Pro tip: the reference librarian in Kansas City handed me a book on CD without checking the case, and side 3 was a different book entirely

Harper Owens · 2026-10-16T21:25:05.078493+00:00

So I was at the Plaza branch in Kansas City about 6 weeks ago trying to find a source for my kid's 4th grade project on the Dust Bowl, and the librarian pulled a book on CD off the shelf for me since the print copy was checked out. Got it home, popped disc 3 into the van's player on the school run, and it was a totally different title, some mystery novel about a detective in Seattle. I went back and she admitted they never check the discs when things get returned, they just scan the case and shelve it. She showed me the shelf and I counted 9 other audiobooks where the case didn't match the booklet inside. Now here's my debate for you all: should libraries pull every audiobook off the shelf and verify them by hand once a year, which sounds like a nightmare of staff hours, or should they just stop trusting the cases and print a big warning label on every one? I get that budgets are tight and checking 400 cases takes a real chunk of a week, but a kid's whole project fell apart on a 2 minute mistake. Which side would you land on, is the yearly audit worth it or is a label the honest fix?

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Pro tip: the reference librarian in Kansas City handed me a book on CD without checking the case, and side 3 was a different book entirely | Ask a Librarian - Librear