Shelving Identifiers

I’m still working on projects like the SEO project for our firm website, and working on a team to figure out our intranet.  But now I have a new (self-assigned) project as well: shelf assignments.  I’m serious, none of the shelves are identified so sometimes when we get supplements for books I have to hunt on three separate floors before finding it.

Because the physical organization of books here is by attorney and not how you would expect to find them organized in an academic law library, and we have multiple offices, I have to come up with a unique shelving system.  My thoughts on this so far are:

(City initial)(Floor number)(Bookshelf)(Shelf)

For example, for the top shelf of the bookshelf closest to me would be identified as B2H1.  When an attorney searches for the book in the database, they will see that the shelving location and know that it is located in the city “B” office on the second floor.  Even if they don’t know which shelf is which (yet), they can look for the H on the top of the bookshelf unit, and the number of the shelf.

I have a color-coded map at my desk that I'm working at to label the shelves preemptively to make sure this works before I give it a go. 

 

I kind of love that my first law librarian position is at this firm – which has never had a law librarian before – because there is so much room for potential growth and I can really work from the ground up to see what works best for the firm.

Someday I will have to take the time to write about my battle with print v. electronic resources.   I just ordered my first electronic book today for the firm (yay)!