student Melanie Grondin pulls a book from a shelfNeuroscience student Melanie Grondin pulls a book from the red section of the Leddy Library.

Leddy Library introduces new memory aid to locating books

While library patrons may have difficulty recalling the title or author of a particular work, there is one attribute that they never have trouble remembering, says Heidi Jacobs—the colour of the book’s cover.

That’s why the information literacy librarian spearheaded a project that re-organized stacks in the Leddy Library to arrange books by their colour.

“As of today, visitors won’t need to know the authors, titles or even call numbers to find their books,” says Dr. Jacobs.

She cites an example from just last week—a student seeking a novel she had read in high school.

“She couldn’t remember the author’s name, but did remember that the cover was a lovely cherry red,” Jacobs says. “Under our new system, she would be able to find her book just by going to our red book section and then the cherry red sub-section.”

As far as she knows, the University of Windsor is the first in Canada to implement the new organizing scheme.

“I’m so glad we were able to meet our deadline of having this in place for the start of April,” says Jacobs. “I expect it will prove a real help to students getting ready for final exams and term papers.”