Stacked
I had to go into the library book stacks today, in search of a journal article. If youâve never seen stacks before, they are huge rolling shelving systems which can be stacked together or opened up to get at a particular shelf. They scare the life out of me, to the point where Iâm reluctant to look up papers in journals with titles in the A-J range in the Psychology library. I always flip the pages in an unnecessarily noisy way so that no-one will accidentally crush me between the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and the Journal of Comparative Psychology. Apparently, Iâm not the only one who worries about this kind of thing.
I wonder how many people die in this way every year?
(This unusually morbid post was brought to you by the fear of an imminent dental appointment.)
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Actually, it would be more ironic if it happened in the safety engineering section.
by Aaron @ 22/03/2004 9:03 pm • Permalink •
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This was hilarious! You've honed in on a fear that I for one have also had over the years. The last time I had to deal with such a shelving system was in the hidden away basement depths of the minute Scandinavian linguistics section of Leeds Uni library. On the one hand, there was little chance of anyone else actually going down there, so I was relatively safe, but on the other hand: if an accident had happened, it might have been years before anyone ventured down there to discover my crushed remains...----- The basement of the library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has the same system. There are light sensors at the end of each shelf -- you can hear a relay click every time you walk in or out -- but they seem rather useless as a safety measure. Maybe if you try to steal a book after-hours they activate the shelves and crush you.
Being smashed between two library shelves would be a truly ironic fate if it happened in the pathology section.
by Aaron @ 22/03/2004 9:04 pm • Permalink •
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could it happen BETWEEN path and Safety Eng?
just thinking of moving shelves scares the poop out me-- to actually SEE them moving???
EEEEEEEEEEEEEsh!
by stacy @ 23/03/2004 1:03 am • Permalink •
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Having, over the years, discovered a fair share of crushed and mummified animal corpses in unexpected places (the latest was a gecko in the doorjamb of a beach bungalow in Thailand) the image of discovering the remains of an academic researcher while visiting the local library is one that I am having a hard time shaking. Am I the only one who`s paranoid enough to wonder if these storage systems are really some sort of elaborate "better mouse trap" extermination system for bookworm types? Hope the dental visit is much less traumatic than you fear. As proof of my sympathy I hereby resist the temptation of transmitting any of the many one liners that have spontaneously arisen in my, probably disturbed, mind.
by john @ 23/03/2004 8:03 am • Permalink •
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The page that you linked to says 'Multiple levels of passive and active safety systems'. They have to be referring to anti-squish mechanisms. We have these in the records department at work, and I've always wondered the same thing. Maybe there's some sort of clutching mechanism where you can stop the shelves with minimal force.
by bitweever @ 23/03/2004 4:04 pm • Permalink •
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I remember thinking last time I was using them, that stacks would be an ideal murder weapon for the detective story that I'll write one day
by Keith @ 23/03/2004 7:03 pm • Permalink •
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David (TEFL Smiler): I know what you mean. The Psychology library is pretty quiet out of term time.
Aaron: Ours is resolutely manual--you have to yank a handle to move the shelves, and if you are a bit heavy-handed about it, several shelves worth of journals crash into one another. The site (and system) I linked to was the only one I could find with a picture. Hehe. How about Forensic science: "Cause of death unknown".
stacy: If someone comes in to the previously empty stacks room, I have the urge to yell (in a particularly un-British way), "Please don't squish me!". But I restrain myself and flip pages instead.
john: I like the mouse trap idea, and now that my dental ordeal is over, I'd like to hear the one-liners!
bitweever: I think that they are movement sensors, so you probably have to jiggle around while reading
Keith: They do have a rather 'Bond villain' feel about them don't they? You can just imagine the arch-baddie slowly squishing Sean Connery between shelves of his bad poetry with one of those absurd quips: "Enjoy your reading, Mr. Bond--it will be your final chapter. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"
by bsag @ 23/03/2004 10:04 pm • Permalink •
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it reminds me of a texas joke...
by stacy @ 24/03/2004 1:03 am • Permalink •
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half the fun of being the library at university was squashing friends in the rolling stacks!
the best are the highly oiled ones at my work place, a row 25 shelves long, so if you whack the end most one into the second, the whole lot go "tunk.. tunk.. tunk" until you hear the "aaargh" of the archivist in aisle W..
by sarah @ 24/03/2004 7:04 pm • Permalink •
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stacy: What Texas joke? Do you mean Bush? (little bit of politics there, folks...)
sarah: You're evil! But I forgot that you are Queen of the Stacks at the moment.
by bsag @ 26/03/2004 8:04 pm • Permalink •
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Morbid Angel Forever !!!!!!!!!!!
by lisergico @ 13/05/2004 10:06 am • Permalink •
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