It's been years since we last saw hide or hair of the infamous Fagin family–those rogues among rogues responsible for stealing hundreds of dollars of library books in our county and beyond. I was certainly not expecting one to appear this week, but appear he did.
It happened midway through my afternoon, shift. I had just been straightening up the periodicals section from where it had been attacked and rearranged by The Coot and various handicapped patrons. Afterward, while descending the staircase, I passed some teenage kid and his girlfriend, who were on the way up. Arriving in the front room, I found the circ-desk to be awash with staff-based activity. Mrs. A was seaching something up in our circulation computer while Mrs. C was digging frantically in a filing cabinet.
"Do you know if Karl Fagin is a Seefile?" Mrs. A asked when she saw me. She was referring to the files we keep, organized by year, of deadbeat patrons who've failed to return our books.
"Hell, yes, he's a Seefile," I said. "Why?"
"He's in the building and wants to check something out."
"No way," I said, pointing back over my shoulder. "That was him?"
"Yes. He's got a card from TOWN-D. And the community college."
Ah, yes. Now I remember. Two years back, when we switched over to our new patron circulation computer system, I was assigned the task of going through all the Seefiles and cataloging the worst offenders into a list of banned patrons we were never ever to issue new library cards to. Karl Fagin had been on that list. And, after a year or so under the new system, I rechecked every name on it and noticed young Mr. Fagin had been allowed a card in Town-D–a branch that has nearly as much reason to hate the Fagins as we do. At that time, I'd loaded his patron record up with notes and pop up warnings to the effect that no library in their right mind should ever check anything out to him, because he and his family owe pretty much every library in the area for "lost" books. Yet, here he was again. And not only did he still have a patron record with Town-D, but he'd managed to get one with the community college to boot. Not that this was surprising. Under the old computer system, the classic Fagin modus operandi was to go to one branch, aquire cards for every family member in their massive brood, check out their limit in books from that branch, then head off to another branch and do the exact same thing. Under the old computer system, this was possible because there were no security features to throw up red flags at repeated names. The security features of our newish circulation software, however, has put a serious crimp in their thievery over the past few years. Clearly there are still ways around our defenses.
All the Fagins really have to do to get back into the system is find a library with a new employee who is potentially unfamiliar with their familial empire of monograph mayhem, then send in a pre-driving age kid to fill out a library card application. Being a kid, they won't have to put down a driver's license number. They won't even be expected to have ID. Then, if the computer flags them by name, the kid will claim he or she is a different person with that same name. And because they've moved around a lot over the years, often their listed addresses don't match up to further send up warning signals.
Karl Fagin had apparently done this with the community college and was likely trying to do the same with us, except Mrs. A recognized his surname and double checked the computer in advance. She sent him off to find whatever book he was looking for to give us time to get our evidence in order, because she couldn't exactly ban him or keep him from buying a replacement card if we didn't have such evidence at hand.
And this was really the whole reason behind compiling a list of Deadbeat Patrons Never To Be Issued Cards Again, as I did two years back. Unfortunately, that original printed list, which used to live by the circulation computer, has gone missing. And because the computer I composed it on did not truly have all its files shifted over into the one that replaced it, as our tech guys told us they had, it no longer exists there either. I didn't learn this, though, until I'd joined the search for evidence. Meanwhile, Mrs. C was having to go through all the physical Seefile folders from 2002 back to confirm Karl Fagin's history of treachery. She was still looking when Karl and his girlfriend came back with his book.
Karl Fagin must have known the jig was up, because he didn't even try to press the issue on getting a new library card. He didn't bring up the subject at all. Instead, he passed his book into the hands of his girlfriend who produced her own library card and checked it out for him. There wasn't a thing we could do about it, either. Likely, we'll never see that book again and she'll soon join the ranks of patrons banned from checking out materials at our branch. They'll probably get married, spawn, and within a few years will be sending their brood in to visit us, too.
A minute after Karl and his girl had left the building, Mrs. C found one of his Seefiles from 1992.
Showing posts with label Seefile Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seefile Fun. Show all posts
Friday, April 20, 2007
Friday, July 16, 2004
Revenge of the Seefiles!
Around 5 yesterday, a girl came in the library who I didn't think I
would likely ever see again. Her name is Caroline and she's the
daughter of one of our formerly regular patrons, whose first name I can
never remember but we sang in the local chorale together so we're
friendly if not entirely acquainted.
The reason I thought I'd never see Caroline again, nor her mom for that matter, is that a few months back I'd heard from Mrs. C that they'd both moved to Maine. Seemed an unfortunate thing to do, considering they still had two of our books checked out. We'd even gone so far as to add them to the short list of 2004 Seefiles for their treachery. Not only were they in the Seefile, but they had also made it onto my Blocked Patron List of Death, which we keep by the desk to remind us of certain patrons who are NOT to be granted new cards.
I pulled their Seefile records to see what they had out. Turned out to be a couple of young adult books, but one of them was a $20 hardback of the Amber Spyglass, the third book in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. We don't own another copy and haven't replaced that one.
Hmm, Mom's name is Margaret, I thought while examining the records further. Margaret Robe. Go figure. Also on the Seefile slip itself was the notation that they'd moved to Maine. Glad to know I'd remembered that correctly.
Caroline's mom was no where in sight, so I figured the girl was waiting to be picked up. Mostly she stayed in the children's room, occasionally coming up to the desk to ask if I'd read the Andre Norton book she'd picked out. She also asked me what the first book in the His Dark Materials series was.
Ah ha! Looking to take them ALL are you?
I pondered to myself what I should do. I've always liked their family, even if I don't think enough about them to learn all their first names, and I wasn't itching to smack down the gavel of "liberry" justice on them. For all I knew the books were still in Maine. I decided to get my ducks in a row before saying anything about the books. I rechecked the computer to make sure they were still checked out. Not only were they out, but they weren't even listed as being owned. This meant Mrs. C had removed them during the great purge.
At nearly 15 til close, Caroline came to the desk and asked me to hold a book for her. I said I would then asked, "You're Caroline, right?" I wanted to make completely sure I had the right girl here. She said she was, so I went ahead and asked about the overdues. She didn't recognize either of them as books she'd checked out, which I thought was odd as she'd just asked me about another Pullman book earlier. She said her friend Amy had checked that one out. Obviously, she'd checked it out on Caroline's card.
"Well, how bout ask your friend to have a look around for it. We just got a new library card system and we can't give you a new card until we clear this up."
Caroline went outside to wait for her mom. Mom turned up shortly and Caroline must have showed her the Seefile photocopy, cause they both came inside. Mom--or Margaret, I should say--said she had never heard of the book on her card. She wasn't mad, but definitely didn't remember it. I told her that there was always the possibility we'd made a mistake somehow and that she might need to take it up with Mrs. A.
"Well, we need to get it done soon, I guess, or we can't have cards," Margaret said. "Can I borrow your phone?"
I let her use the phone to call Caroline's friend Amy. Margaret left a message on the answering machine about it, saying that they needed to get the book back as soon as possible or they wouldn't be able to get library cards. The funny thing was, Margaret left her name with the message, but she said it was Stephanie.
Er. Very odd, I thought. The inconsistency was explained shortly, though, when "Stephanie" asked if she could go ahead and get cards for herself and her husband and that the could take care of the rest later. She said this, gesturing toward the photocopy.
Oh, so Margaret is probably another daughter. I see. I get it.
"Hey, why does this thing say `Moved to Maine'?" Stephanie asked.
I blinked at her in confusion for a few seconds. "You didn't move to Maine?"
"No."
"You didn't move anywhere?"
"No. We still live here."
"Huh," I said. Now I was really confused, because Mrs. C DID say they'd moved to Maine and she's almost always on the money with area rumors. Hell, we were the library! If any place beyond the hair salons and barbershops is gossip central, it's the library. "That's really weird. I could have sworn I heard you'd moved to Maine."
They laughed and Stephanie started filling out her application while I waited and tried to think of something to say that would make me look like less of a dumbass.
"Yeah... I was all prepped to ask you how Maine was, but I guess that's out now."
"Well, I hear it's great this time of year," Stephanie said.
Caroline suddenly grabbed at the photocopy.
"Wait a second! This isn't me!" she said, pointing at her own name. "This says Caroline and Margaret Robe."
"Yeah," I said.
Stephanie gave me a perplexed grin. "But we're Caroline and Stephanie Turner."
A long time seemed to pass as I processed this. Slowly, it dawned on me: I'm a damned moron. Their name IS Turner! They're not the Robes at all. I knew that--or, I should have known that. I used to know that. Whatever! The Turner's didn't have any of our books after all. It was all just a series of coincidences and errors compounded further by my being a dumbass.
"Oh.... Oh, wow," I said. "I feel really really stupid."
No one even politely attempted to disagree with me.
I made cards for the whole Turner family while Stephanie borrowed the phone again to call Amy and her parents and tell them it was all a false alarm. I made no fewer than 5 mistakes typing all their information in, including spelling their last name wrong. I apologized for the hassle and the false accusations and they said it was okay, but I know secretly they were thinking, "What a tard!" And rightfully so.
As embarrassing as that is, I figured I'd share it here anyway. After all, I spend most of my blogging time ridiculing patrons, so it's only fitting that they get some revenge now and then.
The reason I thought I'd never see Caroline again, nor her mom for that matter, is that a few months back I'd heard from Mrs. C that they'd both moved to Maine. Seemed an unfortunate thing to do, considering they still had two of our books checked out. We'd even gone so far as to add them to the short list of 2004 Seefiles for their treachery. Not only were they in the Seefile, but they had also made it onto my Blocked Patron List of Death, which we keep by the desk to remind us of certain patrons who are NOT to be granted new cards.
I pulled their Seefile records to see what they had out. Turned out to be a couple of young adult books, but one of them was a $20 hardback of the Amber Spyglass, the third book in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. We don't own another copy and haven't replaced that one.
Hmm, Mom's name is Margaret, I thought while examining the records further. Margaret Robe. Go figure. Also on the Seefile slip itself was the notation that they'd moved to Maine. Glad to know I'd remembered that correctly.
Caroline's mom was no where in sight, so I figured the girl was waiting to be picked up. Mostly she stayed in the children's room, occasionally coming up to the desk to ask if I'd read the Andre Norton book she'd picked out. She also asked me what the first book in the His Dark Materials series was.
Ah ha! Looking to take them ALL are you?
I pondered to myself what I should do. I've always liked their family, even if I don't think enough about them to learn all their first names, and I wasn't itching to smack down the gavel of "liberry" justice on them. For all I knew the books were still in Maine. I decided to get my ducks in a row before saying anything about the books. I rechecked the computer to make sure they were still checked out. Not only were they out, but they weren't even listed as being owned. This meant Mrs. C had removed them during the great purge.
At nearly 15 til close, Caroline came to the desk and asked me to hold a book for her. I said I would then asked, "You're Caroline, right?" I wanted to make completely sure I had the right girl here. She said she was, so I went ahead and asked about the overdues. She didn't recognize either of them as books she'd checked out, which I thought was odd as she'd just asked me about another Pullman book earlier. She said her friend Amy had checked that one out. Obviously, she'd checked it out on Caroline's card.
"Well, how bout ask your friend to have a look around for it. We just got a new library card system and we can't give you a new card until we clear this up."
Caroline went outside to wait for her mom. Mom turned up shortly and Caroline must have showed her the Seefile photocopy, cause they both came inside. Mom--or Margaret, I should say--said she had never heard of the book on her card. She wasn't mad, but definitely didn't remember it. I told her that there was always the possibility we'd made a mistake somehow and that she might need to take it up with Mrs. A.
"Well, we need to get it done soon, I guess, or we can't have cards," Margaret said. "Can I borrow your phone?"
I let her use the phone to call Caroline's friend Amy. Margaret left a message on the answering machine about it, saying that they needed to get the book back as soon as possible or they wouldn't be able to get library cards. The funny thing was, Margaret left her name with the message, but she said it was Stephanie.
Er. Very odd, I thought. The inconsistency was explained shortly, though, when "Stephanie" asked if she could go ahead and get cards for herself and her husband and that the could take care of the rest later. She said this, gesturing toward the photocopy.
Oh, so Margaret is probably another daughter. I see. I get it.
"Hey, why does this thing say `Moved to Maine'?" Stephanie asked.
I blinked at her in confusion for a few seconds. "You didn't move to Maine?"
"No."
"You didn't move anywhere?"
"No. We still live here."
"Huh," I said. Now I was really confused, because Mrs. C DID say they'd moved to Maine and she's almost always on the money with area rumors. Hell, we were the library! If any place beyond the hair salons and barbershops is gossip central, it's the library. "That's really weird. I could have sworn I heard you'd moved to Maine."
They laughed and Stephanie started filling out her application while I waited and tried to think of something to say that would make me look like less of a dumbass.
"Yeah... I was all prepped to ask you how Maine was, but I guess that's out now."
"Well, I hear it's great this time of year," Stephanie said.
Caroline suddenly grabbed at the photocopy.
"Wait a second! This isn't me!" she said, pointing at her own name. "This says Caroline and Margaret Robe."
"Yeah," I said.
Stephanie gave me a perplexed grin. "But we're Caroline and Stephanie Turner."
A long time seemed to pass as I processed this. Slowly, it dawned on me: I'm a damned moron. Their name IS Turner! They're not the Robes at all. I knew that--or, I should have known that. I used to know that. Whatever! The Turner's didn't have any of our books after all. It was all just a series of coincidences and errors compounded further by my being a dumbass.
"Oh.... Oh, wow," I said. "I feel really really stupid."
No one even politely attempted to disagree with me.
I made cards for the whole Turner family while Stephanie borrowed the phone again to call Amy and her parents and tell them it was all a false alarm. I made no fewer than 5 mistakes typing all their information in, including spelling their last name wrong. I apologized for the hassle and the false accusations and they said it was okay, but I know secretly they were thinking, "What a tard!" And rightfully so.
As embarrassing as that is, I figured I'd share it here anyway. After all, I spend most of my blogging time ridiculing patrons, so it's only fitting that they get some revenge now and then.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Millennium Fever
Today was our first official day going live with our new Millennium cataloging software.
I was frankly expecting complete and utter chaos, but this chaos turned out to be only incomplete and inutter.
Of course, as soon as I walked in the door for work, Mrs. A & Mrs. C grabbed me, ran me through a quick refresher course on how to add new patrons and check out books, said, "You got it?" then fled the building, leaving me at the helm for an hour.
That's okay, though. I had my sea legs on today. Mostly.
Millennium has a lot going for it, but after spending the day with it, we still haven't quite made friends. As clunky and hateful and "1993" as our old VTLS program is, at least I know how to do what I want with it. Fortunately, we're still running VTLS in addition to Millennium so whenever I don't know what to do with one, I can always switch over to the other.
The reason we have both systems running is because all the books that were originally "checked out" with VTLS are not "checked out" with Millennium. So when patrons bring their books back, we check them "IN" on VTLS and only then are they ready to be checked "OUT" with Millennium. In order to do that, we have to make all of our patrons a brand new "Liberry" card for Millennium.
The process for making new liberry cards for Millennium has about as many hoops to jump through as it did with VTLS. And for every advantage over the old way of, there is a new drawback to take its place.
One of the major new changes is that patrons now have to supply us with a photo ID, usually a drivers license, as well as their drivers license number so we can have a unique identifier on hand that will hopefully prevent patrons from getting multiple cards at multiple libraries. We also have to cross check each "new" patron with our old VTLS records to make sure they're not a SEEFILE. And if they are, we get to hit them in the mouth. Well, not really, but it has been suggested.
This leads to the matter of what to do about children who are patrons. After all, what elementary aged kid has the required photo ID or a driver's license? This was a major point of contention for the various policy committees charged with fixing it. Many members of it insisted that each patron, child or adult, MUST HAVE a unique identifying number. However, with children, no one could agree what that number should be. We can't legally use a social security number, but there just isn't any other number universal to all children. In the end, they couldn't come up with any sort of fix to it, so library policy is that kids can have library cards and we can skip the drivers license section of it, but their parents must be present with a drivers license when their kids get the card. Now tell me, just what the hell kind of sense does that make?
Official reasoning is that we're supposed to use the parent's drivers license to verify the child's home address, as children can't apparently be trusted to supply us accurate information on their own. Whatever.
The trouble is, I didn't find this bit of information out until I'd already made quite a few children cards sans drivers license. Mrs. A came back from lunch and pointed out my error. She also added that she didn't really care either way, as the policy didn't make any sense to here either, but she just wanted me to know. Upon hearing it, I was filled with stomach churning waves of frustration. I started to say, "I get chills from the administrative stupidity," but only managed an angry, "I get chills..." before deciding such a phrase was unwise to utter with a room full of patrons and semi-administrative librarian types.
Later on, Mrs. A came up to apologize to me, thinking she'd been the one to make me mad.
"Oh, wait. No. You didn't make me angry," I said. I explained to her that I wasn't angry at her, but at what I viewed as nonsensical policy. Plus I'm still pissed about the noise the upper management has been making about having us rebarcode every book in the building, AGAIN, just to move from a 10 digit barcode to the new 14 digit barcode. As I've stated previously, we just rebarcoded all 33,000 books in our collection last summer in order to move from 9 to 10 digits. The lack of administrative foresight demonstrated in now suggesting we need to do it all over again is practically criminal and is the kind of thing someone should really get fired over. In my opinion, we're already putting the 14 digit barcode on all new books and all new patrons, so we should just let the old books lose theirs by attrition, particularly since the new system is not affected whatsoever by the 10 digit codes. Sure, it'll take years to do this, but I don't see the need for a big rush.
Mrs. A said she more than shared my feelings of frustration over it all and didn't see any need for rebarcoding anything. In fact, she said the only reason they were talking about redoing it all is for statistical purposes, as the new barcode can carry more information helpful for keeping track of various administrative concerns.
They can gnaw on my 14 digit wang, I say.
Another major change in how we do things is that we now offer our patrons a choice in library card design. They can have either the regular sized library card, or a mini key-chain version. We stress to them that they should consider the fact that from now on and forever after they will HAVE TO HAVE THEIR LIBRARY CARD ON THEM in order to check out books. There will be no more looking up their name in the computer, because our database will contain patrons from over 16 counties, many of whom will have the same name. There will also be no more using the cards of other family members when yours gets too full. Screw that.
We also insist on knowing their middle names, as that is one more layer of identifying information to help keep things from getting even more chaotic than they already are. If they don't have a middle name, or just refuse to tell us, we put "NMN" in the blank, for No Middle Name.
Another colossal headache is the checkout system. Not the whole thing, as it's a fairly smooth bit of software to use; just the special unnecessary precautionary measures it takes while doing so.
See, our patrons are allowed to check out up to 10 items on their card at a time. Well, when checking out 10 books for a patron today, I discovered that when you reach 8 books a little warning window pops up and says "This patron can only check out 2 more items on their card. Do you still want to continue? YES/NO" And when you reach 9 items, the window pops up to warn you that there's only room for one more item on the card and again asks if you truly wish to continue.
It's like the system is saying, "whoa! Hold on, Hoss! Let's not be hasty, there. That's 10 books you have on the counter. Are you sure you're gonna need that many? Cause, frankly, we'd be happier if you only took eight."
This warning window has the added drawback of not letting you use a keyboard command to tell it, "YES, I DO BLOODY WELL WANT MORE THAN 8 BOOKS." You have to use the mouse. So you have to stop everything you're doing, put down the barcode scanner, and click YES.
That's something that's going to have to be eliminated quick, because we have multiple families of patrons who come in on a weekly basis, return the 60 books they collectively checked out the week before and collectively check out 60 more. If I have to stop to argue with the computer every 8 and 9 books, either me or the computer is getting pushed into traffic.
Overall, I think Millennium will be a very good replacement for VTLS. Like I said, I'm not friends with it yet because there are still quite a few issues that will require some smoothing out. But it's a fairly customizable program, so any preferences we have should be able to be set... once we figure out exactly how to do it, that is.
I was frankly expecting complete and utter chaos, but this chaos turned out to be only incomplete and inutter.
Of course, as soon as I walked in the door for work, Mrs. A & Mrs. C grabbed me, ran me through a quick refresher course on how to add new patrons and check out books, said, "You got it?" then fled the building, leaving me at the helm for an hour.
That's okay, though. I had my sea legs on today. Mostly.
Millennium has a lot going for it, but after spending the day with it, we still haven't quite made friends. As clunky and hateful and "1993" as our old VTLS program is, at least I know how to do what I want with it. Fortunately, we're still running VTLS in addition to Millennium so whenever I don't know what to do with one, I can always switch over to the other.
The reason we have both systems running is because all the books that were originally "checked out" with VTLS are not "checked out" with Millennium. So when patrons bring their books back, we check them "IN" on VTLS and only then are they ready to be checked "OUT" with Millennium. In order to do that, we have to make all of our patrons a brand new "Liberry" card for Millennium.
The process for making new liberry cards for Millennium has about as many hoops to jump through as it did with VTLS. And for every advantage over the old way of, there is a new drawback to take its place.
One of the major new changes is that patrons now have to supply us with a photo ID, usually a drivers license, as well as their drivers license number so we can have a unique identifier on hand that will hopefully prevent patrons from getting multiple cards at multiple libraries. We also have to cross check each "new" patron with our old VTLS records to make sure they're not a SEEFILE. And if they are, we get to hit them in the mouth. Well, not really, but it has been suggested.
This leads to the matter of what to do about children who are patrons. After all, what elementary aged kid has the required photo ID or a driver's license? This was a major point of contention for the various policy committees charged with fixing it. Many members of it insisted that each patron, child or adult, MUST HAVE a unique identifying number. However, with children, no one could agree what that number should be. We can't legally use a social security number, but there just isn't any other number universal to all children. In the end, they couldn't come up with any sort of fix to it, so library policy is that kids can have library cards and we can skip the drivers license section of it, but their parents must be present with a drivers license when their kids get the card. Now tell me, just what the hell kind of sense does that make?
Official reasoning is that we're supposed to use the parent's drivers license to verify the child's home address, as children can't apparently be trusted to supply us accurate information on their own. Whatever.
The trouble is, I didn't find this bit of information out until I'd already made quite a few children cards sans drivers license. Mrs. A came back from lunch and pointed out my error. She also added that she didn't really care either way, as the policy didn't make any sense to here either, but she just wanted me to know. Upon hearing it, I was filled with stomach churning waves of frustration. I started to say, "I get chills from the administrative stupidity," but only managed an angry, "I get chills..." before deciding such a phrase was unwise to utter with a room full of patrons and semi-administrative librarian types.
Later on, Mrs. A came up to apologize to me, thinking she'd been the one to make me mad.
"Oh, wait. No. You didn't make me angry," I said. I explained to her that I wasn't angry at her, but at what I viewed as nonsensical policy. Plus I'm still pissed about the noise the upper management has been making about having us rebarcode every book in the building, AGAIN, just to move from a 10 digit barcode to the new 14 digit barcode. As I've stated previously, we just rebarcoded all 33,000 books in our collection last summer in order to move from 9 to 10 digits. The lack of administrative foresight demonstrated in now suggesting we need to do it all over again is practically criminal and is the kind of thing someone should really get fired over. In my opinion, we're already putting the 14 digit barcode on all new books and all new patrons, so we should just let the old books lose theirs by attrition, particularly since the new system is not affected whatsoever by the 10 digit codes. Sure, it'll take years to do this, but I don't see the need for a big rush.
Mrs. A said she more than shared my feelings of frustration over it all and didn't see any need for rebarcoding anything. In fact, she said the only reason they were talking about redoing it all is for statistical purposes, as the new barcode can carry more information helpful for keeping track of various administrative concerns.
They can gnaw on my 14 digit wang, I say.
Another major change in how we do things is that we now offer our patrons a choice in library card design. They can have either the regular sized library card, or a mini key-chain version. We stress to them that they should consider the fact that from now on and forever after they will HAVE TO HAVE THEIR LIBRARY CARD ON THEM in order to check out books. There will be no more looking up their name in the computer, because our database will contain patrons from over 16 counties, many of whom will have the same name. There will also be no more using the cards of other family members when yours gets too full. Screw that.
We also insist on knowing their middle names, as that is one more layer of identifying information to help keep things from getting even more chaotic than they already are. If they don't have a middle name, or just refuse to tell us, we put "NMN" in the blank, for No Middle Name.
Another colossal headache is the checkout system. Not the whole thing, as it's a fairly smooth bit of software to use; just the special unnecessary precautionary measures it takes while doing so.
See, our patrons are allowed to check out up to 10 items on their card at a time. Well, when checking out 10 books for a patron today, I discovered that when you reach 8 books a little warning window pops up and says "This patron can only check out 2 more items on their card. Do you still want to continue? YES/NO" And when you reach 9 items, the window pops up to warn you that there's only room for one more item on the card and again asks if you truly wish to continue.
It's like the system is saying, "whoa! Hold on, Hoss! Let's not be hasty, there. That's 10 books you have on the counter. Are you sure you're gonna need that many? Cause, frankly, we'd be happier if you only took eight."
This warning window has the added drawback of not letting you use a keyboard command to tell it, "YES, I DO BLOODY WELL WANT MORE THAN 8 BOOKS." You have to use the mouse. So you have to stop everything you're doing, put down the barcode scanner, and click YES.
That's something that's going to have to be eliminated quick, because we have multiple families of patrons who come in on a weekly basis, return the 60 books they collectively checked out the week before and collectively check out 60 more. If I have to stop to argue with the computer every 8 and 9 books, either me or the computer is getting pushed into traffic.
Overall, I think Millennium will be a very good replacement for VTLS. Like I said, I'm not friends with it yet because there are still quite a few issues that will require some smoothing out. But it's a fairly customizable program, so any preferences we have should be able to be set... once we figure out exactly how to do it, that is.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Under the Boardwalk, Down by the Seefile
My little FINAL NOTICE
note that we sent out with the overdue notices this time has certainly
caused a stir with some patrons. These are the same patrons, mind you,
that we've sent multiple overdue notices to over the past two years.
Suddenly, they can't pay attention fast enough when their ability to
check books out from all 33 libraries in our 15 county network is being
threatened. I can't say that overdue books are pouring in, but we're
definitely getting more of them back than with most overdue mail-outs.
"Final notice? I never got a first notice!" one lady bellowed at us over the phone. The hell you didn't, I wanted to say. Our stats, after all, indicated that her particular overdue had been printed by our computers over 13 times. That's thirteen months to you and me. My guess is, at least three of those months got mailed to her if not more. And she can't exactly claim that we don't have her correct mailing address if this one managed to find her. Nevermind the fact that I PERSONALLY MAILED ONE TO HER LAST MONTH. In the end, she still has to bring her obscenely overdue books back or pay for them, first notice or not. At least we got her attention.
We had another lady come in to sign her children up for our Summer Reading program who coincidentally turned out to be a Seefile from 2001, a year we haven't even bothered to send out overdues for this time around. Turns out she used to live here and moved away, but is now back in the area full time. She even pointed out to me that she probably had fines when signing her kids up. Sure enough, she owed $16.95 for a long lost book.
"Can I pay you something on that?" she asked, offering a $5 bill.
"Uh, sure," I said. We don't normally take installment payments on lost books, but I figured if she couldn't afford to pay all $17 dollars at once, that money was probably earmarked for something more important, like food. I marked both her Seefile and her patron record that she now only owed $11.95 and signed her kids up for Summer Reading and library cards. Granted, they'll all have to get new library cards next week when the new computer system goes online, but they were cool with that.
Sometimes things genuinely do fall through the cracks on our end. One patron called me yesterday to complain that she's now received the same overdue notice on the same Clive Barker book on tape three times and each time she's called us to tell us that she mistakenly dropped it off at a branch in another county and that they still have it. I seem to even recall having taken such a call from her in the past myself. This time I put a note in her patron record to this effect, wrote it down on the note pad to call our "liberrians'" attention to it and assured her this would be looked into. That's the trouble with being high and mighty and sending out FINAL NOTICES; any mistakes on your part get magnified to the same size as the threat you're making. Oh, it's all fine and good when the overdue is for a well-known deadbeat patron who has no excuse, but when the little old lady from down the street comes in to return a book that's been lodged behind her sofa for eight months, you feel a little bad about sending her threatening notes.
Still, quite a number of people are bringing their overdue books back and letting us get our records straight. One in particular was the screenplay to Stephen King's Storm of the Century which has been out since 2003. We're so familiar with it that whenever the overdues are printed we don't even bother looking on the shelf to see if it's there because we've already checked that shelf at least three times before and know full well it ain't there. Yesterday, the lady who checked it out finally returned it and had the decency to at least look sheepish about it.
I'd decided to stop reporting about Parka's activities, since they seemed to have settled into a pretty stable, though highly irritating pattern. However, he came in three times yesterday and not once did he loudly robot drone "MAY I PLEASE SIGN UP TO USE A COMPUTER?" from the door. Nor did he ask what our hours tomorrow are. I wonder if Miss E had to yell at him again.
"Final notice? I never got a first notice!" one lady bellowed at us over the phone. The hell you didn't, I wanted to say. Our stats, after all, indicated that her particular overdue had been printed by our computers over 13 times. That's thirteen months to you and me. My guess is, at least three of those months got mailed to her if not more. And she can't exactly claim that we don't have her correct mailing address if this one managed to find her. Nevermind the fact that I PERSONALLY MAILED ONE TO HER LAST MONTH. In the end, she still has to bring her obscenely overdue books back or pay for them, first notice or not. At least we got her attention.
We had another lady come in to sign her children up for our Summer Reading program who coincidentally turned out to be a Seefile from 2001, a year we haven't even bothered to send out overdues for this time around. Turns out she used to live here and moved away, but is now back in the area full time. She even pointed out to me that she probably had fines when signing her kids up. Sure enough, she owed $16.95 for a long lost book.
"Can I pay you something on that?" she asked, offering a $5 bill.
"Uh, sure," I said. We don't normally take installment payments on lost books, but I figured if she couldn't afford to pay all $17 dollars at once, that money was probably earmarked for something more important, like food. I marked both her Seefile and her patron record that she now only owed $11.95 and signed her kids up for Summer Reading and library cards. Granted, they'll all have to get new library cards next week when the new computer system goes online, but they were cool with that.
Sometimes things genuinely do fall through the cracks on our end. One patron called me yesterday to complain that she's now received the same overdue notice on the same Clive Barker book on tape three times and each time she's called us to tell us that she mistakenly dropped it off at a branch in another county and that they still have it. I seem to even recall having taken such a call from her in the past myself. This time I put a note in her patron record to this effect, wrote it down on the note pad to call our "liberrians'" attention to it and assured her this would be looked into. That's the trouble with being high and mighty and sending out FINAL NOTICES; any mistakes on your part get magnified to the same size as the threat you're making. Oh, it's all fine and good when the overdue is for a well-known deadbeat patron who has no excuse, but when the little old lady from down the street comes in to return a book that's been lodged behind her sofa for eight months, you feel a little bad about sending her threatening notes.
Still, quite a number of people are bringing their overdue books back and letting us get our records straight. One in particular was the screenplay to Stephen King's Storm of the Century which has been out since 2003. We're so familiar with it that whenever the overdues are printed we don't even bother looking on the shelf to see if it's there because we've already checked that shelf at least three times before and know full well it ain't there. Yesterday, the lady who checked it out finally returned it and had the decency to at least look sheepish about it.
I'd decided to stop reporting about Parka's activities, since they seemed to have settled into a pretty stable, though highly irritating pattern. However, he came in three times yesterday and not once did he loudly robot drone "MAY I PLEASE SIGN UP TO USE A COMPUTER?" from the door. Nor did he ask what our hours tomorrow are. I wonder if Miss E had to yell at him again.
Friday, June 04, 2004
...to the Seefiles, the Seefiles of Love
Welllllll, my evil joy at Seefiling may have come back to bite me.
Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Deadbeat Club
My major project of the day was creating new Seefiles.
Seefiles are the files we keep of deadbeat patrons who have kept our books well beyond the customary loan period, refusing to return them despite numerous attempts on our part to get them to do so. The name comes from the note we put in their patron record so that when they attempt to check anything else out we will notice "Seefile 97" and know that we are to SEE the FILE containing all the deadbeat patrons from 1997. We go to the filing cabinet, drag out Seefile 97, find the deadbeat patron's slip with the offending lost books on it and we show it to them. We then get to watch the deadbeat patron's feigned look of shock and horror that we might even think they've had eight of our books out for the past seven years.
Well, let's see... you're Irwin Wazonkowski, we only have one Irwin Wazonkowski in the system, nay, the state... we're betting it's you. Give us our money. What? No money? Okay, get out. That's right, get out. Get your crappy little car out from in front of the building and don't come back without our money.
(That last bit will only happen in the Tales from the "Liberry" movie version, but the point still stands.)
So, let's recap: Seefile people are scum of the earth. They are the lowest of the low. They are old crusty boogers found stuck to the bottom of our computer chairs. And the Fagins are their royal family.
Well, we didn't have any Fagins in today, but we're shoring up our defenses against them for when our new circulation computer system goes live in t-minus a couple of weeks. So my job today was to take our enormous stack of overdues from the past two years, write the barcode numbers of their books on each overdue slip so we can remove them from our records later, then check those books back into our computer and mark the patron records of the deadbeat patrons who still have them as Seefiles, thus preventing them from doing Jaqueline Schidt at the library until they pay up or return their books. It's incredibly tedious and boring work, but I tell you I absolutely love it. It's one of the most satisfying parts of my job. I know deep down that we're probably NEEEVER gonna see these people again. Hell, most of the ones in our Hopeless Causes pile have long since fled the state, or at least the county and will never again darken our door. Doesn't matter. Cause to me, Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of stickin' it to The Man...
...Actually, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, cause it's really more like The Man stickin' it to the little guy, when you think about it. Doesn't mean the little guy's in the right, but that's more like it...
...Okay, forget about the stickin' it to The Man part. That was just bullshit. Look at it this way...
...Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of fighting injustice in the world. There ya go. That's the analogy I want. I'm the superhero squashing the scum of the earth, wiping out the very toejam of the rotting foot of crime, putting right what once went wrong, beating the ever-living hell out of poop-brained morons with no regard for how a polite society is supposed to work. It is my joy of joys.
Even better... Mrs. C, who knows full well just how much I love Seefiling, intentionally didn't let Mrs. B and Mrs. J do much of it yesterday just so I could have the pleasure of Seefiling deadbeats all day today. It was wonderful! I spent my day giving off evil cackles of glee as I added loser after loser to the pile.
I suspect I'm really not supposed to get quite so much enjoyment out of this, but dammit, I do.
Seefiles are the files we keep of deadbeat patrons who have kept our books well beyond the customary loan period, refusing to return them despite numerous attempts on our part to get them to do so. The name comes from the note we put in their patron record so that when they attempt to check anything else out we will notice "Seefile 97" and know that we are to SEE the FILE containing all the deadbeat patrons from 1997. We go to the filing cabinet, drag out Seefile 97, find the deadbeat patron's slip with the offending lost books on it and we show it to them. We then get to watch the deadbeat patron's feigned look of shock and horror that we might even think they've had eight of our books out for the past seven years.
Well, let's see... you're Irwin Wazonkowski, we only have one Irwin Wazonkowski in the system, nay, the state... we're betting it's you. Give us our money. What? No money? Okay, get out. That's right, get out. Get your crappy little car out from in front of the building and don't come back without our money.
(That last bit will only happen in the Tales from the "Liberry" movie version, but the point still stands.)
So, let's recap: Seefile people are scum of the earth. They are the lowest of the low. They are old crusty boogers found stuck to the bottom of our computer chairs. And the Fagins are their royal family.
Well, we didn't have any Fagins in today, but we're shoring up our defenses against them for when our new circulation computer system goes live in t-minus a couple of weeks. So my job today was to take our enormous stack of overdues from the past two years, write the barcode numbers of their books on each overdue slip so we can remove them from our records later, then check those books back into our computer and mark the patron records of the deadbeat patrons who still have them as Seefiles, thus preventing them from doing Jaqueline Schidt at the library until they pay up or return their books. It's incredibly tedious and boring work, but I tell you I absolutely love it. It's one of the most satisfying parts of my job. I know deep down that we're probably NEEEVER gonna see these people again. Hell, most of the ones in our Hopeless Causes pile have long since fled the state, or at least the county and will never again darken our door. Doesn't matter. Cause to me, Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of stickin' it to The Man...
...Actually, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, cause it's really more like The Man stickin' it to the little guy, when you think about it. Doesn't mean the little guy's in the right, but that's more like it...
...Okay, forget about the stickin' it to The Man part. That was just bullshit. Look at it this way...
...Seefiling deadbeat patrons is my small way of fighting injustice in the world. There ya go. That's the analogy I want. I'm the superhero squashing the scum of the earth, wiping out the very toejam of the rotting foot of crime, putting right what once went wrong, beating the ever-living hell out of poop-brained morons with no regard for how a polite society is supposed to work. It is my joy of joys.
Even better... Mrs. C, who knows full well just how much I love Seefiling, intentionally didn't let Mrs. B and Mrs. J do much of it yesterday just so I could have the pleasure of Seefiling deadbeats all day today. It was wonderful! I spent my day giving off evil cackles of glee as I added loser after loser to the pile.
I suspect I'm really not supposed to get quite so much enjoyment out of this, but dammit, I do.
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