One of the many things I am enjoying about being back at my library paging job is that EVEN THOUGH I like the job, I STILL get to experience that delightful “Oh, yay, it’s Friday!”/”Oh, yay, a day off on Monday!” feeling. This happens even when I spend my day off wondering if I should text my supervisor and see if I can come in anyway because I am just itching to get back to my shelf-shifting project and am jealously wondering if my supervisor might have put one of the OTHER LIBRARY PAGES to work on it, NO, LEAVE IT FOR MEEEEEEEEEEE, IT IS MYYYYYYYYYYY PROJECT!!! (There is a sense in which Swistle is an excellent team-player, and another sense in which she the hell is not.)
Shelf-shifting is, as you might expect, when you shift books on the shelves. Sometimes it means moving them to an entirely new place; but more often, it means distributing them more evenly/sensibly among the shelves where they already reside. In a sense, shelf-shifting happens continually as we’re re-shelving: maybe this week’s new James Patterson book won’t fit on the twenty shelves his books are currently inhabiting, so I have to move another James Patterson book either one shelf back or one shelf forward to make room. But usually the term is used for a larger project, such as when an ENTIRE SECTION (e.g., all the large-print books) has gotten to the point where it no longer makes sense to do the little everyday shifts: you’d try to move one book to the next shelf, but in order to do that you’d have to move a book from that shelf to the next shelf, which would require moving one book from THAT shelf to the next shelf, and so on for ten shelves, just to make room for one book. SO THEN: my supervisor might ask me to shelf-shift an entire section. (Or, if I am at loose ends and have noticed an issue, I might shelf-shift a smaller area without being told.)
When I was presented with this type of task for the first time, I thought I wouldn’t like it: it seemed like boring manual labor. But I LOVE it. It’s so satisfying. You start by looking at all the shelves in the section, and estimating how many blank shelves there are total: like, that shelf is about 1/10th empty, that one’s about 1/10th empty, that one’s 1/4th empty, that one’s 1/2 empty, there are three entirely empty shelves at the end of the section, and so on. Then you divide that among how many shelves are allotted to the section: okay, I have approximately five full empty shelves total, and there are forty shelves in this section; so when I’m done shifting, each shelf should be about 1/8th empty.
But! As you’re shifting, there are some Things You Know. For example, you know you should leave more than 1/8th shelf available in the Patterson section. You know it’s likely Berg and King will need more room over the years, but Grafton and Binchy will not. You know you always have a lot of Baldacci and Hilderbrand and Hannah to reshelve, so leave them space because some of their books are for sure checked out right now, and they’ll need shelf to sit on when they come back. And so on!
And you can make the whole area tidier while you’re at it, which I guess doesn’t sound like fun when I type it out, but remember you are being PAID to do this. And: it happens satisfyingly often that, as I am working, I find a misplaced book: maybe every few shelves, I find one mildly out of place, a book I could easily have found if I were looking for it, but it’s still pleasing to move it a few books to the left or right where it belongs; but maybe once per section, I find one WILDLY out of place, a book that was impossibly lost (a 700s book in the 900s! a non-large-print book among the large-print!), and it’s EXTREMELY pleasing to walk it over to where it belongs and feel it clicking into place—as if a little tracking light has lit up on a book-location map, now that the unfindable book is findable again.
(Are you still reading this??? You may want to consider a job at a library.)
I am absolutely considering a job in a library! Once things open up more where I live I want to look at volunteering at one at a minimum.
That was one of my favorite jobs at the bookstore. Especially when we would get a new shipment of books that needed to be faced-out, and we’d have to find them space. SO FUN.
I initially read this as “self-shifting” SEVERAL TIMES. As in shifting to a more self focused space at a job after full time stay home parent. Clearly that’s my life lens right now and that is not at all what you were talking about BUT I think this whole post is a beautifully apt metaphor for that as well.
I nearly took a job at the library when I was in high school, and while I enjoyed the job I took instead, this really does sound good.
Out of curiosity, what job did you take instead?
I wonder if you’re still checking — sorry for the delayed response!
I was a parents’ helper: I got to the family’s house before the kids got back from school and made dinner, usually following directions (sort of like shelving books — not much thought required, just doing what needed using the materials provided) but sometimes making what I could think of with the materials at hand, plus maybe a bonus like cookies or quick bread.
Leaving a casserole in the fridge or a pot of soup on the stove in a clean kitchen was satisfying in a way that doing the same for my own family was/is not. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the sense that I was Done and no more could possibly be expected of me?
The way you describe this is so pleasing, and yet I know myself. I found this to be an unbearable part of medical records when I worked in healthcare. WHY would we do things alphabetically when they COULD be done by date? Woe! Despair! Papercuts made by manila file folders!
But I also greatly enjoy the feeling you talk about when you know some things about your job and how it should go that aren’t strictly in the step-by-step.
I worked as a receptionist at a General Practitioner’s office for a couple of years, and lo, it was merely a chore and not satisfying at all. We did stickers on all the medical records to mark when the patient had last been seen and if the most recent sticker was over 3 years old, the file went into storage. This was a cull we did on the first of every month, and it was NO FUN.
It’s wierd, I did not enjoy doing this to files in a drawer and very much do at the library. It may be the fact that at the library, I think I’m helping patrons and with files I assumed no one would ever use it, but I think it’s about the physical heft of the books compared to the physical size/shape of files.
This sounds deeply satisfying.
Even just READING this was very satisfying.
My mom was a librarian. I read to the end and can easily imagine the satisfaction ❤️
I worked in my campus library for four years in college and this was such a delightful read! Books are just so satisfying in myriad ways, I love it!
I worked in a video store in high school and returning videotapes to the shelves was similarly satisfying. I loved seeing how many I could stack in my arm, and then yes, sometimes shelf-shifting did occur. We had a children’s room in the back which as you can imagine, was always an absolute nightmare, and once or twice I completely reorganized it. It immediately got trashed again, but still. Very satisfying work.
Pre-pandemic I was routinely volunteering in the middle school library and I miss it terribly. This was a nice little sensory return to the shelves.
I would love a job at our library. Unfortunately, jobs at our library are rarer than hen’s teeth so I have to live vicariously through you!
Ditto! Pretty sure all the pages at our library are volunteers, the actual librarians have been there forever and aren’t going anywhere, and because we are in a college town, I suspect the vast majority of entry-level jobs go to recent graduates or students in library science. But it seems like a job I would really love, so I like hearing about it!
Swistle, this is my DREAM JOB. When my children are raised, and I’m too old/obsolete to be a copy editor anymore, I think I should very much like to be a library page.
This whole post reminds me ever so much of when I was an assistant manager at Blockbuster (RIP) and my greatest joy was “doing the wall,” wherein I reorganized the New Release wall, the outer wall of the store, each week when the New Releases came out. Most stores would just slapdash shove things in semi-alphabetically, but NOT MINE, OH NO. I always made sure the shelves were symmetrical (they were all 8 DVD cases wide) and as perfectly alphabetical as possible. It was EXTREMELY SATISFYING.
Please know I am not implying library pages are old or obsolete, merely that I know I have an expiration date as a relevant copy editor.
(Pre-covid) I wanted to volunteer in my kid’s elementary school. I wasn’t interested in one-on-one reading with kindergarteners, but I didn’t want to just volunteer in the office. I ended up in the library, and it was perfect! I got to see all the kids interacting with each other, I learned a bunch of their names, and I could help them once in a while in fun ways, like finding favorite books. But there was also the tremendous satisfaction of reshelving books (lots of opportunity to fix mis-shelvings!) and, as you describe, occasionally shifting the shelves. Now I’m mad at covid for taking that time away.
I found a 320.1 shelved at 330.1 this morning!!
GLORIOUS!!
My job in college was at the university general library and one of my common tasks was to simply scan the shelves in the stacks to find books that were mis-shelved. I loved finding the wildly out of place ones!
Hahaha, every time you write about your job I wish I was working there, too! I even looked into jobs at our local libraries (but this was pre-Covid, so a whole LIFETIME has passed since then and I don’t remember what the roadblock was. But I couldn’t have your same job, and I was sad).
I have worked in libraries. This is a very specific thing that I appreciate 10000%.
I have dabbled in library work both in college and volunteering at my kids’ school. I totally get the satisfaction of bringing order to chaos and helping a place be more usable.
In fact, at some point I realized that my favorite phone/tablet games are puzzle games about bringing order to chaos. In particular, I Love Hue Too. (Do you know this game? I think you might love it!)
I *DO* want to consider a job at my local library! (I do not know if they even have this type of job…but now I am curious to find out because it sounds incredibly mentally satisfying. I worked briefly at a bookstore in my college years and it was HEAVEN.)
PS How sad is it to realize there will be no more Binchy (or, insert your favorite now-deceased author here).
I suspect I’d like this job too. I already return things wildly out of place to where they should be just because it offends my sense of order to find them where I do, and I get such satisfaction at putting things right. This includes books mis-shelved at the library and clothes at the local thrift store hung in the wrong section. (This is an adult man’s shirt in the kids’ section! Back to the men’s section it goes!)
Wistful Sigh…I continue to be entranced by the library job. <3 <3
I blacked out during the math part but I loved the aspect of the the task. LOL.
And then you said author names! Heaven! It's my version of Heaven!
I need a job at the library. BRB.
I’ll meet you there!
I keep my fiction non-graphic novels in alphabetical order by authors surname and it meant when we moved the bookshelves around in the pond*, I had to do a major shelf shift and I found it deeply satisfying. My wife made fun of me.
*The pond is the home office /craft room /library/spare bedroom. In our old house, we called the craft room the Lilly Pad and this is an upgrade. I’d love to hear about names other people have for funny multipurpose or unusual rooms.
Growing up, my sister and I called the second story of the house “The Upland Plateau”. It had the study, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and an upstairs porch. Occasionally, I’ll make reference to it in my current house by asking my kids about the condition of The Upland Plateau.
I volunteer at my library and LOOOOOOVE every aspect of shelving that I get to do. I fairly cavort into the library when it’s my day (although, I have not been in since quarantine started, sob sob), and I feel so accomplished at the end!
My sheet music library in my classroom needs some serious shelf-shifting (drawer shifting)… want to come help? I just can’t deal with it! ;)
OOh I read this to the end! I would love your job! When I am in person at my library, which I haven’t been since before COVID (they weren’t allowing browsing up to a couple of weeks ago, which is why I go), I will often move books back to their right places. I hate it when I see an Ha author after an He author or some such nonsense. Somehow I ended up in accounting, but I have a friend who has been a library page and loved it! Maybe when I retire and am looking for a great part-time job….
This all sounds so deeply satisfying, especially when you add in the paycheck. My own beloved library re-opened last week; they did an amazing job of providing curbside service during the pandamorama but I was SO HAPPY to be able to wander the stacks again!! I thought of you as I brought in Tiff’s Treats cookies for the staff with a little note thanking them for keeping the books available over the past year-plus. I was sad to see that many of the familiar faces are gone, though.
This was exactly my favorite job of all time. I was a senior in high school, and my zone was all of children’s non-fiction. The job was especially thrilling, since due to the way school districts and libraries were set up where I grew up, I went to a different school than all my teen-aged coworkers. I was *exotic*!