[Publib] Good-bye Dewey

[BookBitch]

The shelving that goes on in a bookstore varies just
like it does in libraries.  I feel I have a good basis
for comparison as I worked in both a bookstore & a
library that are located half a mile apart and share a
customer base.

The bookstore doesn't have the returned books to deal
with like the library does, but they do deal with what
we called slush. With bookstores becoming places for
people to hang out and browse, they tend to leave the
items they've looked at all over the store.  In the
cafe alone we could fill 2-3 book trucks a day on the
weekend, just picking up books & magazines that
customers were looking at and left behind.  The same
holds true for the rest of the store, people peruse a
variety of items and leave them on tables, piled on
chairs or the floor, or even worse, reshelve them in
the wrong areas. And don't get me started about the
children's area!  I still have nightmares.

In my library we have a reshelf cart and it is packed
full by the end of the day.  But Borders had several
of those carts to deal with every day, perhaps because
they were open so many more hours, but also I think
it's more an attitude or perception of the
patrons/customers that use it.  

In the bookstore, people would complain if they had to
wait five minutes in line.  They would literally throw
their stuff on a display table and stomp out of the
store.  At the library, they don't seem to mind
waiting.  They are also neater, putting things back or
perhaps just not taking so many things to look at? 
I'm not sure which but it's true, especially in
children's.

My bookstore had several pallets of books delivered
three days a week.  They would all have to be shelved
before the next day's delivery.  The receiving area
was quite small and often we had to leave a pallet
outside until the first one was shelved so it was
imperative to get the books out immediately.  I had a
dedicated shelving crew of 4-6 most of the time I
worked there.  We tried various shifts but the most
effective was the overnight shelvers; they would come
in at 11:00 pm and shelve all night until 7 am. When I
was inventory manager I would help them load up book
trucks before I left at midnight and they would all be
shelved by morning.  

There was more to shelving also in that we constantly
had to shift sections depending on what came in. You
might think it would be easier to shelve 300 copies of
the new James Patterson than to shelve 2 copies each
of 150 different titles, but the reality is a
logistical nightmare that usually involves scouting
out various locations throughout the store, moving
other books around, shifting entire bookcases at
times, finding a spot on an endcap or display or
wherever you possibly can squeeze in a few copies that
will be easy to find.

At the bookstore we had to change the entire front of
store every month - all those tables and endcaps and
displays.  The  bargain book displays were rebuilt
weekly. 

Even pages or volunteers can have a dedicated section.
 It is much quicker to shelve an area with which you
are familiar than to try and learn the whole library. 


The shelving at bookstores, at least busy bookstores,
is intensive and neverending.  The pressure is always
there to get the books out because as one of my
favorite managers used to say, you can't sell books
from the backroom.  My library is a busy one; we
circulate over 800,000 items a year and while the
shelving also seems neverending, it doesn't seem to
have the intensity or stress of the bookstore.

Cheers,
Stacy Alesi
Library Name *Censored*
Boca Raton, Florida






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