Just when I thought the ire of most crabby patrons had settled regarding our now SIX MONTH OLD library cataloging software and the SIX MONTH OLD policy of requiring patrons to have their library cards, this happens...
A
semi-regular male patron came in, late in the day, and went upstairs to
look for books. He came back down, around 10 minutes shy of closing,
put his selection of books on the counter and began digging in his
wallet for his card. After a lengthy search, during which I have to
stand there and wait for him and not attend to any of my closing duties,
he belched up the inevitable question: "Do I really have to have my
card?"
"Yes, you do," I replied, not at all as snottily
as I wanted to. His demeanor did a quick shift all the same and the
whole transaction instantly became a hideous inconvenience to him.
"Well,
I guess I'm going to have to go out to my car and look for it," he
said, in much the same tone he might have used to say, "Well, I guess
I'm going to have to punch myself in the taint."
Off
he went. He was gone so long that I was nearly able to finish all of my
closing duties before he came back, empty handed. He didn't even bother
coming up to the desk and just stood in the doorway, shouting at me as
though the 15 feet of dirty blue runner carpet were a great chasm
dividing us.
"I'll just have to put those back," he said, gesturing to his pile of books on the circ-desk. "I can't find it anywhere!"
"Okay," I said. I knew that when he said, "I'll have to put those back," he really meant, "You'll have to put those back because I've no intention of coming any farther into the building." Whatever.
He wasn't done with me yet, though.
"This is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! Just the stupidest!"
"Okay," I said.
"I'm
going to write a letter to the... Uh... what is this, some sort of
state library association policy?" He didn't wait for a response. "Well,
I'm going to write a letter to them saying how stupid I think this is."
"Okay,"
I said again, my collar starting to heat up now. "You do realize, of
course, that this policy is for your protection, though?"
"Oh?"
I
then explained at length and with justifiable irritation the whole
concept of our "liberry" being just one of a collection of 33
"liberries" in 20 counties who all shared the same patron database. I
pointed out that if we did not require a card then anyone in the
surrounding 20 counties who happened to share his name or even just
CLAIMED to share his name could check out books using his account—books
which HE would then be held responsible for since they were on HIS
account. I told him that even back when our database included only our
library, we had lots of trouble with that sort of thing and so it was
agreed that the new collective would adopt this policy in order to head
off the enormous headaches we would have had without it. I explained
that "liberries" requiring cards was a—no doubt—centuries-old tradition
which we are carrying on into the 21st century. I then told him he was
free to write to whomever he wanted to about it and that Mrs. A would
gladly provide him with the proper address, but at the end of the day we
were doing this for his benefit.
"Oh," he said when I
was finished. He then remained quiet for several seconds, allowing me
time to realize that I'd just mildy gone off on a patron. Sure, it's
nothing Mrs. A herself wouldn't have done, but I still think
it's not a good idea for me to do.
"I, uh, I didn't mean to imply that you were stupid, or anything," the man finally said.
"Oh, no. Sure," I said, taking a very genial tone.
"I still think it's stupid that we have to have our cards."
I just stared at him. After a few more seconds under my glare, he left, sans books.
Showing posts with label millennium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label millennium. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Friday, July 09, 2004
Joey's New Show is Gonna Suck Too
We're still not Friends with the new Millennium software system yet.
I think most of the problem stems from our ignorance at how we can adjust the system to Not Quite So Annoying mode from the Pretty Damn Consistently Annoying mode it's currently in.
We can't seem to make it stop printing whenever we perform ANY normal function with it. Check out a book, it prints a slip. Renew a book, it prints a slip. Put a book on hold, it prints a slip. (And while I'm using the term "slip" what I really mean is "a full 8.5" by 11" piece of paper with a slip-sized print at the top of it.)
Oh, we can uncheck the little box that says PRINT SLIP and make it stop temporarily, but that box never stays unchecked for long. In fact, it rechecks itself to PRINT SLIP if you do pretty much ANYTHING and suddenly the printer starts shitting out slips again. Actually, if it only shit out the slips that wouldn't be so bad. (It might even be useful at shutting the whine-holes of some of our patrons who moved here from big cities where their libraries gave them an itemized printout of all their books with every checkout, and where they were served pastries and tea and had a frickin' Starbucks in the reference hall.) Instead, the printer shits out BOTH a slip AND a damned cover page for each slip that tells us it just printed a slip. No kidding? REALLY? A slip you say? Damn, I'm glad you used a whole piece of paper to tell me, cause I wouldn't have noticed it among the 500 other pages the printer's shat in the last hour!
Occasionally we are able to convince the infernal thing to stop printing on a more lengthy basis, but we never know exactly how we've done it when we do. See the thing comes with more than one PRINT SLIP box to check and we think they ALL have to be checked, cause if you do only one of them it just rechecks itself when your back is turned. Another method is to shut Millennium down and bring it back up again. A box comes up that mentions something about printing capabilities and you can tell it "HELL NO." This is all very inconvenient because our circ computer is so slow that it literally takes 8 minutes to reboot, during which time the computer cannot be used for anything else. It's also merely a temporary measure, cause as soon as we really DO need to print something, say a book hold request slip, the computer assumes you want it to print EVERYTHING once again and starts doing so with gusto.
We know there has to be a way to get it to print only when we specifically request it. Our librarians are hesitant to call our state tech guys to ask, though, because: A) the tech's are busy as hell with all the other libraries calling to ask why the system keeps freezing up or eating patron records or losing its ability to search books by barcode or smoking cigarettes in the restroom and horking sandwiches from the staff fridge, etc.; and B) because we have no faith that the tech guys truly know any more about it than we do. Many of the other libraries seem to take this same attitude, which is why they call us when they have questions. Naturally, these questions tend to land painfully in my crotch.
THEM ON PHONE: Hey, Juice, this computer isn't letting us check a book out to this patron and it keeps telling us we can't access its Booginfroondle Record using that number, cause it's invalid, but we're not using that number and we don't want to access its Booginfroondle Record in the first place, we just want to check out a Patty Cornhole book to them. How do I fix that?
ME: (*THROWS UP HANDS*) Pshht! Ya got me. Have you tried turning it off and rebooting?
I think most of the problem stems from our ignorance at how we can adjust the system to Not Quite So Annoying mode from the Pretty Damn Consistently Annoying mode it's currently in.
We can't seem to make it stop printing whenever we perform ANY normal function with it. Check out a book, it prints a slip. Renew a book, it prints a slip. Put a book on hold, it prints a slip. (And while I'm using the term "slip" what I really mean is "a full 8.5" by 11" piece of paper with a slip-sized print at the top of it.)
Oh, we can uncheck the little box that says PRINT SLIP and make it stop temporarily, but that box never stays unchecked for long. In fact, it rechecks itself to PRINT SLIP if you do pretty much ANYTHING and suddenly the printer starts shitting out slips again. Actually, if it only shit out the slips that wouldn't be so bad. (It might even be useful at shutting the whine-holes of some of our patrons who moved here from big cities where their libraries gave them an itemized printout of all their books with every checkout, and where they were served pastries and tea and had a frickin' Starbucks in the reference hall.) Instead, the printer shits out BOTH a slip AND a damned cover page for each slip that tells us it just printed a slip. No kidding? REALLY? A slip you say? Damn, I'm glad you used a whole piece of paper to tell me, cause I wouldn't have noticed it among the 500 other pages the printer's shat in the last hour!
Occasionally we are able to convince the infernal thing to stop printing on a more lengthy basis, but we never know exactly how we've done it when we do. See the thing comes with more than one PRINT SLIP box to check and we think they ALL have to be checked, cause if you do only one of them it just rechecks itself when your back is turned. Another method is to shut Millennium down and bring it back up again. A box comes up that mentions something about printing capabilities and you can tell it "HELL NO." This is all very inconvenient because our circ computer is so slow that it literally takes 8 minutes to reboot, during which time the computer cannot be used for anything else. It's also merely a temporary measure, cause as soon as we really DO need to print something, say a book hold request slip, the computer assumes you want it to print EVERYTHING once again and starts doing so with gusto.
We know there has to be a way to get it to print only when we specifically request it. Our librarians are hesitant to call our state tech guys to ask, though, because: A) the tech's are busy as hell with all the other libraries calling to ask why the system keeps freezing up or eating patron records or losing its ability to search books by barcode or smoking cigarettes in the restroom and horking sandwiches from the staff fridge, etc.; and B) because we have no faith that the tech guys truly know any more about it than we do. Many of the other libraries seem to take this same attitude, which is why they call us when they have questions. Naturally, these questions tend to land painfully in my crotch.
THEM ON PHONE: Hey, Juice, this computer isn't letting us check a book out to this patron and it keeps telling us we can't access its Booginfroondle Record using that number, cause it's invalid, but we're not using that number and we don't want to access its Booginfroondle Record in the first place, we just want to check out a Patty Cornhole book to them. How do I fix that?
ME: (*THROWS UP HANDS*) Pshht! Ya got me. Have you tried turning it off and rebooting?
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
"Parking" Issues
Today was one of the most peaceful and relaxing days I've ever spent
at the "liberry". It wasn't boring or slow, just very well-paced. We
had enough staff on hand to take care of just about every issue that
cropped up, all our computer problems were easily solved and I didn't
have to throw anybody out.
I'd almost suspect that word has gotten out that the library is a place of chaos and confusion to be avoided until we get our sealegs back with the new computer system.
The only real strangeness that came up didn't even involve a patron. At around 4, a woman drove up in a red Chevy Cavalier-LS and parked--a word I'm using in the loosest sense of the definition--in one of the half hour parallel spaces in front of the library. Basically, she pulled the front part of her car sort of near the curb, leaving the back half of her car jutting into the road itself, partially blocking it. Of her four tires, only the driver's side front tire was actually IN the parking space. According to Mrs. C, the woman got out of her car and went running down the hill toward Town-A's down-town area. She wore a white button up shirt and black pants, which suggests she was staff at one of our fine local restaurants.
I didn't know about any of this until I came back from my break at 4:30 and found it difficult to find a parking space of my own due to the Cavalier blocking much of the road. I thought perhaps it was a patron who had just run in to drop a book off, but then I heard the above story.
We're beginning to suspect that the manager of at least one of these dining establishments must be a some kind of unholy-terror devil-boss because this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened with local restaurant employees.
A few winters ago, a woman (perhaps the same one) was driving down the hill toward main street when she slid on some ice, plowed into the corner of the building across the road from us, then got out and ran the rest of the way down the hill to her job. The police eventually found her and told her she'd left the scene of an accident. Her reported response: "Well, I had to get to work, didn't I?"
So today, Mrs. C called down to one of the restaurants and asked if any of their employees drove a red Cavalier. Nope.
By this time the car had been in the space for 45 minutes, so at the very least the woman deserved a parking ticket. Mrs. C next called her husband, a local volunteer fireman who knows how to get in touch with the local police department. Note that Mrs. C didn't call the police department itself, for around here that would be foolhardy after 4 p.m. Unless you dial 911, you're not getting the cops after 4.
Around 5 p.m., an officer rolled up, walked around the car a few times and issued it a ticket, telling us he'd check back later.
At 5:45 he returned accompanied by a wrecker which, after gouging a couple of small trenches in the asphalt, managed to winch the car onto its bed before hauling it off to the impound yard. The cop came in and told me where they were taking it, should the owner come back.
That's just great, I thought. Couldn't they have towed it closer to our closing time so I didn't have to be the messenger? I was just imagining the awkwardness of having the owner yell at me because her car got towed, then having to let her use our phone to call for a ride.
Fortunately, she didn't show.
I'd almost suspect that word has gotten out that the library is a place of chaos and confusion to be avoided until we get our sealegs back with the new computer system.
The only real strangeness that came up didn't even involve a patron. At around 4, a woman drove up in a red Chevy Cavalier-LS and parked--a word I'm using in the loosest sense of the definition--in one of the half hour parallel spaces in front of the library. Basically, she pulled the front part of her car sort of near the curb, leaving the back half of her car jutting into the road itself, partially blocking it. Of her four tires, only the driver's side front tire was actually IN the parking space. According to Mrs. C, the woman got out of her car and went running down the hill toward Town-A's down-town area. She wore a white button up shirt and black pants, which suggests she was staff at one of our fine local restaurants.
I didn't know about any of this until I came back from my break at 4:30 and found it difficult to find a parking space of my own due to the Cavalier blocking much of the road. I thought perhaps it was a patron who had just run in to drop a book off, but then I heard the above story.
We're beginning to suspect that the manager of at least one of these dining establishments must be a some kind of unholy-terror devil-boss because this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened with local restaurant employees.
A few winters ago, a woman (perhaps the same one) was driving down the hill toward main street when she slid on some ice, plowed into the corner of the building across the road from us, then got out and ran the rest of the way down the hill to her job. The police eventually found her and told her she'd left the scene of an accident. Her reported response: "Well, I had to get to work, didn't I?"
So today, Mrs. C called down to one of the restaurants and asked if any of their employees drove a red Cavalier. Nope.
By this time the car had been in the space for 45 minutes, so at the very least the woman deserved a parking ticket. Mrs. C next called her husband, a local volunteer fireman who knows how to get in touch with the local police department. Note that Mrs. C didn't call the police department itself, for around here that would be foolhardy after 4 p.m. Unless you dial 911, you're not getting the cops after 4.
Around 5 p.m., an officer rolled up, walked around the car a few times and issued it a ticket, telling us he'd check back later.
At 5:45 he returned accompanied by a wrecker which, after gouging a couple of small trenches in the asphalt, managed to winch the car onto its bed before hauling it off to the impound yard. The cop came in and told me where they were taking it, should the owner come back.
That's just great, I thought. Couldn't they have towed it closer to our closing time so I didn't have to be the messenger? I was just imagining the awkwardness of having the owner yell at me because her car got towed, then having to let her use our phone to call for a ride.
Fortunately, she didn't show.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Today was to be a day off for me, but Mrs. A asked me to come in and
close with Miss E, who hasn't had as much experience with our new
computer system and who might need questions answered. Miss E did fine,
but if she'd had any questions she would have had to get in line. The
whole day was one question after another from a wide variety of sources
and everyone seemed to think I had the answers.
Mrs. D, from a neighboring county library, called five times and two of those were for the exact same question. I don't know what she thought would have changed about my answer of "I don't know" between calls, but nothing had.
In order to celebrate finally going live with Millennium, we held a patron appreciation day and brought in food and lemonade. The food mostly consisted of a box of Nilla wafers, some home made chocolate chip dipping sauce, a few brownies, some mixed nuts, meringue cookies and scones. We figured the food would distract patrons from our taking forever to make them a new library card. It may have helped, but to hear Mrs. A tell it the whole morning was a series of chaos explosions.
We keep learning new and unsettling things about Millennium and each day brings yet another item to our growing list of "Things We'd Better Pay Attention to if we want to Prevent Massive Headaches in the Future."
Mostly, my part of the day went fairly smooth right up until Mrs. A and Mrs. B departed for the day and Miss E and I were left to man the ship. That's when our blessed new circulation program went all Hal 9000 on our ass and started offing people. We were probably lucky to escape with our lives. Several patrons were not so lucky and they began disappearing.
Here's how it went down: A patron would fill out our application, we would input that information into the computer and save it, the patron would then check out several books with their new card, but as soon as we closed out the patron record, according to instructions, that patron record and all evidence of their existence would vanish into the ether.
We didn't discover this until we went back to try and put one new patron on hold for several books he asked us to save for him. When we did, we couldn't find his record. I chalked it up to Miss E possibly not having saved it or spelled his last name wrong, but she insisted neither was the case. Then the next two patrons we entered also vanished without a trace, taking the record of several of our books with them.
Soon, Mrs. D was calling back to ask if our patrons were disappearing like hers were, so we knew it was an epidemic.
Our solution was to start writing down the new 14 digit patron barcode and the barcodes of all of their chosen books just so we'd have some kind of record should the computer eventually start behaving.
My theory was that they were being saved, but that the database just wasn't updating to reflect the new data. Don't know if that's right. I just know that none of my usual computer repair techniques, such as switching the damned thing off and starting it up again, had no effect. I phoned Mrs. A to let her know, in case she wanted to call for the computer cavalry. I'm just glad I wasn't the one to have to deal with it all day tomorrow.
Poor Miss E.
Mrs. D, from a neighboring county library, called five times and two of those were for the exact same question. I don't know what she thought would have changed about my answer of "I don't know" between calls, but nothing had.
In order to celebrate finally going live with Millennium, we held a patron appreciation day and brought in food and lemonade. The food mostly consisted of a box of Nilla wafers, some home made chocolate chip dipping sauce, a few brownies, some mixed nuts, meringue cookies and scones. We figured the food would distract patrons from our taking forever to make them a new library card. It may have helped, but to hear Mrs. A tell it the whole morning was a series of chaos explosions.
We keep learning new and unsettling things about Millennium and each day brings yet another item to our growing list of "Things We'd Better Pay Attention to if we want to Prevent Massive Headaches in the Future."
Mostly, my part of the day went fairly smooth right up until Mrs. A and Mrs. B departed for the day and Miss E and I were left to man the ship. That's when our blessed new circulation program went all Hal 9000 on our ass and started offing people. We were probably lucky to escape with our lives. Several patrons were not so lucky and they began disappearing.
Here's how it went down: A patron would fill out our application, we would input that information into the computer and save it, the patron would then check out several books with their new card, but as soon as we closed out the patron record, according to instructions, that patron record and all evidence of their existence would vanish into the ether.
We didn't discover this until we went back to try and put one new patron on hold for several books he asked us to save for him. When we did, we couldn't find his record. I chalked it up to Miss E possibly not having saved it or spelled his last name wrong, but she insisted neither was the case. Then the next two patrons we entered also vanished without a trace, taking the record of several of our books with them.
Soon, Mrs. D was calling back to ask if our patrons were disappearing like hers were, so we knew it was an epidemic.
Our solution was to start writing down the new 14 digit patron barcode and the barcodes of all of their chosen books just so we'd have some kind of record should the computer eventually start behaving.
My theory was that they were being saved, but that the database just wasn't updating to reflect the new data. Don't know if that's right. I just know that none of my usual computer repair techniques, such as switching the damned thing off and starting it up again, had no effect. I phoned Mrs. A to let her know, in case she wanted to call for the computer cavalry. I'm just glad I wasn't the one to have to deal with it all day tomorrow.
Poor Miss E.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
The Fever... it burns!
More fun with Millennium today. Still not completely friends with it.
Found out that since we're all one big happy system now it's perfectly possible for me to check out an interlibrary loan from another library that a patron has brought back to us onto to my card. I didn't even realize it wasn't our book, but yesterday spied a copy of a book I wanted to read that had just come back to us and I checked it out. It wasn't until later that I noticed it had the stamp of one of our fine state college libraries stamped on the top edge of its pages. This is odd, because I had checked it into VTLS before checking it out to myself, so VTLS should have let me know it wasn't ours to loan by a slightly altered version of its usual BEEP. It didn't.
And today we had more problems with returned interlibrary loans not beeping properly to alert us. I think we figured out what's wrong. Millennium has subversively taken control over all computer sounds and is no longer allowing VTLS to make sounds proper to its programming. This means we'll have to pay attention to the screen when checking anything in so that we don't accidentally shelve other libraries materials.
We also are having to contend with problems raised by the fact that not all libraries in our new collective have the new library cards to give out yet. They all have the Millennium system up and running, but many can't issue new cards because they don't have them to issue. Not that this is stopping one of them in particular. Town-D's library decided that since they had Millennium up, they were just gonna start issuing new cards to their patrons whether or not they had any to give. What they're doing is entering patrons into the system, inserting the existing 10-digit patron barcode with 4 digits of random numbers inserted at the front of it and calling it a day. They then tell these lucky patrons not to get a library card at any other library and that they'll be mailing them a new one when they arrive. (Can we say, "waste of postage?")
We'd heard rumors this was happening, as one of our part time employees, Mrs. H, also works part time at Town-D's branch and had alerted us. However, we didn't think it was a problem, beyond just being a dumb idea, until one of their patrons turned out to be one of our patrons and came in to get a library card from us despite being told not to do that by Town-D.
I'd already had him fill out the application, choose what form his card would take and told him he would have to have it before checking books out in the future. I then typed most of his info into our computer when his record magically appeared on the screen.
"Do you already have a new card?" I asked, perplexed.
"Yeah," he said, explaining it was from Town-D then adding, "Only they didn't give me a card."
I grumbled and growled about the lunacy of making new patron cards without the $#@%ing cards when I hit upon an idea. Since we're all one big happy system now, I just went into his record and replaced Town-D's bogus 14 digit barcode from the non-existent card with a genuine 14 digit barcode from a real live card, which I then gave to the patron.
He was happy. I was happy. And Town-D will be mighty confused.
Found out that since we're all one big happy system now it's perfectly possible for me to check out an interlibrary loan from another library that a patron has brought back to us onto to my card. I didn't even realize it wasn't our book, but yesterday spied a copy of a book I wanted to read that had just come back to us and I checked it out. It wasn't until later that I noticed it had the stamp of one of our fine state college libraries stamped on the top edge of its pages. This is odd, because I had checked it into VTLS before checking it out to myself, so VTLS should have let me know it wasn't ours to loan by a slightly altered version of its usual BEEP. It didn't.
And today we had more problems with returned interlibrary loans not beeping properly to alert us. I think we figured out what's wrong. Millennium has subversively taken control over all computer sounds and is no longer allowing VTLS to make sounds proper to its programming. This means we'll have to pay attention to the screen when checking anything in so that we don't accidentally shelve other libraries materials.
We also are having to contend with problems raised by the fact that not all libraries in our new collective have the new library cards to give out yet. They all have the Millennium system up and running, but many can't issue new cards because they don't have them to issue. Not that this is stopping one of them in particular. Town-D's library decided that since they had Millennium up, they were just gonna start issuing new cards to their patrons whether or not they had any to give. What they're doing is entering patrons into the system, inserting the existing 10-digit patron barcode with 4 digits of random numbers inserted at the front of it and calling it a day. They then tell these lucky patrons not to get a library card at any other library and that they'll be mailing them a new one when they arrive. (Can we say, "waste of postage?")
We'd heard rumors this was happening, as one of our part time employees, Mrs. H, also works part time at Town-D's branch and had alerted us. However, we didn't think it was a problem, beyond just being a dumb idea, until one of their patrons turned out to be one of our patrons and came in to get a library card from us despite being told not to do that by Town-D.
I'd already had him fill out the application, choose what form his card would take and told him he would have to have it before checking books out in the future. I then typed most of his info into our computer when his record magically appeared on the screen.
"Do you already have a new card?" I asked, perplexed.
"Yeah," he said, explaining it was from Town-D then adding, "Only they didn't give me a card."
I grumbled and growled about the lunacy of making new patron cards without the $#@%ing cards when I hit upon an idea. Since we're all one big happy system now, I just went into his record and replaced Town-D's bogus 14 digit barcode from the non-existent card with a genuine 14 digit barcode from a real live card, which I then gave to the patron.
He was happy. I was happy. And Town-D will be mighty confused.
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.
Monday, June 14, 2004
History Lessons
Summer Reading season is upon us. This means that upwards of 200
children will soon descend upon the "liberry" on Mondays and Thursdays
to read books, craft crafts, play games and get new library cards. (Unfortunately,
the jury's still out on when exactly those new cards will be arriving.
Today is in fact D-Day for our new regional, 15 county, cataloging and
circulation computer system to go live, but as far as I know none of the
libraries in the 15 counties actually have the new library cards
they're supposed to start issuing. We'll somehow muddle through.)
That said, last week was sign-up week for Summer Reading. Mostly, it went pretty smooth and we only had a few of the usual complaints from irritable parents unwilling to jump through our oh so complicated process of "come to the library and sign your kid up, you've got an 8 day window in which to do so or you're out." We even had a giant sign printed up and laminated that we stuck in the yard of the library on stakes advertising the Summer Reading program to one and all. And, as is often the case with giant signs staked out within city limits, we had to get a permit in order to put it up. Fortunately, we have an in within the city department responsible for issuing such permits, so we got one right away. Unfortunately, the mayor got wind of it and threatened to walk up the hill to see whether the sign fit within the rigid guidelines of our town's historic character.
See, Town-A of the Town A/B/C Tri-Metro Area is something of a historic town. Part of its whole appeal is that it LOOKS like a historic town. This is due in large part to strict city ordinances governing how each building can appear, from architectural design to paint-color to lawn maintenance. Anything that falls outside of those boundaries is strictly prohibited. This isn't a town-wide ordinance, but does govern all the businesses in the down-town area. And as our library was constructed in 1834, we are even more definitely subject to the rules.
Mind you, I'm not really complaining. It's a system that seems to have worked and the town is quite the hopping tourist attraction due in no small part to it. Other towns in the area, where I live in Town-C, for instance, are actually far more historical but they don't have such ordinances. As a result, they are quite often look very ratty, soot covered and run-down.
However, when the mayor himself threatens to march up the hill and condemn a damn yard sign that's only going to be there for a week on the grounds that it might not look historic enough to match the town's character, it seems a bit much to me. It's not like we're colonial Williamsburg.
I suggested to Mrs. A that she tell the mayor to bite her historic ass, but she declined. Instead, she opted to just take the sign down in advance before it could be condemned.
It's just as well. We've already had well over 100 children sign up for Summer Reading, far more than last year. Granted, most of those kids are not going to show up every single week, but we have enough to keep us busy with the ones who will. The mayor probably did us a favor. We just don't have to like it.
We really don't have the worst of it. A local attorney we know has been fighting with the city for years over whether or not he can put up a sign on his office's property denoting his business. The city says he can put one up, but they're never happy with his choice of sign designs so they keep refusing to issue him a permit. His firm is also located in a semi-historic house which is in need of repainting. There is a list of a select few colors that any downtown structure can be painted and only two of those listed colors are allowed to be used on any one building. It has been suggested to the attorney that he should threaten to choose the two most ugly and contrasting colors from the list to use on his office.
See, as much as I agree with the need for such rules, I also agree with flaunting them to their very boundaries.
That said, last week was sign-up week for Summer Reading. Mostly, it went pretty smooth and we only had a few of the usual complaints from irritable parents unwilling to jump through our oh so complicated process of "come to the library and sign your kid up, you've got an 8 day window in which to do so or you're out." We even had a giant sign printed up and laminated that we stuck in the yard of the library on stakes advertising the Summer Reading program to one and all. And, as is often the case with giant signs staked out within city limits, we had to get a permit in order to put it up. Fortunately, we have an in within the city department responsible for issuing such permits, so we got one right away. Unfortunately, the mayor got wind of it and threatened to walk up the hill to see whether the sign fit within the rigid guidelines of our town's historic character.
See, Town-A of the Town A/B/C Tri-Metro Area is something of a historic town. Part of its whole appeal is that it LOOKS like a historic town. This is due in large part to strict city ordinances governing how each building can appear, from architectural design to paint-color to lawn maintenance. Anything that falls outside of those boundaries is strictly prohibited. This isn't a town-wide ordinance, but does govern all the businesses in the down-town area. And as our library was constructed in 1834, we are even more definitely subject to the rules.
Mind you, I'm not really complaining. It's a system that seems to have worked and the town is quite the hopping tourist attraction due in no small part to it. Other towns in the area, where I live in Town-C, for instance, are actually far more historical but they don't have such ordinances. As a result, they are quite often look very ratty, soot covered and run-down.
However, when the mayor himself threatens to march up the hill and condemn a damn yard sign that's only going to be there for a week on the grounds that it might not look historic enough to match the town's character, it seems a bit much to me. It's not like we're colonial Williamsburg.
I suggested to Mrs. A that she tell the mayor to bite her historic ass, but she declined. Instead, she opted to just take the sign down in advance before it could be condemned.
It's just as well. We've already had well over 100 children sign up for Summer Reading, far more than last year. Granted, most of those kids are not going to show up every single week, but we have enough to keep us busy with the ones who will. The mayor probably did us a favor. We just don't have to like it.
We really don't have the worst of it. A local attorney we know has been fighting with the city for years over whether or not he can put up a sign on his office's property denoting his business. The city says he can put one up, but they're never happy with his choice of sign designs so they keep refusing to issue him a permit. His firm is also located in a semi-historic house which is in need of repainting. There is a list of a select few colors that any downtown structure can be painted and only two of those listed colors are allowed to be used on any one building. It has been suggested to the attorney that he should threaten to choose the two most ugly and contrasting colors from the list to use on his office.
See, as much as I agree with the need for such rules, I also agree with flaunting them to their very boundaries.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Don't Taunt the Patrons
We had three boxes of new books come in last week. These represented
book orders from three different libraries, not to mention personal
orders for various board members and staff. Mrs. C told me that my copy
of Fantagraphics Books' new The Complete Peanuts, Vol I, was
among the new books but that I couldn't have it unless I opened the
boxes and sorted all the orders. No problemo. I'm all about opening
boxes, especially when there's a prize for me at that bottom. I started
ripping cardboard.
When I'd finished I had several stacks of books sorted by owner and my nice fat Peanuts volume. A few patrons happened by during this and looked over the titles in my stacks with wanton desire in their eyes. Too bad for them. Not a one of these books is gonna hit the new books shelf for quite a while cause we can't catalog shite until our new computer system is live and in full working order. So patrons will have to wait a while before getting their hands on the new Laurie King mystery or the new Tom Clancy non-fiction. And from the rumors we've been hearing, the wait may be even longer as the program may not go live as soon as we'd been lead to believe due to unforeseen problems.
Meanwhile, my Peanuts book is fantastic. It collects all of Charles Schulz's Peanuts strips from 1950-1952. For those of you who've never seen any of those strips, the characters are practically unrecognizable from their later incarnations. Oh, you can spot Charlie Brown and Snoopy, but they look more like a bald Calvin with a much more beagle-like dog instead of Hobbes. Long lost characters such as Shermy, Violet and a decidedly more lady-like Patty (sans the Peppermint and long-suspected "partner" Marcy) help fill out the cast. Schroeder has made an appearance, but as an infant. Later in the book they discover him to be a piano prodigy with a Beethoven bust fetish. Lucy and Linus also make their debuts, however Linus is an infant as well rather than Charlie Brown's peer.
The strips are just brilliant, though. I've always regarded Charles Schulz as one of the true greats in the business, but I can definitely see why the respect is due him. Looking at these strips from a modern perspective, you can see the wide ranging influence he's had over our culture in so many ways. He was the first to do strips of this nature, that reflected a more jaded-yet-still-optomistic look at society. Now everybody does that sort of thing, but Good Ol' Sparky Schulz paved that dirt road a long time ago. I'm looking forward to collecting the complete series of reprints that Fantagraphics is doing. Any librarians listening might wanna order this for their collections too.
This is a high-quality hardback collection, with amazing graphic design and a lot of thought behind it. At $28.95, it's a pricey book to buy... that is, unless you have "liberry" connections and can get it for damn near half-price through Baker & Taylor, like me.
When I'd finished I had several stacks of books sorted by owner and my nice fat Peanuts volume. A few patrons happened by during this and looked over the titles in my stacks with wanton desire in their eyes. Too bad for them. Not a one of these books is gonna hit the new books shelf for quite a while cause we can't catalog shite until our new computer system is live and in full working order. So patrons will have to wait a while before getting their hands on the new Laurie King mystery or the new Tom Clancy non-fiction. And from the rumors we've been hearing, the wait may be even longer as the program may not go live as soon as we'd been lead to believe due to unforeseen problems.
Meanwhile, my Peanuts book is fantastic. It collects all of Charles Schulz's Peanuts strips from 1950-1952. For those of you who've never seen any of those strips, the characters are practically unrecognizable from their later incarnations. Oh, you can spot Charlie Brown and Snoopy, but they look more like a bald Calvin with a much more beagle-like dog instead of Hobbes. Long lost characters such as Shermy, Violet and a decidedly more lady-like Patty (sans the Peppermint and long-suspected "partner" Marcy) help fill out the cast. Schroeder has made an appearance, but as an infant. Later in the book they discover him to be a piano prodigy with a Beethoven bust fetish. Lucy and Linus also make their debuts, however Linus is an infant as well rather than Charlie Brown's peer.
The strips are just brilliant, though. I've always regarded Charles Schulz as one of the true greats in the business, but I can definitely see why the respect is due him. Looking at these strips from a modern perspective, you can see the wide ranging influence he's had over our culture in so many ways. He was the first to do strips of this nature, that reflected a more jaded-yet-still-optomistic look at society. Now everybody does that sort of thing, but Good Ol' Sparky Schulz paved that dirt road a long time ago. I'm looking forward to collecting the complete series of reprints that Fantagraphics is doing. Any librarians listening might wanna order this for their collections too.
This is a high-quality hardback collection, with amazing graphic design and a lot of thought behind it. At $28.95, it's a pricey book to buy... that is, unless you have "liberry" connections and can get it for damn near half-price through Baker & Taylor, like me.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Boy, you close for one day's worth of training...
...and the world suddenly HAS to get to the library. Our book
return box was packed to its epiglotis this morning, and more than one
patron grumbled at us about not being open yesterday. It's not like we
didn't put up fifty signs two weeks in advance saying we'd be closed,
though. Too bad all these loyal book addicts can't frickin' read.
I feel especially sorry for the internet crowd, who no doubt stood on our steps yesterday pounding on the door for an hour and shaking from the DTs before they finally noticed the sign. They more than made up for it today. We had 34 people pile in to use the internet. That may not seem like much, but we're a small town library with only three internet access computers and we usually do only about two thirds of that traffic on our busiest days.
Two of our usual internet crowd, who I call the Russians cause they're, well, Russian and all, came in for their usual Wednesday afternoon's surf. They're good guys as far as I can tell, though I still have no idea what brought them to the area. I put one of them on the only available computer and I had to ask the young woman next to him to relinquish hers as her time had run out. She seemed a little distraught at this, as she was typing something. Russian #1 valiantly came to her rescue saying that she didn't have to get off as Russian #2 wouldn't mind waiting. He seemed pretty insistent about this. This was very nice of him and it also saved me having to explain to Russian #2 that we give people working on writing projects extra time so that he couldn't have a computer after all. This would have been a complicated process since the Russians don't speak good English like me.
Still, for every patron who grumbled, there were two who were genuinely interested in what kind of training we were getting and then were excited about the word of our new system.
Some of the patrons, however, were concerned that we were going to charge them a fine for their books that were due yesterday. I hesistate to inform them that there's no danger of this happening as we haven't actually charged a late fine on book since September. This is mostly due to the computer issues associated with preparing a multi-county library network to transition to new library software. It's also due to sheer laziness on our part. There IS a way to charge fines, but there's an added hassle about it, in addition to the usual hassle of remembering to turn VTLS's grace flag on Friday morning for Fine Free Friday, and then remember to turn it back off Saturday morning. VTLS, being the library circulation system of Lucifer, goes out of its way to make this the least easy thing to do. You can't just push a little button with a mouse (in fact, I think VTLS only has ONE little computer button in its entire arsenal). Instead, you have to telnet to an address, login, then you get a series of four double-digit menus from which you have to choose the correct seemingly grace-flag unrelated item in order to continue to the next one. Eventually, you get to one that mentions a grace flag at which point you have to answer a trickily worded question, apparently written by Yoda, in order to turn on. ("GRACE FLAG IS OFF, CHANGE ITS STATUS, NO?") Then you have to shut the whole VTLS system down and bring it back up, or all that hassle will be for naught. It's just one example of how un-user friendly VTLS is and how much better we're hoping and praying Millennium will be.
On the subject of packed book returns, they tend to lead to packed book-shelving carts. Ours certainly was when I came in today. I cannot abide a full shelving cart. Some of my fellow employees have no trouble abiding one, and let it pile up quite a bit before they make a stab at shelving. There are even other libraries in the county that let theirs stay perpetually piled up, not to mention their shelves in a constant state of chaos. I've had to sub there on occasion, and on each occasion I spent my entire day trying to get everything put away and semi-organized, or at the very least put all their books upright on the shelves.
A full book cart, to me, is a living representation of work to be done and if there's one thing I can't stand it's knowing there's work ahead of me. I don't mind working. I'm all for work. In fact, I spend most of my job time LOOKING for work to do. So I am completely cool with shelving books while I'm in the moment, but I hate having to think about all the books I'm gonna have to shelve later piled up on a cart. The trouble with this is that I can NEVER get all the shelving done at once unless there are other employees to mind the desk and phone so I can just do the job. This is near impossible when I'm the only Joe in the store, as it was this afternoon while Mrs. C was out to lunch. I make attempts to shelve and can usually get most of the fiction done, but as soon as I gather a stack of books on tape to shelve in the computer hall, or a stack of non-fiction to carry upstairs, either the door opens and an especially needy patron walks through or the phone rings with one calling to ask if Mrs. C is in or what time we frickin' close. It never fails to go down like that.
Today also brought something of a compliment. One of my favorite patrons came in and told me that he really loved Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, which I'd recommended to him a while back. He wanted to know what else I recommended. Naturally, my mind went completely blank and I had no idea what to give him. I finally sent him away with Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, both of whom are authors who I think would really enjoy Life of Pi.
I do realize that the above logic makes no sense, but I'm stuck with it.
I feel especially sorry for the internet crowd, who no doubt stood on our steps yesterday pounding on the door for an hour and shaking from the DTs before they finally noticed the sign. They more than made up for it today. We had 34 people pile in to use the internet. That may not seem like much, but we're a small town library with only three internet access computers and we usually do only about two thirds of that traffic on our busiest days.
Two of our usual internet crowd, who I call the Russians cause they're, well, Russian and all, came in for their usual Wednesday afternoon's surf. They're good guys as far as I can tell, though I still have no idea what brought them to the area. I put one of them on the only available computer and I had to ask the young woman next to him to relinquish hers as her time had run out. She seemed a little distraught at this, as she was typing something. Russian #1 valiantly came to her rescue saying that she didn't have to get off as Russian #2 wouldn't mind waiting. He seemed pretty insistent about this. This was very nice of him and it also saved me having to explain to Russian #2 that we give people working on writing projects extra time so that he couldn't have a computer after all. This would have been a complicated process since the Russians don't speak good English like me.
Still, for every patron who grumbled, there were two who were genuinely interested in what kind of training we were getting and then were excited about the word of our new system.
Some of the patrons, however, were concerned that we were going to charge them a fine for their books that were due yesterday. I hesistate to inform them that there's no danger of this happening as we haven't actually charged a late fine on book since September. This is mostly due to the computer issues associated with preparing a multi-county library network to transition to new library software. It's also due to sheer laziness on our part. There IS a way to charge fines, but there's an added hassle about it, in addition to the usual hassle of remembering to turn VTLS's grace flag on Friday morning for Fine Free Friday, and then remember to turn it back off Saturday morning. VTLS, being the library circulation system of Lucifer, goes out of its way to make this the least easy thing to do. You can't just push a little button with a mouse (in fact, I think VTLS only has ONE little computer button in its entire arsenal). Instead, you have to telnet to an address, login, then you get a series of four double-digit menus from which you have to choose the correct seemingly grace-flag unrelated item in order to continue to the next one. Eventually, you get to one that mentions a grace flag at which point you have to answer a trickily worded question, apparently written by Yoda, in order to turn on. ("GRACE FLAG IS OFF, CHANGE ITS STATUS, NO?") Then you have to shut the whole VTLS system down and bring it back up, or all that hassle will be for naught. It's just one example of how un-user friendly VTLS is and how much better we're hoping and praying Millennium will be.
On the subject of packed book returns, they tend to lead to packed book-shelving carts. Ours certainly was when I came in today. I cannot abide a full shelving cart. Some of my fellow employees have no trouble abiding one, and let it pile up quite a bit before they make a stab at shelving. There are even other libraries in the county that let theirs stay perpetually piled up, not to mention their shelves in a constant state of chaos. I've had to sub there on occasion, and on each occasion I spent my entire day trying to get everything put away and semi-organized, or at the very least put all their books upright on the shelves.
A full book cart, to me, is a living representation of work to be done and if there's one thing I can't stand it's knowing there's work ahead of me. I don't mind working. I'm all for work. In fact, I spend most of my job time LOOKING for work to do. So I am completely cool with shelving books while I'm in the moment, but I hate having to think about all the books I'm gonna have to shelve later piled up on a cart. The trouble with this is that I can NEVER get all the shelving done at once unless there are other employees to mind the desk and phone so I can just do the job. This is near impossible when I'm the only Joe in the store, as it was this afternoon while Mrs. C was out to lunch. I make attempts to shelve and can usually get most of the fiction done, but as soon as I gather a stack of books on tape to shelve in the computer hall, or a stack of non-fiction to carry upstairs, either the door opens and an especially needy patron walks through or the phone rings with one calling to ask if Mrs. C is in or what time we frickin' close. It never fails to go down like that.
Today also brought something of a compliment. One of my favorite patrons came in and told me that he really loved Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, which I'd recommended to him a while back. He wanted to know what else I recommended. Naturally, my mind went completely blank and I had no idea what to give him. I finally sent him away with Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, both of whom are authors who I think would really enjoy Life of Pi.
I do realize that the above logic makes no sense, but I'm stuck with it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)