Hide and Seek with books

There seems to be a new game being played at public libraries nowadays. It's called Hide and Seek with Books. Here's how it is played: you take a book from the shelf and place it in another shelf. And you continue doing this with all the books you fancy. The end result is books with new homes on new shelves.

The benefit of this game is that it makes it more exciting for readers when they are looking for books they want to read. Now, where's that book by Virginia Woolf? No, it's not under WOO, it's under LUD! But what's this book under WOO? Harry Potter by JK Rowling? Now that's a bonus find! It makes finding a book such a joy, since no one can find what they were looking for in the first place.

It also provides work for the librarians who have to spend time putting these books back on their correct shelves. Why else do we need librarians, but to put books back and spoil the fun of the hide-and-seekers?

Or it just shows that people are simply incapable of putting books back where they found them. What's so hard about that, you'd wonder? Pick the book up from the shelf, flip through it, don't like it, put it back.

But no, people go:
1. Pick the book up.
2. Flip through it.
3. Don't like it.
4. Back on the end of the shelf.
4a (to make it more exciting) Place it on the next shelf!

If you can pick up a book between two others, you'd assume you can put it back in the same place? Why take the trouble to place it in another spot? Surely that will take more time: "Now, where should I place this? at the end of the shelf? the shelf above or the shelf below?"

And oh yes, have we mentioned the ultimate benefit? Greater creativity! Doesn't it generate the kind of variety and buzz that everyone is looking for? Why should books conform to shelves and labels? Just like people, books are independent, and should be allowed to go anywhere they want. Why follow rules when you can be free indeed?