Black Lives Matter
Edwards and Harris
2016
Submitter: Here is a brand new book on display! It is shiny and new and deals with current events. The barcode sticker obscures the first part of the title, though, so its content is not exactly clear at first glance. I appreciate the uniformity of always having the barcode in the upper left corner, but this unfortunate covering of title (or sometimes author) is a frequent problem.
If you have read at all about #alllivesmatter vs. #blacklivesmatter, this sticker placement becomes even more unfortunate. Here is an article from USA Today in case you have never heard of this hashtag controversy.
Holly: Forget uniformity. The barcode works just fine in empty space on the cover. There’s no reason to put it right over the title. This is a pet peeve of mine. This is especially unfortunate because you don’t know if someone was being passive aggressive with their sticker placement. Patrons pick up on the strangest things sometimes, even when it is completely unintentional.
Mary and I worked in a library with a movable “Fairy Tales” sign in the youth department that had slid about a foot to the left of the actual fairy tale collection, resting directly above religion. The 398s in that library were just a few shelves from the 200s. A patron was absolutely incensed that we would label religion as a fairy tale, and would not accept that the sign had simply shifted a bit over time from its intended location.
Thankfully, as you can see in the first image below, every single book in this series has the same barcode placement. That probably rules out sabotage. Unfortunately, the whole collection is now ruined.
Awful Library Books 