In "Librarian's Center?" I wrote about the Librarian’s Center at the National Book Store Superbranch in Cubao and said that, "what I found most unforgivable was the fact that the books were arranged not by subject, but by publisher!" In "Updates on Previous Posts," I mentioned that, "I received an email from National Bookstore regarding my observations," and planned to visit again.
Well, I did go back soon after, and—because I appreciated the fact that the person who emailed me was open to customer feedback—here's what I found...
- There was no mention of a "Librarian's Center" on the directory next to the escalators on the first floor.
- I suppose I should have qualified my earlier statement, but most of the books are, in fact, arranged by subject—except for the Filipiniana books and the NBS reprints. I don't know why I thought they were arranged by publisher on my first visit, but this time I really tried to see if there was any logic to the arrangement of books. There was none. Some of the books that were next to each other were by the same publisher, some were on the same subject, and some seemed to be together just because they were Filipiniana books. One example: a book on food was flanked by history and showbiz books. Go figure.
- Finally, I turned my attention to the other books that I hadn't found time for the last time. It would have been nice if they had hired a "useless" librarian so that they could at least follow the main divisions of LC or DDC, but the arrangement seemed logical enough. What I really found disturbing was that the 4-volume DDC, which catalogers need, was not with the other library and information science books. In fact, they were not even in the Librarian's Center. Well, maybe their regular customers need DDC more than the librarians...
