How does this book shop work anyway?

[ferebee]

I braved the mall this morning to finish up my christmas shopping, and headed to the book store for some readable goodies. Just stepped into the shop to the new release wall and a middle aged lady, well dressed, looks fairly well off, comes up to me:

Me: me
PW: puzzling woman person...

PW: How does this work?
Me: How does...
PW: How do they arrange the books?
Me: Alphabetically? ( I have a head full of cold and cold medicine so I thought I might be misunderstanding her - having my own sinusitis induced brain burp, but it turns out I wasn't having the brain burp...)
PW: (still looking confused in front of the general fiction - authors starting with A to B ) er... but I'm looking for Joy Fielding. Is it by first name?
(points at a book by an author whose name I don't remember now, but the first name was George or Gerald )
Me: Oh. No, by last name.
PW: Further that way then?
Me: Yes.
The PW goes on her merry- hopefully to the F section.I assume she must have found it - what with it being a whopping six feet away.

At that point, though I meant to have a look through general fiction first I went to look at nonfiction,very quickly as I thought I might start to laugh at her, maybe causing christmas spirit failure in at least one of us.

Seriously - how do you get upper middle age and not know how alphabetical arrangement works?

[wraiths_crono]

Nothing surprises me anymore. NOTHING!

[LibraryLady]

You would be amazed.

Back in the old days of the card catalog we had a volunteer for a while who never tired of telling us how educated she was. We had our doubts because the woman couldn't alphabetize worth beans.

As an example there was a card with the title "If the Warren House Could Talk". Where did she file it? Under Warren, of course. "If" is too small a word to count and everyone knows that leading articles aren't counted.

We didn't let her file if we could help it.

[Imogene]

As an example there was a card with the title "If the Warren House Could Talk". Where did she file it? Under Warren, of course.

Uh...
What's the Author's name? Without an author to go on, I'd most likely find it in both the I's and the W's... depending on who shelved...
Same deal when shelving Dot Hack. Old SM put it at the beginning of the anime wall, at least until I pointed out the Title wasn't '.Hack', it's 'Dot Hack'! He still might not've changed where he shelved it, but at least I pointed it out to him.
Then we got Lesbian AM, also into anime, mostly into the shoujo stuff, and, hmm, I don't think it moved then either...
I once again pointed out the tiny little word 'Dot' in the title. No change. So, I just started moving them to the D's any time I saw them at the beginning of the section.

[LibraryLady]

We had main entry cards that were filed by author but we also had title cards, subject cards and added entries such as series and/or secondary authors. Some items might have a dozen cards or more. This was a title card.

[Pagan]

For some reason, the more people know about one subject, the less commonsense they seem to have. The stories I could tell you about the biology profs from when I was in college and a work-study in the Biology Dept office....OY!

[prb]

Thanks, this post reminded me to place some books on hold at the library

[hecubus]

The same thing happened to me when I worked at the Buster of Blocks. I practically had to explain to the guy just how the whole "al-pha-bet(?)" thing worked.

[depechemodefan]

Fiction books at my library are in order by author's last name. Granted, some authors have hypenated names or 3 word name. Say Donna Huston Murray. We have her books under "Murray". This isn't a fiction writer, but his name is Frank J. Dello Stritto. But his book is cataloged by Dello Stritto, Frank J.