h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I loved my Uni library, spent many hours there and met my girl somewhere around the 306.44 shelf. I noticed that you didn't mention the dread week before coursework deadlines, when every student for miles around descends on the library and decimates the shelves. How the poor librarians ever got the books back in order after that is beyond my comprehension but I suspect that this might be one of the reasons that coursework is followed by holidays . How well I recall the ungodly sight of a chaotic library with more books on troleys than shelves, disorder and chaos in every section and librarians buzzing round in various states of stress induced psychosis. We always left it rather late to get the books we needed for our coursework and invariably found our reading lists of less than no use. It gave us the very useful knack of applying less immediatley relevant seconday sources to our work. This actually improved our grades in most cases, though I wouldn't reccomend it as a good stratagy for the majority of students.

Thanks for writing this entry, it brought back some great memories.

In those weeks our caffeine intake increases considerably!

David

That would be about the time when we run out of carts to put books on before they are shelved and they start coming out of our ears. Arguments break out over carts between cataloging librarians, periodicals librarians, and circulation librarians. We may be scrawny, but we pack a good punch.

And then hyper-caffinated panicky students come along and rifle the carts causing yet more chaos. It's a wonder the librarians don't resort to violence.

We just have a very involved cover-up system!

Indeed... what do you think is in the 'reserve stock' room, or the 'special collections' room which no-one except library staff is allowed in? Libraries really do have skeletons in the closet...

In the basement is the "dungeon" where we house stinky magazines that are over 80 years old. But you don't really have to worry unless someone makes a move for the trap door in the floor of the dungeon. The rats down there are just ravenous.

I lived with a guy who'd go through the term's reading list and "redistribute" the core texts to a far corner of the library where nothing had been touched in years. This unscrupulous and dastardly student would then roll up a week before his coursework was due and leave with all the volumes that nobody else could find.

Not recommended if you want to stay out of Hell

And we do sometimes dinf such books. Sometimes... And get jolly about it, although we know we can't catch the culprit.

That said, if books etc. go missing for a long period of time, we (and I assume other university librarians) inform the academic departments of their not-there-ness. This has led to some students being found out when, surprise, suprise, they are the only one to have referenced a particular item, having either stolen it or hidden it. We get them in the end...

And we do sometimes find such books. Sometimes... And get jolly about it, although we know we can't catch the culprit.

That said, if books etc. go missing for a long period of time, we (and I assume other university librarians) inform the academic departments of their not-there-ness. This has led to some students being found out when, surprise, suprise, they are the only one to have referenced a particular item, having either stolen it or hidden it. We get them in the end...