we didn’t track anything unless you checked out the book.
But would you trust everyone who takes a book off the shelf to put it back exactly where they found it?
We had all books stickered on the spine though, with the shelve/genre (for novels) or number (for educational books) and the first three letters of the author’s name. So it wasn’t overly hard and mostly worked out. People can mostly manage to match the picture and then alphabetise “DUM”, so the Three Musketeers would generally find it’s way back alright.
We still had walks to check though, and that’s probably where my lifeling obsession with alphabetising and straightening shelves comes from. I do it even when i’m in a random bookstore, just alinging the spines with the edge of the shelve after putting a book back.