I was working with a student today who said that she would often look up books in our catalog and then buy them online or get them from the public library instead of looking for them here - because it's too confusing! This made me sad. A few things made me happy:
- She came to the desk for help
- She wanted to know how to find books in our library
- I showed her how to look up one call number and she found the second one on her own
Here's what I learned:
- It is confusing to find books in the library!
The issue for this student was the tags on the side of the shelves that give the call number range. One of them had something like this - HD 5412 - HQ 112. It was the switch from HD to HQ that was confusing. The student knew she was in the H section, knew she was close with HD, but then couldn't figure out why the number went from 5412 - 112 right after I finished telling her the numbers increased. She had gone past the first letters in her mind and didn't think to look back to see what the letters were doing. And you know what else? It was confusing to explain it.
This seems like genuine confusion, not laziness or unwillingness to learn the system. I think most of our students come up against this wall - getting to the right section but not being able to decode what the call number range on the side of the shelves actually means. At the moment I'm picturing simple directions mounted on the side of all the shelves with further instructions on how to locate the books. I'll toy with this during the summer.
Either that, or closed stacks... :)
