Shelf File
A shelf file is a cabinet designed to accommodate folders with tabs on the side rather than on the top. The cabinet has no drawers, only shelves. Some shelf files come with doors that recede into the cabinet. These cabinets are typically 12" or 18" deep, for letter or legal size folders respectively. Like lateral files, they are made in 30", 36", 42" and 45" widths but are usually only installed in 5-high and 6-high applications.
Side tabbed files often use color codes that represent an alpha-numeric filing system. This methodology is a way to ensure files which are frequently retrieved and returned are easy to find and do not get lost. Finding a file is easy as to color-coded tabs easily lead the human eye to the appropriate location in the filing system. Similarly, a misfiled folder is obvious as an out-of-sequence color code is obvious to the user.
Businesses such as doctors, dentists, veterinarians, police, and government agencies use shelf files and end-tabbed folders to manage large filing systems.
Variations on traditional shelf files, designed to offer increased capacity for a given floor area, include Rotary Storage systems.
Read more about this topic: Filing Cabinet
Famous quotes containing the words shelf and/or file:
“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)