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Hey Will.
It is a move action to ready a shield. What does it mean to ready a shield?
"Ready or Drop a Shield
Strapping a shield to your arm to gain its shield bonus to your AC, or unstrapping and dropping a shield so you can use your shield hand for another purpose, requires a move action. If you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you can ready or drop a shield as a free action combined with a regular move."
Readying a shield is the act of strapping it to your arm. Once it is strapped to your arm, you gain the AC benefit of the shield.
The act of strapping on a shield is independent of moving to where the shield is, picking it up, retrieving it, or otherwise getting it the condition from which you can strap it on.
If you pick up a shield, you are holding a shield. It is not providing an AC bonus, nor can it be used to bash. The description of a shield describes what must be done with a shield to use it: it needs to be strapped on. Before it's strapped on, it is merely a funny looking table top in desperate search of table legs.
If you are carrying a shield in your hand, you're ready to strap it on, just as if you had just picked it up. You could drop it as a free action while just carrying it, something you can't do if it's strapped on.
If you are carrying it on your person (slung over your back, whatever), you still need to get it to a point to then strap it on. Depending on how it's being toted around, this could be retrieving an item, but in most conditions and in most playing groups, drawing it, whether as a weapon or weapon-like object, will be how it is typically handled.
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If it's strapped to your back, I've always treated it as a move action to don it. If you have it in a handy haversack it should be a move action to draw and a move action to don.
This is a statement about how you've always treated it, which may or may not fit within the rules. What is your rationale for why this is not only how you've been doing it, but is correct?
Given the medium of communication, I'm gonna take a leap and assume that you permit the move action to don a shield from carrying it on your back as a free action when accompanied by a regular move.
What is your view of a quickdraw shield, which has the extra capability of donning it from carrying it on your back as a swift action when combined with a move? In other words, the quickdraw shield takes a greater expenditure of actions (swift while moving rather than free while moving).
I'm not a fan of using a subsequent rule to prove how a general rule works. We all get things wrong from time to time, including the writers. The shield fighter archetype is an example of when I think the writer got something wrong. I went out of my way to spell out my explanation of why I think getting a shield from your back to strapped on your arm is two actions rather than one without appealing to the quickdraw shield for just this reason. But, if taking the 1 move position, it follows that such a position must also take the position that the quickdraw shield needs errata.