Here is a sweet little action. It has two faults: One, it is only visible as an action to people who frequent bookstores and actually look at books – that is, it only touches other readers. Or other Flickr viewers.

The other problem is that I can’t help but feel sorry for the people who work at the bookstore.

Still, this is pretty fun.

Flickr: Ministry of Reshelving

How to Serve the Ministry of Reshelving

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving" bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell’s 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved.

6. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied, so that visitors can still find copies of 1984.

7. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

8. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com or on the Flickr Ministry of Reshelving group message board. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as "reshelving", and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

I often find shelving/marketing/genre categories to be off-base anyway.

The post mentions Orwell’s 1984, but I think there are other books this could apply to. Ann Coulter for example – fantasy, clinical studies… Please comment with other suggestions!