Deciphering "wee old lady" library book code

[simonize]

Most libraries have book drops, so that people can return books when the library is closed. There’s no way of knowing which person returned a copy of a book

Mistakes happen. Bettie Joe Patron swears that she has returned the book. And here it is on the shelf. There is no way to determine whether the book on the shelf is one that she returned or one that has been sitting there the whole time.

Sometimes the network goes down, there is no room to stack up little piles of books sorted by the person who returned them until the computer comes back. And even if there was, you are asking for mistakes. See above.

[Gyrofrog]

@RickMycroft

(And the security scanners at the door can do the same to make sure that everything is checked out.)

I remember that if I walked through the scanner whilst listening to a cassette tape, I’d hear “click-click-click” in the headphones as I passed through. (Cassette player would also pick up noise if I walked past a neon sign.) But these were little metal (presumably magnetized) strips that they put in the spine, not RFID chips.