When Librarians Screw Up

When you're a librarian and you receive a new book into the library, you have to determine where to place it on the shelves. Usually the easiest way to figure this out is to look at the verso page, which is the page that is on the back of the title page. The verso page provides copyright information and, in more modern books, information about how the book might be classified and shelved. If you can't figure it out by using the verso page, you might read a summary of the book on the dust jacket, or glance at the contents page, or, if all else fails, try to classify it via the title.

This last option is apparently what happened at UK's Manchester University Library when the librarians were confronted with a book titled Homo Britannicus.

The conversation probably went something like this:

1st librarian: 'Eee, it's called "Homo Britannicus." Is it about poofters, then? It says "Homo" right there in the title.

2nd librarian: Oh, it must be. There's so many books about gay lads out now.

1st libarian: All right, then, we'll put it with the gay books.


Unfortunately for our Manchester librarians, Homo Britannicus is a scholarly discussion of man's origin and the archaeological record.

I wonder what they would have made of a book titled Homo Erectus?