Training first involves face-to-face instruction. A media session (a viewing of Youtube videos related to LC classification). Training continues with an interactive shelving game (provided via Kent State University Library)--a digital practice which is then followed up by real world application: a sorting of physical books.
Once supervisors are satisfied with the library worker's demonstrated mastery of LC, the principals of shelf-reading are detailed in-depth.
- Books out of order by Library of Congress call number.
- Books shelved in the wrong location. For example: a Reference book shelved in the Stacks Collection.
- Books placed on top of other books, outside of bookends, or books that have fallen behind the row of books on the shelf.
- Books with damaged or missing call number labels.
- Books shelved in the collection but owned by another library.Source: https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/access.../overview_of_shelf_reading.pdf)
Workers are assigned micro-sections (see Figure 1)--this initiative's intent is to reduce "read fatigue" by having workers read smaller, more manageable areas of hierarchical (high-use first) stack sections.
A log is kept of the number of miss-shelves per stack (above-mentioned principal 3., not included in miss-shelve stats).
Figure 1.