Subtle Changes To New Book Shelves

If you walk in the north doors of Ellis Library (the doors by the Tiger Spot, shown above) and walk straight ahead, the first books you will come across occupy three bookcases on your left.

In this picture, the New Books shelves are over on the left. You can just see a bit of one of the three bookcases.

These are our newest books. To give you an idea of just how many books we receive every year...the books on all three shelves together constitute one week's worth of new books. If you've looked at those shelves any time before about October 1 or so, and then look at them again now, you will see that:

• there are now more books on these shelves than there used to be
• they don't sport dust jackets as they used to
• there is now a sign pointing out that we change these books out every Wednesday.

There is also now a possibility that when you look for a new book in MERLIN, there will be a note that the status is New Books. That means you have to go over to those shelves to find the books.

There are more books than there used to be b/c we are now putting all new books we receive on this shelf as soon as they leave Cataloging, not just the ones we think make a "good sample" of interesting books. I believe the dust jackets come off sooner now because this speeds the process of moving the books on to the regular stacks when the week is up and newer new books come to take their place.

This change will reduce the number of "I can't find it on the shelf!" frustrations, because previously, MERLIN made no distinction between books in the stacks and books still on the New Books shelf.