Ponder This
Kevin D. Hendricks – “Why is it that libraries shelve paperbacks and hardbacks separately?”
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© Copyright 2012, Information Today, Inc., All rights reserved.
Kevin D. Hendricks – “Why is it that libraries shelve paperbacks and hardbacks separately?”
© Copyright 2012, Information Today, Inc., All rights reserved.
The first answer would be: You can’t generalize from your own library.
My public library intershelves trade paperbacks with hardcovers, at the very least, and I suspect does so with all purchased paperbacks.
At another local library, I’ve seen spinners of mass-market paperbacks, but those also weren’t fully processed. And, of course, lots of libraries have exchange shelves where people drop off paperbacks they’ve finished with and pick up others…
Try this experiment. Pile ten small paperbacks in a stack. Now put a few folios on top of the stack. After the unstable pile falls over, ask yourself this: Should folios be kept separate from paperbacks? Yes, the folios were being pushed down vertically by gravity. Consider that on a horizontal shelf, the horizontal force that holds the books together comes from the bookends, corresponding to the vertical force in the experiment. If someone pulls a book off such a mixed shelf, the lack of stability causes several books to fall off the shelf. On a high shelf, the books rain down on anyone below. As a guy who puts the books on the shelf, I am careful not to set such traps for people. Librarians don’t always know better.
As Walt Crawford mentioned, different public libraries shelve paperbacks differently. My library does separate the paperbacks from the hardbacks for several reasons. First of all, many of our patrons will only read paperbacks, because they are easier to hold. This is especially important for libraries that have a large “older adult” demographic. Shelving the paperbacks together also means that there is less chance of individual books being pushed to the back and less chance of the books on a shelf falling down if several are removed (as TheDonOfPages mentioned above). Some libraries even separate paperbacks into genre sections (romance, science fiction, mysteries, etc.) to make it quicker and even more convenient for patrons to find their particular favorite books.