When does “hold” mean “move”? At the Palo Alto Library, of course. I had an urge to read a couple of books and their catalog showed that they were both in the collection and available: Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous at the Mitchell Park branch and Liddell-Hart’s History of the Second World War at the Main Library. Once I found them in the catalog (easy, if you are a really good speller), I put holds on them, even though I didn’t really expect the Liddell-Hart to circulate out from under me. Still, with the Ken Burns documentary current, it was worth playing it safe. I had some errands planned, so I decided to hit both libraries and pick up the books. At Mitchell Park, Weinberger was already on the hold shelf (quick work!). At the Main, there was nothing on the hold shelf and an obvious space at 940.53 L712h. I asked at the circulation desk and found that it was already in transit to the Mitchell Park branch. Sigh. It was now trapped in the tubes until some undetermined delivery time. Where is my UPS tracker URL? I guess I’ll be checking the catalog daily, waiting for Transit Request to morph into some unknown successor state.

Meanwhile, why doesn’t a “hold” pin a book to it’s current location? Or if it means “deliver it to my preferred branch”, why doesn’t it say that?