January 3, 2008
Shelving Game
Shelving books has never been so... fun? weird? trippy?
Check out this Library of Congress classification game. The chipper music and the gruff "you're not done yet" aren't so bad, but the "YES!" and "ALL RIGHT!" guy seems a little too enthusiastic about shelving books.
I must admit that I played through to the end. My inner librarian loved the fact that I could shelve all the books and have them stay in perfect order, because my time working at a library taught me that this never happens in reality (at least not at a public library). Patrons constantly put books back on the shelf in the wrong spot and, more importantly, shelving never ends. You never finish shelving. It's a constant process that must be diligently monitored. And if the computers go down or a power outage occurs, the backlog takes ages to clear out. It's like the 'Seinfeld' episode in which Newman explains why postal workers 'go postal':
Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming. Piles of it, more and more! And you have to put it all out, but the more you put it out, the more it keeps coming in! And then the barcode reader breaks! And it's Publisher's Clearing House Day!
(Maybe it would be helpful for library workers to have someone standing next to them saying "YES!" and "ALL RIGHT!" every time they shelved a book correctly.)
03 Jan 0:59 | Link | Category: Interactive, Libraries & Digital Information