Ceceile-
There is an interesting point made by Tom Mann in his essay about the
"closed stack" issue. First of all, it is not closed to the reference
staff or to CRS or to scholars with stack passes. The reference staff
is quite busy helping either the public, scholars or members of
Congress. The Guild of professionals at LC has come out strongly
against the proposal as has CRS. It is their opinions that the
non-subject arrangement will severely affect their ability to use the
library. Their opposition to height shelving is its proposed use in the
stack areas where these persons work, not in off site or remote storage
areas which are closed to all and where the holdings are only available
by paging.
Richard Leiter
Ceceile Kay Richter wrote:
At 12:28 PM 6/17/99 -0500, scott_narowetz@bakerbotts.com wrote:
>
> I think the height shelving idea will accommodate all those
> disgruntled shelves quite nicely but what about the *people* who
> try to use the library?
I may be answering prematurely because I have not read the document.
However, as a regular user of the Library of Congress, I can speak to
the
situation there.
The situation at the Library of Congress has some uniqueness. The
stacks
are closed, not open. Library patrons need information that they can
retrieve from the catalogue. Once they know which reading room to go to
to
order a book and can find the call number, what it takes to retrieve the
book is beyond their concern. Only if retrieval speed were affected
considerably by how the book is shelved, would it be their concern.,
As a regular user of the Library of Congress I do feel disadvantaged by
closed stacks. I could not have solved the Cal Law Review question in
the
easy manner that it was resolved yesterday. And I miss the serendipity
of
discovering nearby books that meet my purpose better than the book I
selected from the catalogue. I also miss the serendipity of card
catalogues.
If height shelving allows more books to be stored and the stacks will
stay
closed, it is hard to argue against height shelving. If however, there
is
even the possibility that the Library will return to open stacks, all
books
height shelved would have to be recatalogued.
> I would suggest that LC do classification by book color next.
> After all anyone whose worked with a lawyer knows that they may
not
> be able to remember the title of a book but they always remember
> its color. ;)
>
I would agree that there is something to be said for book color. It
took
me a few years to realize that the halls of the Library of Congress are
color coded. I didn't notice the color of the doors. However, I
remember
the color of book covers and probably their size as well.. Does anyone
else remember the orange color of those small books that were
biographies
of famous people that you read in your classroom in the 1950s?
>
>
> Scott Narowetz
>
>
Ceceile Kay Richter, Informationist
The ResearchSource For Hard-to-Find Information
mailto:crichter@ResearchSource.com
Tel. +1-202-778-0002; Fax +1-202-331-1585
Fee-Based Information Research - Historical Research - Legal Materials
Research - Document Delivery - Added Analysis - Custom Reports
-- Richard Leiter Associate Dean & Professor Howard University School of Law Allen Mercer Daniel Law Library 202-806-8045 202-806-8400 (fax)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:50:07 PST