Wal-Mart Jesus Vs. The Internet

Things were going along swimmingly for once; not too much patron traffic, not too much work for me. Then Wal-Mart Jesus came in and the patron floodgates opened up. Wal-Mart Jesus wasn't even the trouble. He just set his bag and cudgel down, then disappeared into the reference hall without a word. It was everyone else in the room that were suddenly desperate for my attention! I felt like the main brain buffet for Night of the Living Dead. Still, I blame him as the chaos didn't begin until he arrived.

All at once, somebody wanted to interlibrary loan some Finnish language tapes, another wanted a computer, two others wanted to check out, one wanted a library card and a late middle-age white lady with a slightly manic look about her wanted Ulysses by James Joyce.

Where the hell was Mrs. C when I needed extra hands? Oh, that's right! She'd disappeared upstairs fifteen minutes before and hadn't been seen since.

I tried to deal with the patrons in order, but our computers were all full so the computer patron would have to wait. Then I couldn't look up the Finnish tapes on ILL because our brand new Dell circulation computer--which is allegedly superior to our old one, yet still somehow manages to run just as slowly and freeze up just as much--no longer had access to our statewide catalog and no one in our smaller 20 county library system owned any Finnish tapes.

"Oh, and do you have Kitty Kelly's new book?" the manic Ulysses requester asked. "I think it's called The Bush Dynasty."

"Uh, no. Not that I'm aware of, ma'am. I couldn't even say if we've ordered it."

She looked appalled that we could call ourselves a library and not have the full Kitty Kelly catalog on display by the front desk.

"We do have Ulysses," I offered, seeing that it was available in our computer. "Looks like it's upstairs."

"Oh good. Could you go get it for me?" Mrs. Manic said.

I wanted to tell her to gnaw on a loin, but opted to just go get the book for her upstairs. It would give me a chance to hunt down Mrs. C, who it turned out was indeed upstairs having a chat with Mrs. B.

"The desk is swamped," I said, dashing over to the 823's in search of Joyce.

Mrs. B made for the stairs while I grilled Mrs. C about Kitty Kelly orders, our computer catalog access and Finnish tapes. Came up zero on all three and then Ulysses too, as it was missing from the shelf.

We went back downstairs. On the way, I spied an open computer I could plug our computer-wanting patron into, so I went to tell them but was accosted by Mrs. Manic first.

"I'm sorry. We don't seem to have Ulysses on the shelf," I said. "And our librarian hasn't done a book order in a couple of weeks, so Kitty Kelly's book isn't here yet and hasn't been ordered. I'm not even sure if we're planning to order it, but if we did it wouldn't be until next week cause our librarian's still on vacation."

Again, Mrs. Manic looked aghast. "It's a huge, huge book. Kitty Kelly... Very big," she said, practically shaking her finger at me. "Could you put me on hold for it?"

"No, I'm sorry, but we can only put people on hold for books that are currently in our system and, like I said, I'm not even sure we're going to order it." Again with the look. "I can put you on for Ulysses, though."

She seemed delighted at this, so I went around the desk where Mrs. B was helping the patron who wanted a library card. I was about to sigh and take a break since I couldn't get at the circ computer for holds anyway when I remembered our waiting computer patron. Well, remembered isn't really accurate as I only recalled her when she walked up to my side of the desk and looked hopeful at me.

"Oh, yeah. I've got one ready for you," I told her. We both went to the computer hall where I found Wal-Mart Jesus had commandeered the empty computer. I wasn't exactly sure if he was there legitimately or if he'd just plopped down for a surf without signing in first. Turned out he hadn't signed in, so I asked him to let me put my patron on since she had signed in first and told him I'd get him on the first available one. Another user was just leaving, so I suddenly had one open for him. Screw the sign-in, I thought. Who's really gonna complain that the guy who looks like Jesus and carries a cudgel didn't sign in?

Back up front, I was finally able to get to the circ desk to put Mrs. Manic on hold. Then, the question I should have asked her in the first place hit me.

"Um, do you have a library card with us?"

Mrs. Manic blinked at me for a while, then admitted that she didn't think so. ARGH!!!

I couldn't put her on hold without a card, so I directed her toward the applications. A sort of worried look came across her face at that point. She didn't seem to want to take the time to fill one out. Fortunately for her, the man who had just received a new library card from Mrs. B was her husband, and he agreed to let her put Ulysses on hold on his card. (I tell ya, I'm really getting sick of patrons and their card-issues.)

About that time, Wal-Mart Jesus reappeared wanting help with the internet. I moseyed on back with him. Seems he was looking to expand his usual quest for obscure Judaic philosophical texts that no one owns to the internet. He even had a site written down that someone had told him about, but he didn't exactly know how to go about getting to it. Admirably, he had brought up Internet Explorer, but he had somehow managed to delete the address field, all of the toolbars and indeed the pull down menu bar, plus he'd moved the task bar to the top of the screen in such a way that I couldn't move it back. He'd also managed to change the appearance of the program itself, causing the IE window to appear far more colorful and shaded than it normally does. I just don't understand how people who are such internet neophytes can cause such havoc with our systems, yet can't seem to type a damn address into the one field clearly labeled "ADDRESS."

Since I couldn't seem to undo his damage, I just rebooted the system so it would reset everything. Then I Googled the Jewish studies university library he was looking for. He explained that he heard they had a really wonderful database on CD Rom and was hoping to access many obscure Jewish texts this way. I hated to tell him, but usually when people have databases on CD Rom, it's because they want you to buy them. This turned out to be exactly the case, though I didn't know for sure right away as the entire site was in Hebrew. Fortunately, being a devout Chasidic Jew, Wal-Mart Jesus can read Hebrew so he was able to translate and guide me where to click. After nearly five minutes of doing the clicking for him, I decided that it wasn't doing him any good for me to navigate for him and it would be much better on us in the future if he had some skills for searching on his own. He took over the mouse and I stood by to answer any questions. I didn't actually have many answers, as most of his questions were geared for someone with more familiarity with the site and I, as I kept explaining to him, had never been to it before and couldn't read it now that I was there. Still, I did at least have internet intuition on my side and steered him away from obvious pay services and back toward the on-line database it listed, which he kept avoiding because it had far too much information to take in at a glance.

That's the thing about searching for information... you're gonna have to wade through a lot you don't want to get to something you do.

Once he was headed in the right direction, I left him to his search, coming back only to remind him that his bus would soon be leaving 20 minutes later.