what makes a book a "reference" book at a library instead of being just a regular "shelf" book?

Question

the books i need most are "reference books" and i can't take them out for a few days. I'm stuck with the useless "shelf" books at the library. Why can't i take out the "reference" books? how do they decide what a "reference" book is or a "shelf" book is??

Answer 1

The reference books are ones usually used for reserach and there are usually not many of them and a lot of people want to use them. Often they are current text books and are in high demand. You cannot take them out of the library because they try to make sure that everyone gets access to them for short periods of time.

Answer 2

I think that the demand for the work is part of the picture. The cost of the book might be another issue. Then, for such things as encyclopedias, membership in a set that loses value if one volume is lost - that makes something more likely to be reserved for in-library use only. Suppose that the library DIDN'T put encyclopedias on the "reference" list and Jack Whack took out the XYZ volume - just before you were going to do research on ZOOLOGY. Whoops!

My best advice to you is to better plan your activity so that you know ahead of time what you have to look up in your list of books. That way you minimize your problem of limited access.

Answer 3

I think a reference book is a book that contains more than one writer writing in it and on more than one topic and is in high demand so to give evrybody the opportunity to use it it is "for reference only"-,and an ordinary shelf book is something that is written by one or two authors and on one specific topic.

Answer 4

Sometimes libraries will have the same books in both places.
Reference books are frquently in high demand. The library doesn't want to be without them for a long period of time.
Many reference works are expensive and difficult to duplicate if a borrower doesn't return them.