If the computer says the book isn’t checked out, and it isn’t on the right shelf, what’s the chance it will ever be found and put in the right place?
People do browse the shelves. I’ve no doubt that sooner or later, someone will notice the book and either call the staff’s attention to it or put it in the right spot themselves. And I’d bet most libraries have staff who periodically check the shelves–maybe a few sections a day–to be sure that books are in the right place.
Presumably libraries periodically take stock? They’d find it then.
Or perhaps they would find it while returning borrowed books to their proper place, or sorting the shelves into proper order.
My ex-wife worked in a school library for a while, and they did routinely inventory the shelves.
Peace,
mangeorge
There are two things you as a patron can do if you find a misshelved book:
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If you have time and inclination, take it up to the desk and either place on the cart of checked-back-in books to be reshelved, if it’s accessible, or hand it to the librarian for her/him to place on said cart. (They’ll appreciate it – one more book to reshelve is far less work than scouring the shelves for a book that’s been misshelved.)
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If you don’t want to do the above (e.g., you’re in a second-story rack at the far end of the building from the elevators/staircase to the circulation desk), simply turn it sideways, spine up, where it is – this is a standard signal apparently known to librarians far and wide that this book is in the wrong place.
Who’d want to help a librarian, Polycarp? Everybody who’s read Steven King knows what they’re really like. 
It depends, really. If the library has the staff to have someone do shelf-reading periodically (no one can do the whole library. More than an hour or so and your eyes are terribly crossed.) That’s when misplaced books are most likely to be found.
Some libraries will do a full inventory, but this is most feasible in smaller public, “special” or small academic libraries where there may be a shutdown during a holiday. In a large public or academic library, this really isn’t a possibility, so assigning people to read sections of shelves is the most likely way to find mis-shelved books - or having a patron who notices that a book is out of place and setting it out to be re-shelved.
Most libraries strongly dislike patron re-shelving. It makes a mess of the filing system. They ask you to you place any book you remove in one of their carts for staff reshelving (carts are often at each end of each aisle or every few aisles). I suggest you place any misshelved books you notice in those carts, too. The staff will thank you.
Public libraries in my area hire high school students who are called “pages.” One of their main duties is “shelf reading,” in which they are supposed to put the books back into correct order and reshelf ones that are wildly out of place.
Like every other job in the world, some people are better at this than others, and some people are hopeless. My first job was as a page and I loved shelf reading. I seemed to have a radar sense for books out of order. So I could spend the first 30 minutes of what was supposed to be a 45-minute shelf-reading session literally reading and then do the work in the remaining time.
I still straighten shelves compulsively when I’m in a library. Libraries may quite properly discourage this, but what am I supposed to do - leave it to the pages? :dubious:
While large academic libraries do do shelf reading, there are a LOT of “missing” books in them. Especially now that the work study shelf readers are hit by the budget cuts. Please drop any misshelved books on a cart or turn them paper-up to get somebody’s attention, as shelf-reading is often spotty and is ALWAYS difficult. Especially on those bottom shelves where you cretins always dump everything.
Hmm…Poly says spine up; Zsofia says paper up (which I assume means spine down). Which is it? If there’s a secret world-wide librarian code (and apparently there is) I don’t want to accidentally make the signal for “I checked this book out in 1987 and never payed the late fine!”
If you see books on a library shelf that are out of order, just take them off the shelf and drop them on a nearby table. Somebody will come by and pick them up.
As for the OP, there are many things that could be happening with the book in question. If the book is very popular or needed for a class, it’s quite likely the book has had a five finger checkout.
As for it being misshelved and when it shows up, it depends upon it was put in a place close to where it should be. If that is the case, it will turn up fairly soon.
But a more sinister thing, could be somebody squirrelling the book away where only the person doing the hiding can find it. Tops of shelves are popular for this. So are bathrooms (you don’t want to know how).
You could also ask the staff if they’ve seen the book around, sometimes the staff sees a book they want to read and for all you know someone has it in the back as lunchtime reading.
Paper up is better for the book’s spine during long-term storage, if a book has to be placed on edge. Placing the book with its spine up means gravity will be pulling the pages down away from the spine. However, for the short-term purpose of sorting for reshelving, it helps the worker to see the spine showing and it won’t hurt the spine if it’s just for a few hours or a day. But in the libraries I know the books go on the cart top edge first, same as normal shelving.
They dislike patron mis-shelving. Patrons who re-shelve are tolerated. 
I’m a librarian and I’ve never heard of this signal for misshelved books. If someone does spot a misshelved book, it’s usually best to give it to a librarian–if it’s been missing for a long time, it could be checked out to “lost” or “missing” in the computer and they’d want to fix that before reshelving. In the case of the OP, the book could be misshelved or it could have walked. Even with security systems, sometimes books get stolen.
Not many libraries seem to have the time or the staff to do periodic inventories. We try to keep up with shelf reading, but that can be difficult, too, if you don’t have enough staff people to have someone off the desk to do it. Personally, I’m hoping that RFID technology will greatly improve our ability to track materials in the library, make inventories quick and accurate, and reduce the number of misshelved books.
Oh, and, mangeorge, don’t let Stephen King fool you about librarians. We aren’t all like that! Some of us are more like this
IIRC, The Confessions of Lady Nijo, the autobiography of a Japanese imperial courtesan, was misfiled under “Geography” for something like four hundred years in private archives in Tokyo, before it was found and published. So, librarians do find books, but it can take a while.
(Honesty compels me to point out that the first chapter of The Confessions of Lady Nijo runs along the lines of “I went to the imperial capital and became a courtesan, decided it was a bit of a bore, and became a Buddhist nun instead.” So don’t expect a terribly racy read there.)
Misshelved books can be found by shelf reading or inventory, but poor cataloging of materials can effectively bury them for a very long time!
I found a book about wood tools titled The Plane Dealer and it had been cataloged under Aerodynamics :rolleyes:
When I worked in a library in college, we had a bar-reader system for checking out books. The bar-codes on the books also helped us keep track of them for other purposes, such as how much they were used for in-library reading and the like.
One of the duties I hated to do when I worked there was going through the shelves with a special machine and a reader for the bar-code and literally scanning every book on the shelf. This would indicate if a book was out of order or missing. It was a job which was done pretty regularly, usually when there was no other work to do. It really sucked, but I guess it’s better than going through and scanning without the machine, which seems to be the way some other libraries do it.
When I volunteered at a library for a Summer, one of the things they had the volunteers do was walk every single shelf, and look for out-of-order books. We put them all on a cart, then others took the cart and re-shelved them properly. Loads of fun (seriously), as you did find occasional interesting books hidden away that you got to check out.
I’ve had the same experience as Una, except that I also got to alphabetize the books on a cart and reshelve them. I actually enjoyed doing this, it seems to fill some sort of need in me.
The librarians that I’ve met in the Fort Worth public library system are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.