Library tidbits: Another significant number, challenge areas shelving.

The other week I was at my library shelving job again for a few hours, and a few cool things happened.

First, I found (another) barcode ending in "...666".

Second, I had to re-shelve and then pull some books, and three sections in a row were the biggest call number challenge I've faced yet.

All of the 3 sections were these endless multi-volume series of English document collections, and sometimes the call numbers were organized by different titles and years but no volume numbers, and at other times by volume numbers that didn't match up to the number of the internally bound material that was still somehow noted on the spine, and at still other times within multiple series.

Because of that, then, a lot of times previous shelvers (or people consulting the books?) had put stuff back in the wrong places, which added to the confusion.

On top of all of that, too, two sections were also placed "spine down", since the books were too tall to stand normally on the shelf, so not only were they confusing and misordered, but I couldn't necessarily see everything at once and had to lift a lot individually before I could figure out what was going on.

It was a huge challenge, but I sorted it out before I left, and I felt a huge sense of completion.

I really do like that library job.