Joshua Lambert, a member of the Library Science faculty at Missouri State University, recently published an article

named Evidence-based library book shifting in the Journal of Access Services.

This article describes an evidence-based process to shift books. The process involves measuring books, creating a moving plan, and specifying goals, or waypoints, to keep the shift on track. One of Joshua’s previous articles, Predictable book shifting, described a Python script librarians could run to help plan a book shift. This latest article presents a similar method but using a spreadsheet. This should have a lower barrier to use compared to the Python script.

The book shifting process described in the article allows library personnel to know if they are shifting books as planned and if not, then they can make small adjustments to correct the issue. Without these regular “waypoints” someone may not know there is a problem until the end of the shift. Two great advantages to the described method is that it allows personnel to move the books in parallel and the future location of the books is predictable. The shifting method works with varying shelf counts, varying shelf lengths, and the separation of different fill ratios for distinct parts of the collection.