I need a flowchart

I did more stack-searching today. I looked in four different places in the stacks for one Bible. (And I don't mean four different shelves or four corners of the same floor. I mean four entirely separate rooms on separate floors, down long hallways and through electronically-locked doors). It took a really long time, more time than my boss was willing to have me spend on one book, and I never found it. I can understand why she wanted me to move on to the rest of my books, though. Yes, it was a Bible from 1795 and it was supposed to have cool engravings "from the Old Masters" but I'm willing to bet that the Library of Congress has more Bibles than anyone. There is almost an entire card catalog drawer of Bible records in their shelflist. It looks impressive.

That experience kind of sums up my internship so far. I see a record I would like to "fix" so that it is more complete and thus, more useful to researchers and staff alike. I try to locate the physical item for comparison to the online record but it is not where it's supposed to be. And it's not in the next logical place, either. Or the two places after that. And it's not even at the place where it absolutely shouldn't be even though the Library staff acknolwedges that things sometimes end up there anywhere. I have learned countless rules for figuring out where in the stacks a books will be placed, based on publication date, type of media, language, country of origin, size, rarity of the content, date of arrival at the Library, and/or gift status by original owner. And after narrowing down my options and deciding on the most likely location for a certain book, I am told that there's another rule I have to learn in order to find it. And then another and a few dozen more as well. Isn't there a manual or a cheat sheet or a flow chart I can follow?!

I like my internship very much, but the learning curve is driving me crazy. I don't like having to struggle through something before it is explained to me and I don't really like learning as I go, not when I only have 10 weeks in this internship . . . athough my boss did reassure me that, at the rate I'm learning the idiosyncrasies of the Library, by the time I leave in 8 weeks I'll be more knowledgeable than many full-time employees.

But I still won't be able to find that Bible.