An elderly gentleman approached the reference desk upset because he couldn’t get on the internet. I followed him back to the terminal he was working on and was surprised when we passed the card catalogue stations (my first assumption was that he was trying to use one of the card catalogue computers because at least once a day someone complains about the “internet not working” while sitting at an OPAC station which has giant signs around it saying “Card Catalogue and Databases Only"). When we got to the station he was working at I was a bit confused because the library’s homepage was clearly up and running and he was in fact on the internet.
“It looks like things are working fine to me.” I said.
He shook his head, “That’s not the real internet.”
I asked if he could explain what the real internet was.
“How come it doesn’t look like my internet at home?” he asked.
When I asked him to further elaborate he was at a loss for words. Then I had a hunch: “Who is your internet service provider?” I asked.
He stared blankly at me.
I tried again. “Where do you log on to get your email? Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL?”
“AOL!” he exclaimed.
I entered in www.aol.com in the address bar and all was right with the world when AOL’s homepage came to give this gentleman access to the “real internet.”
Friday, August 21, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
what you say?
So I signed up for Twitter awhile back, but it is barely functioning because I can't think of any headline worthy microblog posts to make that aren't the typical lame "Just had my second cup of coffee!" I am verbose by nature and usually if I have anything to say I want at least a few sentences to speak my mind (Twitter brags that "Its 140-character limit also precludes users from the long-winded navel-gazing that makes most personal blogs insufferable" -- I might admit to navel-gazing, but am I insufferable?). However, I must be really out of it because I just came across Tumblr, another social networking site that I am not on. It looks like it's more about posting media, but also has the whole microblogging thingy and lets people "follow" you like Twitter.
Since I barely have a toe on the platform of Twitter, I highly doubt I'll be jumping on the Tumblr wagon anytime soon, but with this increasingly "gimmie info now" society that can hardly stand to wait for me to look up the author of "that book with the woman where her son dies in the car accident with a blue cover," I wonder if regular blogging will soon become obsolete.
Since I barely have a toe on the platform of Twitter, I highly doubt I'll be jumping on the Tumblr wagon anytime soon, but with this increasingly "gimmie info now" society that can hardly stand to wait for me to look up the author of "that book with the woman where her son dies in the car accident with a blue cover," I wonder if regular blogging will soon become obsolete.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Almost like bad mad libs
A couple months back I confessed that I had jumped on that bandwagon that helped fund the "and Zombies/with Vampires" explosion with my purchase of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (my review was a solid "meh"). And now it appears that there is much more on the horizon with the upcoming Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Mr Darcy, Vampyre, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim. Is this good that we are getting people to take a look at the classics they would normally ignore just because of some promised gore and violence? How long do you think this literary trend will last? Oh yeah, and before I forget, what about this?
My sibbling is urging me to get to work on our own version of a literary classic with monsters, but I feel so ridiculous even thinking about it. The possible interest in publishers and a check are the only motivating factors.
My sibbling is urging me to get to work on our own version of a literary classic with monsters, but I feel so ridiculous even thinking about it. The possible interest in publishers and a check are the only motivating factors.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
A Day in the Life of a Library...
The other day I heard about the Library Day in the Life project and wanted to participate. I'm just doing it for today, but if you haven't already gotten the gist of my library life, for better or worse this is pretty much it:
9:00 am: - Get to Library
· Check email, which includes deleting about 15 system messages from the night before about how the power was off/on at the neighboring branches due to the thunderstorm last night.
· Get the “cash drawer” (a half rusted metal box with about $5 in quarters in it) out of the locker and place it behind the reference desk.
· Check daily desk schedule to see where I’m at what time.
· Take a cart of children’s books out of shelve.
10:00-11:00 – Library opens
· Greet the incoming sea of patrons who float by the reference desk and go directly to the public internet stations. It’s never too early to update one’s status on Facebook or search for young attractive females living in the area on Myspace.
· Make several internet station visitor passes.
· Take a couple phone calls about tomorrow’s children’s program that is already maxed out in attendance.
· Request a few titles of books we don’t hold at this branch for patrons.
· Get asked where our DVD collection is located at least twice.
11:00-12:00
· Back to my own desk to follow up some phone calls about unsolicted donated books (usually by self published authors or religious nuts) when I get paged for back up by the branch manager (it’s just the two of us this morning).
· Out on the floor I see that copy machine is yet again jammed and the branch manager is already involved with another patron so it’s my job to try to fix it.
· After nearly 20 minutes of pulling out crumpled sheets of paper, opening various copier drawers, trying not to burn myself or get ink all over my hands I achieve success! The copier is working again! The teen who was in the process of using it before it broke returns to photocopying pages in People featuring Twilight star Robert Pattinson.
12:00-1:00
· Hey, it’s time to go back out on the reference desk already! There are several moms in posession of cranky toddlers who need to go home for lunch/nap time. Library is filled with periodic wailing over the next half hour.
· Book the meeting room for a local HOA.
· Make a couple more internet station passes.
· Put a copy of the all checked out Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on hold for a little girl who is disappointed we don’t have it currently in, but informs me that the movie is the “best thing (she’s) ever seen,” which is good news for me since I’ve yet to go see it.
· Show a patron to our consumer reports holdings.
· Shelve some of our “new” titles that are in the bookshelves across from the reference desk.
1:00-3:30
· Use my break off the reference desk to go back to my own cube to work on individual projects and eat lunch (tuna fish sandwich).
· Finish making unsolicted materials phone calls to their donars.
· Check email and respond as needed.
· Branch manager has sent me a message about her idea for a new book display for August. I make a few notes to myself and start searching the catalog for possible corresponding titles.
3:30-5:00
· Back out to the reference desk, one of our regulars (yes, this one’s crazy) wants me to call the city branch to make sure that their internet stations are working “just in case” she wants to go over there because we now have a bit of a queue. She was at the other branch last night and very upset that she could not use the internet when they lost their power. I explain to her that we receive notification emails whenever there’s a problem with service and that none have gone out today. This is not good enough for her and she impatiently taps her fingernails on the desk as I call the downtown branch, wait on hold for about two minutes, and ask a colleague if they have power and if the internet stations are up and working. He responds with a slightly confused “yes” (with a hint of “duh”), and I relay the info to the patron. She says thanks and goes back to waiting in line for our internet stations.
· Make a couple more internet passes and direct patrons to our DVDs.
· Stop giant toddler from climbing shelves in children’s section. He is unattended and when I find mom (browsing the DVDs) and explain our policy to her she laughs and thinks the whole situation is funny.
· Put a whole list of Jodi Picoult books on hold for patron.
· Give patron on the phone directions to our branch.
· Print out directions to the nearby academic library for a student.
· Teen boy asks for books on “car parts” but has a hard time articulating what parts he’s interested in. After interviewing him for a few minutes I’m still not sure what he’s looking for except he’s not repairing a car nor is he interested in how a car works. I decide to take him over to our automotive section to see if looking at any of the titles help and immediately he sees what he was looking for. He wanted books on hot rods.
· One of my coworkers appears to relieve me and it’s time to go home!
9:00 am: - Get to Library
· Check email, which includes deleting about 15 system messages from the night before about how the power was off/on at the neighboring branches due to the thunderstorm last night.
· Get the “cash drawer” (a half rusted metal box with about $5 in quarters in it) out of the locker and place it behind the reference desk.
· Check daily desk schedule to see where I’m at what time.
· Take a cart of children’s books out of shelve.
10:00-11:00 – Library opens
· Greet the incoming sea of patrons who float by the reference desk and go directly to the public internet stations. It’s never too early to update one’s status on Facebook or search for young attractive females living in the area on Myspace.
· Make several internet station visitor passes.
· Take a couple phone calls about tomorrow’s children’s program that is already maxed out in attendance.
· Request a few titles of books we don’t hold at this branch for patrons.
· Get asked where our DVD collection is located at least twice.
11:00-12:00
· Back to my own desk to follow up some phone calls about unsolicted donated books (usually by self published authors or religious nuts) when I get paged for back up by the branch manager (it’s just the two of us this morning).
· Out on the floor I see that copy machine is yet again jammed and the branch manager is already involved with another patron so it’s my job to try to fix it.
· After nearly 20 minutes of pulling out crumpled sheets of paper, opening various copier drawers, trying not to burn myself or get ink all over my hands I achieve success! The copier is working again! The teen who was in the process of using it before it broke returns to photocopying pages in People featuring Twilight star Robert Pattinson.
12:00-1:00
· Hey, it’s time to go back out on the reference desk already! There are several moms in posession of cranky toddlers who need to go home for lunch/nap time. Library is filled with periodic wailing over the next half hour.
· Book the meeting room for a local HOA.
· Make a couple more internet station passes.
· Put a copy of the all checked out Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on hold for a little girl who is disappointed we don’t have it currently in, but informs me that the movie is the “best thing (she’s) ever seen,” which is good news for me since I’ve yet to go see it.
· Show a patron to our consumer reports holdings.
· Shelve some of our “new” titles that are in the bookshelves across from the reference desk.
1:00-3:30
· Use my break off the reference desk to go back to my own cube to work on individual projects and eat lunch (tuna fish sandwich).
· Finish making unsolicted materials phone calls to their donars.
· Check email and respond as needed.
· Branch manager has sent me a message about her idea for a new book display for August. I make a few notes to myself and start searching the catalog for possible corresponding titles.
3:30-5:00
· Back out to the reference desk, one of our regulars (yes, this one’s crazy) wants me to call the city branch to make sure that their internet stations are working “just in case” she wants to go over there because we now have a bit of a queue. She was at the other branch last night and very upset that she could not use the internet when they lost their power. I explain to her that we receive notification emails whenever there’s a problem with service and that none have gone out today. This is not good enough for her and she impatiently taps her fingernails on the desk as I call the downtown branch, wait on hold for about two minutes, and ask a colleague if they have power and if the internet stations are up and working. He responds with a slightly confused “yes” (with a hint of “duh”), and I relay the info to the patron. She says thanks and goes back to waiting in line for our internet stations.
· Make a couple more internet passes and direct patrons to our DVDs.
· Stop giant toddler from climbing shelves in children’s section. He is unattended and when I find mom (browsing the DVDs) and explain our policy to her she laughs and thinks the whole situation is funny.
· Put a whole list of Jodi Picoult books on hold for patron.
· Give patron on the phone directions to our branch.
· Print out directions to the nearby academic library for a student.
· Teen boy asks for books on “car parts” but has a hard time articulating what parts he’s interested in. After interviewing him for a few minutes I’m still not sure what he’s looking for except he’s not repairing a car nor is he interested in how a car works. I decide to take him over to our automotive section to see if looking at any of the titles help and immediately he sees what he was looking for. He wanted books on hot rods.
· One of my coworkers appears to relieve me and it’s time to go home!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Librarians: impressions and behind closed doors
I think anyone involved in the profession today is quite tired of the old stereotype: the bun, the ugly shoes, the oatmeal colored cardigan. But then again, how many librarians actually look like that (oh, I know a few and quite worse) and what are we doing about it?
Last year I couldn’t help but get annoyed every time some media person labeled Sarah Palin physically as having the “sexy librarian” look, especially since she was someone that I thought epitomized all things not librarian (like somewhat educated
or against censorship). But maybe I was more irritated that the description was referring to the uptight librarian stereotype of someone who is thought to be mild, bookish, and sexy only because they appear so completely the opposite (repressed). And how unfair is it that someone not even part of our profession was incorrectly identified as not only being one of us, but also being the “sexy” one?
What made me start thinking about this was this article about the ALA conference last week (yes, I know it has been mentioned a lot, but sometimes I’m a little late on these things (and no, I was not there!)). I found myself both shocked and amused – a Twitter account to post wanted sexual encounters during a professional conference was created by a bunch of librarians?!? I’ll admit, I was guilty at first of imagining a stomach-churning clumsy orgy of hobbit looking people: a mass of pasty cankles, coke-bottle glasses, and unfortunate facial hair on both genders. However, at the same time I am “inspired by the perceived lack of cultural acceptance for a librarian’s sex life” and agree with the poster who commented, “I am an adult. I am a librarian. I enjoy good sex…What’s the problem?”
And to add one more question to this already loaded post, is all this coming to light more sexually liberating for librarians or TMI?
Thursday, July 16, 2009
I'm freaking out man!
We have a few recognizable patrons who are special (read: crazy) and one of our regulars approached the reference desk this evening very upset.
"The computer is covered with blood!" she said.
"What?" I said, already imagining all the horrible ways that this scenario could end.
"There's blood all over the keyboard," she says then starts to walk toward the internet stations so I follow her.
This is an elderly lady with long gray hair, dressed in a pink tracksuit, who might've gone by the name "Starshine" 40 years ago.
We get to the computer she is talking about and I don't see anything. I lean in to inspect the keyboard and look at the other stations for comparison for some reason.
"It's covered in blood," she says again.
I don't have an answer for this because the blood is purely the result of a flashback or something. There is nothing there. Other patrons are looking over and I imagine I sound alot like Butthead with "Uhhhh" as my only response for awhile. I walk to an adjacent terminal and pat the back of the chair, "Why don't you use computer 11 instead?"
She shakes her head. Computer 10 is like her soul mate. "I don't think it's very hygienic to have keyboards covered in blood," she says quietly.
"You want me to get you a paper towel?" I offer.
She considers it then says yes. This makes her happy after she wipes it down and she gets back on computer 10.
"The computer is covered with blood!" she said.
"What?" I said, already imagining all the horrible ways that this scenario could end.
"There's blood all over the keyboard," she says then starts to walk toward the internet stations so I follow her.
This is an elderly lady with long gray hair, dressed in a pink tracksuit, who might've gone by the name "Starshine" 40 years ago.
We get to the computer she is talking about and I don't see anything. I lean in to inspect the keyboard and look at the other stations for comparison for some reason.
"It's covered in blood," she says again.
I don't have an answer for this because the blood is purely the result of a flashback or something. There is nothing there. Other patrons are looking over and I imagine I sound alot like Butthead with "Uhhhh" as my only response for awhile. I walk to an adjacent terminal and pat the back of the chair, "Why don't you use computer 11 instead?"
She shakes her head. Computer 10 is like her soul mate. "I don't think it's very hygienic to have keyboards covered in blood," she says quietly.
"You want me to get you a paper towel?" I offer.
She considers it then says yes. This makes her happy after she wipes it down and she gets back on computer 10.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Helping the elderly
Today as I was stranded alone on the ref. desk for almost four hours a seemingly endless stream of patrons needing help bombarded me left and right. One such patron was an elderly lady who came up to me and said she wanted to get on the internet. When I started to explain the simple procedure for signing up she held up her hand interrupting me and said she didn’t have time for me to tell her, that I had to show her. I explained to her how busy the library was she said she was willing to wait and plopped down in one of the seating areas.
After about ten minutes things had calmed down some and I went over to the lady offering to help her get on the internet, but still explaining that I would have to leave her if someone approached the reference desk or the phone rang. She seemed understanding, and showed me the notepad she was carrying outlining how she wanted to set up a free email account and list some items on craigslist. Simple enough, I thought, but was I ever wrong…
I got her to Yahoo’s account sign up screen and since she was about as slow as molasses, I said I’d give her a few minutes to fill in all the information and then she could come get me if she had any problems. Another ten minutes went by and she came up to the reference desk quite angry.
“This stupid thing isn’t working right!” she yelled.
Since she was getting some attention, I tried to calm her down and said that it would be ok and we’d have a look at what was going wrong. Approaching her screen I found myself both confused and trying hard to suppress my laughter, as I have never seen someone fill out such a basic form in such a way. Her name was right, but all hell broke loose after that. For her birthday she entered today’s date, in the blank for the zip code she put the correct zip, but for some strange reason wrote her name “Candace” after it. I gently, but quickly went through trying to correct the errors. I pointed them out to her as we went along, but she would just wave her hand dismissively as if she had meant to do that and it was the computer’s fault they weren’t acceptable answers.
When I got to the email address she had tried to choose I stopped. In the blank she had typed “candybar.com@candy@yahoo.com.”
“This isn’t going to work,” I said pointing at the email address on the screen.
She didn’t like that answer. She turned to me with eyes blazing and screeched “WHAT??!” then she whipped out her little notepad and pounded on it saying “My son said I could have any email address I wanted and I want this one.”
I spent the next several minutes trying to explain to her the various reasons why her desired email address would never work, but in the end she just waved her hand again and said she would agree to one of the more sensible email addresses that Yahoo suggested in its place (but not before trying to enter in her home mailing address).
“Are you sure about this one?” I asked pointing to the screen. “Is this something that you want and think you can remember?”
She got angry again replying that it obviously wasn’t the email address she wanted and balked at my suggestion that she couldn’t remember something.
Next we went to the password section, where I could see by her little dots that she had chosen a password that contained about 15 characters and that also, in the blank below where she was to repeat it she had entered a password with probably at least two extra characters.
“These don’t match,” I tried showing her. Her response was to angrily delete them and start over, where again they didn’t match, nor did they on the third try. I told her that the password didn’t need to be so lengthy and she grabbed her notepad again, showing me a page where reportedly her son told her that “1234567” would be a good password. I told her that I didn’t agree with that and that passwords should be something that one can remember and still be secure, but all that got me was another dismissive wave. She entered in something different this time, about 10 characters long, and this time both password blanks matched.
I decided not to even explain the captcha to her (where instead of typing AW4r7t she entered “hello”) and just corrected it. We looked over the page once more, made sure everything was correct, and then submitted it. I brought up the sign in page for her and told her to go ahead and log in, where she stared blankly at me. Of course, she did not remember her email address or password. The alternate email address that she gave so she could get her information if she forgot? “Oh, I that’s my old email, I don’t remember the password to that one either.”
So I brought the sign up page back up, told her to fill it out again, but this time write down all her information in her notepad. I went away for 10 minutes and came back and we were back to square one: she was still angry about not being able to have candybar.com@candy@yahoo.com as her email. We picked something else suggested by Yahoo again (wrote it down) and then her password, which she selected to be the make and year of her first car (and we had her write that down). After submitting it a second time, I brought the sign in screen up and let her have a go. And it wasn’t working. The email address was right, (I least I thought it was) but then again she had selected a random stream of numbers after her name – could we have written them down wrong? Skipped a number? But I couldn’t figure out how we would have the Chevy1965 wrong. After her third unsuccessful log in I basically ripped the keyboard from her hands and frustrated tried various password combinations to try to get it to work.
“Did you type Chevy in all caps or all lowercase or a combination of both?” I asked.
“The hell if I know!” she barked back. “Maybe I used capital numbers?”
I tried using the different characters after Chevy, but nothing worked. Now she got really mad and decided to just yell because of course she was right because even the librarian couldn’t get it to work.
Exhausted, I went back to the reference desk and got the name and number of our computer tutorial volunteer who does one on one instruction.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we have any more time to work on this today and I have other patrons waiting, but if you schedule an appointment with our computer tutor they will be more than happy to help you set your email account up and they can give you more one on one attention,” I said handing her a slip of paper.
She grabbed the paper out of my fingers, crumpled it up into a ball, and tossed it on the floor. “Computer classes? That’s for mental defectives!” she shouted. I protested that it wasn’t, but as I looked around at the other computer users who were growing nervous by her behavior, I agreed with them that there was definitely a mental defective present. In her last stand she took her notepad and shoved it in my face, pointing to a now blank page and yelling, “My son told me I could have any name I wanted! He said so! I knew I should’ve never come to the library!” before storming off.
I hope that she will remember this interaction and never come to the library again.
After about ten minutes things had calmed down some and I went over to the lady offering to help her get on the internet, but still explaining that I would have to leave her if someone approached the reference desk or the phone rang. She seemed understanding, and showed me the notepad she was carrying outlining how she wanted to set up a free email account and list some items on craigslist. Simple enough, I thought, but was I ever wrong…
I got her to Yahoo’s account sign up screen and since she was about as slow as molasses, I said I’d give her a few minutes to fill in all the information and then she could come get me if she had any problems. Another ten minutes went by and she came up to the reference desk quite angry.
“This stupid thing isn’t working right!” she yelled.
Since she was getting some attention, I tried to calm her down and said that it would be ok and we’d have a look at what was going wrong. Approaching her screen I found myself both confused and trying hard to suppress my laughter, as I have never seen someone fill out such a basic form in such a way. Her name was right, but all hell broke loose after that. For her birthday she entered today’s date, in the blank for the zip code she put the correct zip, but for some strange reason wrote her name “Candace” after it. I gently, but quickly went through trying to correct the errors. I pointed them out to her as we went along, but she would just wave her hand dismissively as if she had meant to do that and it was the computer’s fault they weren’t acceptable answers.
When I got to the email address she had tried to choose I stopped. In the blank she had typed “candybar.com@candy@yahoo.com.”
“This isn’t going to work,” I said pointing at the email address on the screen.
She didn’t like that answer. She turned to me with eyes blazing and screeched “WHAT??!” then she whipped out her little notepad and pounded on it saying “My son said I could have any email address I wanted and I want this one.”
I spent the next several minutes trying to explain to her the various reasons why her desired email address would never work, but in the end she just waved her hand again and said she would agree to one of the more sensible email addresses that Yahoo suggested in its place (but not before trying to enter in her home mailing address).
“Are you sure about this one?” I asked pointing to the screen. “Is this something that you want and think you can remember?”
She got angry again replying that it obviously wasn’t the email address she wanted and balked at my suggestion that she couldn’t remember something.
Next we went to the password section, where I could see by her little dots that she had chosen a password that contained about 15 characters and that also, in the blank below where she was to repeat it she had entered a password with probably at least two extra characters.
“These don’t match,” I tried showing her. Her response was to angrily delete them and start over, where again they didn’t match, nor did they on the third try. I told her that the password didn’t need to be so lengthy and she grabbed her notepad again, showing me a page where reportedly her son told her that “1234567” would be a good password. I told her that I didn’t agree with that and that passwords should be something that one can remember and still be secure, but all that got me was another dismissive wave. She entered in something different this time, about 10 characters long, and this time both password blanks matched.
I decided not to even explain the captcha to her (where instead of typing AW4r7t she entered “hello”) and just corrected it. We looked over the page once more, made sure everything was correct, and then submitted it. I brought up the sign in page for her and told her to go ahead and log in, where she stared blankly at me. Of course, she did not remember her email address or password. The alternate email address that she gave so she could get her information if she forgot? “Oh, I that’s my old email, I don’t remember the password to that one either.”
So I brought the sign up page back up, told her to fill it out again, but this time write down all her information in her notepad. I went away for 10 minutes and came back and we were back to square one: she was still angry about not being able to have candybar.com@candy@yahoo.com as her email. We picked something else suggested by Yahoo again (wrote it down) and then her password, which she selected to be the make and year of her first car (and we had her write that down). After submitting it a second time, I brought the sign in screen up and let her have a go. And it wasn’t working. The email address was right, (I least I thought it was) but then again she had selected a random stream of numbers after her name – could we have written them down wrong? Skipped a number? But I couldn’t figure out how we would have the Chevy1965 wrong. After her third unsuccessful log in I basically ripped the keyboard from her hands and frustrated tried various password combinations to try to get it to work.
“Did you type Chevy in all caps or all lowercase or a combination of both?” I asked.
“The hell if I know!” she barked back. “Maybe I used capital numbers?”
I tried using the different characters after Chevy, but nothing worked. Now she got really mad and decided to just yell because of course she was right because even the librarian couldn’t get it to work.
Exhausted, I went back to the reference desk and got the name and number of our computer tutorial volunteer who does one on one instruction.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we have any more time to work on this today and I have other patrons waiting, but if you schedule an appointment with our computer tutor they will be more than happy to help you set your email account up and they can give you more one on one attention,” I said handing her a slip of paper.
She grabbed the paper out of my fingers, crumpled it up into a ball, and tossed it on the floor. “Computer classes? That’s for mental defectives!” she shouted. I protested that it wasn’t, but as I looked around at the other computer users who were growing nervous by her behavior, I agreed with them that there was definitely a mental defective present. In her last stand she took her notepad and shoved it in my face, pointing to a now blank page and yelling, “My son told me I could have any name I wanted! He said so! I knew I should’ve never come to the library!” before storming off.
I hope that she will remember this interaction and never come to the library again.
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