this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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I suspect that depends.
At least at finnish HelMet libraries, you can just walk in and take any book out of any shelf, and sit down to read it. Once you're done, you put it back in the exact same spot.
If you don't remember where that was, then you can hand it to a librarian to re-shelve. They will check the inventory to see where it should go.
You can actually also do that yourself, since the same system is available for finding any given book currently in the library, but it works just as well for putting something back.
All of the above is allowed without signing up for a library card.
If you want to bring a book home, that's when you go to the checkout, scan your library card, and the barcode on the book. This removes it from current inventory and logs you as the current borrower.
When you bring it back, you scan the book again and leave it on the shelf by the returns scanner. Because the book was removed from the inventory, it wont have a place on a shelf yet. Also, because the inventory of any one library here is everchanging, things may have moved around.
This system also allows you return books to a different library from where you borrowed them. Since the HelMet libraries in the capital city region all interoperate, they share collections, and the location and lending of every individual item is tracked across them all. Across four cities and 66 libraries, and even a couple library buses that visit schools and more remote spots on a schedule.
You can even browse the inventory online. See where copies of what are available, what's available but currently lent out, request something be moved to a library close to you so you can read it, or reserve a spot in line to borrow something popular.
Kinda just gushing about our libraries. If they don't have something, HelMet does intralibrary lending. They will get a certain book or item for you from another library network entirely (even from abroad), lend it out to you, and once you're done, return it back to the providing network.
They do their darndest to make physical media as accessible as the internet, and it's freaking free (for the most part, some things have a fee).
That's how it should work everywhere.
That’s all exactly the same here in the US, except I’ve yet to come across a library that let patrons operate the scanner.
Damn. Over here we have self-service hours.
Library card holders that sign up for it can get into a library building using their library card, outside normal opening hours, when the staff isn't even there.
That’s neat. I guess American society is too low trust for that, sadly.
Our little local library uses RFID chips in the books. It is all self checkout, you just place it on the scanner and done.
No, we definitely have them, even as far back as when I was a teen. But like most things, it varies...
I haven’t encountered it, so I am absolutely sure it doesn’t exist anywhere in America.
In a comment, OP provides the other reason that libraries may not want you to read a book and return it (other than putting it in the wrong place, which occurs). Libraries may be collecting data on usage.
I assumed the OP is about returning books you've checked out. If you just come in and put them back on the shelf, the system will still think they are checked out since they never got checked in.
This is essentially the same as in the US. But one question
Do you not have a classification system that determines where a book should reside? US libraries (and others, I presume) use the Dewey Decimal System, which groups books into categories and such, and then finally alphabetically by author. So every book would have a general place to go, and then the specific place would be determined by the author's last name.
Sure.
Items are grouped by type (games, video, music, tools, devices, fact, fiction, for adults, for kids, comics, audiobooks) etc. Each library may subdivide things in slightly different ways, due to the fact that they vary massively in size. I think some do use DDC for some subset of their inventory. But HelMet has a lot of media and items that do no fit into the DDC system.
You can certainly find something based on how things are sorted, and if you know its there.
But since the collection is region-wide, you don't necessarily know that. Step one to finding a copy of something is to look up what libraries currently have any. When you look that up, the shelf location is right there as well.
Many locations simply number their shelves, and then further subdivide them by a point value, and then sort alphabetically.
A Harry Potter book for example, could be on shelf 86, section 11063, by "HAR".
Each entire shelf is usually in alphabetical order overall, too, but the numbers make it really easy to zero in on exactly where a given item can be found.
But since any book might move to any other library, at any time (due to requests or due to borrowers returning books to a different library to where they picked them up), there is the simple problem that a location can run out of space in a given section. Hence they need to be able to put items on any shelf, and still have it trackable by the system.
Otherwise they can end up having to shift hundreds of books over to make space for just a couple more items to go in the right spot in the order.
Interesting! When you return a book to a different in-network library it stays there? In the US/at my library, if a book belongs to library A and a patron returns it at library B, it is sent back to A.
Depends.
Items get sent around all the time. In-network, copies are interchangeable, and the system balances them out among the libraries. AFAIK there's no particular need for a copy to go back to the same shelf, so it doesn't happen.
If no-one is looking for a certain item, it wont move again unless someone asks, or if the library needs space for something else.
It's kinda nice. Every time I visit a library it can have an entirely new selection. With recent requests to that location which have been returned again, or just returns, appearing on the shelves.
Ah, I can see how shelving limits could cause problems. Most libraries I've gone to only fill each shelf about 3/4 full to account for that. Thanks for the insights!
My Helmet library after scanning the book you want to return tells you to put it on the shelf behind you or it zoops into the machine and goes in some sort of cart or something