Query of the Day…
May 6th, 2010 by Vanessa
Email from Library Manager:
“We’re refurbishing our library and wondered if you could tell us how to divide up the books and what to call the sections”
Admittedly, I’m feeling fairly snarky today but even so …
On the one hand, fine but on the other: you’re a library manager – surely you should know this stuff? Or be able to visit some of your local bookshops in the south-east of England? Or maybe I should be charging a consultancy fee?
Sections we’re thinking of including next time we have a reorganise include “Diggers and Trucks”, “Vampires and The Like”, “Books for Very-Advanced-For-Their-Age Children” and “Orphans and Sundry Other Depressing Plots”. Any other suggestions?
oh dear.
Someone came into my shop yesterday and said she wanted some children’s books in the waiting area of her work, and wanted advice on what kind of books to have, and the correct books for different reading abilities.
Turned out this waiting room was the reception area of her school.
Surely she should have some sort of idea of children’s abilities? She is a teacher.
Fail.
Also, a lady came in with a big box of books and said ‘can you give these to a good home?’
Me: Sure.
Lady: Thanks, what charity will you give them to?
Me: Well, we won’t give them to a charity: we will sell them. This is a second hand bookshop.
Lady: You sell them?? Oh dear. Well. I’ll take them elsewhere.
What the hell is going on? x
We have a diggers and trucks (and Thomas and fire engines…) section in our shop! We also have a pink/sparkly/princess section but tend to give it a wide berth when recommending…
Sports stories or just books for boys that don’t have sparkly covers
How about a section for “I don’t know the title or author but it has an (insert colour choice) cover.”
Please tell me the Library Manager wasn’t from Kensington …
Ah right, the simple answer is, “Well actually you don’t organise books like that. You need to buy a tape measure first. Then you measure all the books. Then you put them in order of height. Yes, I know you have some books that are the same height. You open those and count the pages. The books with the most pages go first. If two books have the same number of pages then you start to order them by colour and you do not that in the same sequence as the rainbow. It is all very simple. Trust me.” :-)
That’s really strange. Library managers aren’t usually professionally trained librarians but even then they should have an awareness of the classification system in use. Let’s hope they are not representative of their library service. But then with massive cuts of professional staff across the country, who knows?
When I was a librarian in Leeds we reorganised the children’s fiction books categories but it was we librarians who decided on it.
Snarky … but funny :-)