At the center of each floor there is a parking area for booktrucks ready to be reshelved. Every weekday, and again on Sunday, there is a crew of shelvers who put back in place the books that have been used and left on brown shelves or on table tops. Users are asked not to reshelve materials they have taken down from the shelves, as it is very easy to put books in the wrong place, where they may be effectively lost for months. Periodicals sustain heavy use, and may not be borrowed.
Periodicals receive top priority in reshelving.
Periodical volumes not in place on the shelves are often left near the copying machines. In addition to the daily re-shelving of items that have been used and left on the upper floors, shelvers are responsible for sorting and returning to the stacks items that have been checked out and returned. When returns are heavy, this process may take more than a day, but 24 hours from returned to reshelved is typical, and 48 hours is our standard. Throughout the semester, attention is paid to keeping good order in the stacks by carefully comparing call numbers on adjacent volumes, and rearranging as necessary. Reference items do not circulate out of the Library.