Library Tales: Observations I

When students attempt to hide books - that is, when they deliberately secrete a pile of un-checked-out books in a place that only they know so that they alone can gain repeated use of said books - it is mostly found to be Law or Business students (or Law and Business text books at any rate) that are the perpetrators. What are we to make of this?

The messiest book shelves - that is, kind-hearted students have made something like an attempt to return the item to the shelf, but instead have dumped them near but not near enough to were they actually should be. It's a benign dumping, rather than actively trying to stop people use books they want, they stop everyone, including themselves - are almost always to found wherever there are science and medical students. Mathematics students seem to find the classification system especially impossible to follow, maybe it's just too simple?

Some helpful students like to write notes on the frontispiece of books, "this one's good!" or "what a load of rubbish!" or point out good work by the author "good start!" sometimes they like to leave hand-written notes, "Recommended Reading." How sweet.

It is a  Japanese superstition that when one sneezes it means you are being talked about by someone. Since starting work at the library it seems I've become a regular topic of conversations...

The worst part of the job, taking books off the shelf. Not even to be cleaned or repaired, but simply packed up and sent away. First to an external store and then probable shredding. That I was 'weeding' philosophy books only compounded my ill feeling.