Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2016
In order to study the transience of Hendricks libraries, we introduce and study a special class of Markov chains, the Tsetlin d-piles, generalizing Tsetlin libraries and briefly defined as follows: a 1-pile is a Tsetlin library and a d-pile is a Tsetlin library where each book is replaced by a (d − 1)-pile. We give a stationary measure of these chains and establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for positive recurrence and transience. Finally, the study of d-piles allows us to determine a sufficient condition for transience of quite a large class of Hendricks libraries.