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Midjack posted:It's not quite a librarian experience but you will probably recognize some common themes. Oh dear Lord yes, especially the "Obnoxious rear end in a top hat who's painfully lonely and desperately wants to be a regular" sort.
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Dec 29, 2018 23:54
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Cythereal posted:Oh dear Lord yes, especially the "Obnoxious rear end in a top hat who's painfully lonely and desperately wants to be a regular" sort. Fortunately my department didn't get hit with that nearly as hard as ref or circ, though can confirm they got plenty of that. We, being adjacent to youth services, mostly heard about the sad cases of kids who clearly didn't get enough love or attention at home. Latchkey kids would get their school bus to drop them off at the library, they'd spend five hours there until mom or dad could pick them up, and a lot of them got very attached to our friendly YS librarians. It's not necessarily that the parents were assholes; often these were kids coming from underprivileged homes where their single mom might have to work two or three jobs to afford the absurd price of rent in that area. The library was seen as a safe place for your kid to go to when you can barely afford rent, let alone a babysitter. The YS staff would help them out with homework, play the latest educational games we had on the kids' computers with them for a bit, and just plain talk to them. Sometimes mom or dad would drop the ball on picking them up when the library closed at 9pm, and a YS librarian would stay with the kid until they got a ride, we wouldn't just toss them out on the curb and make them wait in the dark alone. A lot of YS felt like they were surrogate moms (or in one case, dad) to these kiddos. Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming. Our YS staff rocked. The exception to this being, oddly enough, the director of YS, aka the Heffalump/Fiona, who deserves a lengthier post of her own.
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Dec 30, 2018 00:49
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Fortunately my department didn't get hit with that nearly as hard as ref or circ, though can confirm they got plenty of that. My worst experience with that wasn't at one of the public libraries, remarkably enough, but an academic library. There was a professor there whom we all regarded with antipathy at best - he was very courteous and polite to the librarians, but he was incredibly obnoxious to the paraprofessional staff. Every semester he had lots of books to put on reserve, and he would quickly get upset with us if there were any problems, usually in the most condescending, arrogant, "Gee I bet your parents are really proud of what you're doing with all their money they gave you for college, huh?" way you can imagine. He'd routinely come back behind the counter without asking, leave his bicycle there without asking, and we discovered during my last year there that he was routinely stealing supplies from our cabinets and closet. His explanation? "I'm such a great patron of the library I figured we were free to help each other out."
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Dec 30, 2018 00:57
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Cythereal posted:My worst experience with that wasn't at one of the public libraries, remarkably enough, but an academic library. There was a professor there whom we all regarded with antipathy at best - he was very courteous and polite to the librarians, but he was incredibly obnoxious to the paraprofessional staff. Every semester he had lots of books to put on reserve, and he would quickly get upset with us if there were any problems, usually in the most condescending, arrogant, "Gee I bet your parents are really proud of what you're doing with all their money they gave you for college, huh?" way you can imagine. Holy crap that dude skipped straight over "my tax dollars" and tried to rip off a library that's funded by the same place that cuts his paycheck. While making GBS threads on the para's. Did he ever get a comeuppance? I wanna give this guy a comeuppercut to the jaw.
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Dec 30, 2018 01:09
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Holy crap that dude skipped straight over "my tax dollars" and tried to rip off a library that's funded by the same place that cuts his paycheck. While making GBS threads on the para's. Did he ever get a comeuppance? I wanna give this guy a comeuppercut. Still working there last I heard. Why? Same reason he took his wife's last name when they married. She's a legit world famous scholar in her field who for some reason likes the area and being the big fish in that small university. As I understood it, we couldn't really do much about him lest he prod his wife into leaving. Students also hated him. He was one of only two people who taught a class a certain prevalent major required in order to graduate, and being the library staff, we got to know all about who the students liked and didn't like.
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Dec 30, 2018 01:12
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Geez, are weirdos in public libraries THAT big of a deal??
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Dec 30, 2018 10:27
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Vietnamwees posted:Geez, are weirdos in public libraries THAT big of a deal?? If you have to ask, you're the library weirdo.
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Dec 30, 2018 18:32
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once a year i end up calling around to local libraries to try and find information for a trivia scavenger hunt type of thing that i play in. it's pretty funny because i think the questions are like catnip to librarians, finding really obscure and useless pictures/text, with minimal clues to go on. last year i got ahold of a periodicals librarian at the central library of a nearby county and she must have put several hours into trying to find a stupid cartoon drawing from a magazine based on the incredibly vague and unhelpful information i had been able to dig up about it. she even made copies of everything she found, with citations, and had it waiting for me at the front desk the next day 
Lutha Mahtin fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Dec 30, 2018 |
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Dec 30, 2018 20:18
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Lutha Mahtin posted:once a year i call around to local libraries trying to find information for a trivia scavenger hunt type of thing. it's pretty funny because i think the questions are like catnip to librarians, finding really obscure pictures/articles/text with minimal clues Those are only interesting the first time. We always know when there's a scavenger hunt going on after the second or third call about that, and we cut out the bullshit after that. Vietnamwees posted:Geez, are weirdos in public libraries THAT big of a deal?? Most people in public libraries are weird, including the staff. This thread is talking about the really egregious ones.
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Dec 30, 2018 20:24
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Courtesy of the comic strip thread: DUST IS GOOD is no SATURN IS A THING but they sure go on the same shelf.
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Dec 30, 2018 20:34
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Cythereal posted:Those are only interesting the first time. We always know when there's a scavenger hunt going on after the second or third call about that, and we cut out the bullshit after that. i just wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation for the librarians who have helped me with my silly requests, and for their cheerful enthusiasm in doing so. perhaps i'm misreading the tone of the thread though, so if appreciative patron stories are off topic ill gently caress off then
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Dec 31, 2018 05:05
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Vietnamwees posted:Geez, are weirdos in public libraries THAT big of a deal?? Yes... and we're hiring them occasionally... This reminds me of the Academic Library I used to work at, way back when conscription was a thing objectors were forced to work in the library. We got a lot of weirdos out of that policy, including the directior that went to see a prostitute EVERY loving LUNCHBREAK.
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Dec 31, 2018 23:32
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DONT TOUCH THE PC posted:including the directior that went to see a prostitute EVERY loving LUNCHBREAK. Every lunchtime fuckbreak.
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Dec 31, 2018 23:37
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DONT TOUCH THE PC posted:This reminds me of the Academic Library I used to work at, way back when conscription was a thing objectors were forced to work in the library. Service guarantees citizenship!
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Dec 31, 2018 23:52
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that dude supported his local economy. and his local venereal diseases edit: it's good tha dude didn't agree to become a murderer for the people who take his taxes, it's bad if he didn't wear a rubber tho? honestly, unironically, the morality of purchasing sex work is super interesting and fraught with complications and I'm too ignorant to make conclusions but I'm trying to learn without actually hiring a prostitute which I think I'm conditioned to be depressed by, which ruins the intended experience oystertoadfish fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Dec 31, 2018 23:52
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Lutha Mahtin posted:i just wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation for the librarians who have helped me with my silly requests, and for their cheerful enthusiasm in doing so. perhaps i'm misreading the tone of the thread though, so if appreciative patron stories are off topic ill gently caress off then I really liked 99% of my patrons when I worked at a public library. They were just regular people looking for library cards for their kids, people who were down on their luck looking for jobs to apply to, or people looking for a book. I loved the feeling of having helped someone or made a difference to them or their families. People don't often go into librarianship for the paycheck. The remaining 1% were ones I remember the most, for better or for worse. Cythereal posted:Most people in public libraries are weird, including the staff. Same, and also, same.
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Jan 1, 2019 00:10
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oh yeah I should also say that many of my childhood memories were books (the rest were civ2, sim city 2k, and random Florida boy experiences like dodging peacock poo poo, breaking open a piece of bamboo to find what in memory was a trillion carpenter ants, using literal aloe plants from the lot across the street to salve these and related wounds, that's more than enough example wise), and everybody who contributed to letting me walk out of there with a stack of books from waist to chin over and over again is a true doer of good I wish they'd given me better fantasy than Raymond e Feist and that pornographer Piers Anthony but it was a start
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Jan 1, 2019 00:16
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Coheed and Camembert posted:I really liked 99% of my patrons when I worked at a public library. They were just regular people looking for library cards for their kids, people who were down on their luck looking for jobs to apply to, or people looking for a book. I loved the feeling of having helped someone or made a difference to them or their families. People don't often go into librarianship for the paycheck. Hear, hear! I loved helping people, and most of our patrons were great. Like, we had an on-going lecture series put on by the League of Women Voters, and it made me full of pride as a woman to be helping to get the word out to vote, and educate folks, especially women and other minorities, on their local candidates. I liked running sound for concerts that were free to the public, who otherwise might never see a symphony concert because they were from underprivileged communities. Showing young science-curious girls that it was okay to pet a reptile during Snakes Alive! got me chuffed as hell. Stupid little things like setting up a laptop for a PowerPoint for a senior citizen to give a presentation on gardening natural flowers in our area, and when I asked if they wanted a remote so they could click forward the slides from anywhere on stage, they looked at me like I was some kind of a/v sorceress. But yeah, it's unfortunately most of the weirdos that stick in my brain, and make for the best goon-amusing stories. ... Aaawwww sheeet-it, USA ref librarians, it's getting on that time when people come in for tax forms and think you know everything about filing taxes, wanna use your fax machine (if you still have one) and phones, and generally expect you to be their CPA. Or was that just my branch? We had an AARP volunteer group that camped out in one of our meeting rooms and did taxes for free, and lordy, did I hate Feb 1 to April 15th every year. Just because AARP was there, this automatically meant that anyone working in the library had to bend over backwards for the folks that only came in once a year, during tax season. On the other side, in my conference room job, you had the groups that had gotten used to using that particular meeting room once every month, and we had to tell them "sorry, that's reserved for the next 3 months." Much frothing at the mouth ensued.
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Jan 1, 2019 01:14
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Aaawwww sheeet-it, USA ref librarians, it's getting on that time when people come in for tax forms and think you know everything about filing taxes, wanna use your fax machine (if you still have one) and phones, and generally expect you to be their CPA. Or was that just my branch? We had an AARP volunteer group that camped out in one of our meeting rooms and did taxes for free, and lordy, did I hate Feb 1 to April 15th every year. Just because AARP was there, this automatically meant that anyone working in the library had to bend over backwards for the folks that only came in once a year, during tax season. Yup, this was my experience at every public library. I am so much happier to be at an academic library now.
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Jan 1, 2019 02:20
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My favorite public librarian was named Rita. She was eternally friendly, helpful, and best of all: when I'd forget my library card and the mile-long number that would let me log into the computers, she would helpfully look it up for me so I could hang out on the computers. I remember one bad day in high school ending with me in tears leaving the school and walking the blocks to the library where I could calm down and refind myself. I don't remember if I talked to a librarian there, but that library was and is a safe place, where I could always go for friendly staff, comfy chairs in nooks away from people, and good books.
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Jan 1, 2019 02:28
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My little hometown library was 4 rooms of about 10'x10' each. Three had books (kids, fiction, and nonfiction), the fourth was where the librarian sat and (eventually) the one Internet terminal was, along with a little round table where you filled out the carbon forms to check out books. The selection wasn't great but we had a free ILL system that would actually mail the book directly to your house in these little zippered cloth bags. It was a great window to a larger world for me as a small town kid. I remember checking out Unix For Dummies and reading about vi and emacs and all that poo poo, THEN getting an old computer and installing Linux. I peeked through the windows while I was home for Christmas and saw that they've got 6 Internet computers in there now, and they've stripped down the fiction section to make room for more DVDs, which saddens me a little but if playing Blockbuster is what it takes to keep the library open, I guess I'm cool with it.
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Jan 1, 2019 02:49
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Pham Nuwen posted:I peeked through the windows while I was home for Christmas and saw that they've got 6 Internet computers in there now, and they've stripped down the fiction section to make room for more DVDs, which saddens me a little but if playing Blockbuster is what it takes to keep the library open, I guess I'm cool with it. Fun fact: libraries killed Blockbuster. Seriously. Video rental stores in the US are functionally extinct because public libraries started carrying movies, and rental stores just can't compete with free libraries. And yes, carrying movies does a lot to keep libraries afloat. Every public library I've been at has done almost as much business with dvd movies and tv shows as they do with books.
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Jan 1, 2019 02:52
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Y'all were talking about Little Free Libraries earlier, and today I stopped to get some pictures of the one at the local Episcopal church:   TWO copies of the hit novel The Hunger Games!!
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Jan 1, 2019 02:55
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Oh man Walk Two Moons! I loved that book when I was a kid, it made me cry super hard! I'm going to have to take some books to the Little Library near my in-laws place next time I go over there. I don't have a lot of 'good' books but I definitely have better stuff than Who Moved My Cheese?
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Jan 1, 2019 03:14
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What happens when a patron comes in and demands you order a behind-the-paywall article for him? You know the kind I mean, 39.95 for a 24 hour 'license' to read a 12 page academic article at Elsevier or somewhere similar.
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Jan 1, 2019 08:30
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I've always been in academic libraries so firstly it would be weird if we didn't have access already  , but in the event I'd see if I could find them a nearby library that did or see about getting a printed copy through ILL. One of those usually does the trick. I guess if they absolutely insist they'd have to pay. Good question actually, it's never come up.
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Jan 1, 2019 09:03
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My mum used to be a librarian so I'm loving this thread. I don't have any anecdotes myself, but I do have a book called Is That The Library Speaking? that's the memoirs of someone who worked in a library for a while and it reads... well, very much like this thread, albeit rather dated (it's from the 70s I think). Should I post some extracts if I have time?
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Jan 1, 2019 12:30
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Paul.Power posted:My mum used to be a librarian so I'm loving this thread. That sounds awesome, do so!
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Jan 1, 2019 14:35
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Jan 1, 2019 18:10
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Khazar-khum posted:What happens when a patron comes in and demands you order a behind-the-paywall article for him? You know the kind I mean, 39.95 for a 24 hour 'license' to read a 12 page academic article at Elsevier or somewhere similar. But I thought of something else this request could set in motion: if it comes up often enough, we're gonna look into getting a subscription for whatever journal people want. And it doesn't take all that much demand for us to say we'll do it.
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Jan 1, 2019 18:25
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oystertoadfish posted:that dude supported his local economy. and his local venereal diseases This was Amsterdam, the local economy is fine until the British stag-parties stop. In any case, apparently the guy just wasn't a good director and his appointment was some sort of "starve the beast" thing cooked up by the board. The whole "visit the red light district every lunch break" was just icing on the cake.
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Jan 1, 2019 22:22
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Cythereal posted:And yes, carrying movies does a lot to keep libraries afloat. Every public library I've been at has done almost as much business with dvd movies and tv shows as they do with books. Absolutely. My tour of duty was around the time before podcasts and phone hookups, but CD players being standard in cars, so audiobooks were a big thing, too, for people that listened to stuff in their car on their commutes to the big city 45 minutes away. Think I may have mentioned, one of my jobs in the a/v department was repairing media that patrons checked out and then brought back saying "we can't watch/listen to this, the CD skips/the tape snapped/etc." Every day I'd get one or two milk crate sized bins of crap. Sometimes the note would just say "patron reports doesn't work", which could lead to an excuse to have a really cool movie playing on our little set-up behind the desk while I minded the front and worked on the stuff that clearly needed splicing or buffing. "Yeah, just gotta make sure this copy of Jaws runs all the way through!" One patron that made me grit my teeth was Purple Post-It Note. They checked out tons of a/v media, and would return them via the dropbox with a (you guessed it) purple post-it that would just say "doesn't play". No details, nothing like "skips on disc three" for a multi-disc set or "tape gets distorted around halfway thru the movie", just "doesn't play". Since they never returned them in person, circ would give it to ref, who would change the catalog status to "repair", then send them to me. I quickly learned that nothing was ever wrong with the media, Purple must've just had lovely/dirty playback equipment. The furthest I went with due diligence when I got something from Purple was quickly checking the physical media for crinkly tape or disc rot, then back to ref it went. Ain't nobody got time for that, I've got nine VHS tapes to splice back together, a 12 cassette audiobook of some Stephen King tome that someone left in their hot car that needs to be re-shelled, and thirteen children's DVDs that need buffing because they'd scratched them all to hell or eat peanut butter sandwiches off them. I started saving the post-it's, and still have them somewhere. The stack was like about an inch thick when I left. And yes, I know it sounds like stdh, but I also had a patron note that said their DVD would not rewind. Hand to God. That was some cool experience though; if any of y'all still have tape media that needs fixing, I can field strip, splice, and re-shell a VHS or audio cassette while blindfolded, in the rain, with one arm tied behind my back, now. Even have a custom screwdriver that I made by grinding down a Philips head, just to get into Disney tapes --- they use a proprietary kind of screw on their VHS because, Disney.
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Jan 1, 2019 23:26
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To be fair, they probably did that to keep kids like me from disassembling on a whim.
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Jan 3, 2019 11:14
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Midjack posted:True Porn Clerk Stories, on improvisation.ws. The site is long gone but the Wayback Machine provides at least the first page: This was the first thing I ever read on the Internet that I kept going back to and re-reading. It was mostly dead by the time I discovered it, but I loved it so much. JacquelineDempsey posted:The next book in the series should be "Can You Post When You're Dead?" and the answer is yes, because I just died laughing at those. Holy crow, you weren't kidding, Fleta. "Robert Makes a Graph" --- omg tell me how it ends but put it in spoiler tags, please! Wouldn't want to ruin that roller coaster of a story for anyone else. BOCES actually sent a recruiter to our classes in eighth grade...it didn't go well. I got picked on a little bit because my dad was so strongly in favor of the program, but not much. For him, it was really personal because he'd grown up poor and, while very smart, hadn't been an academic person. He remembered wishing there was a way to move into a vocational program while still receiving good training at a high pedagogic standard, so BOCES seemed like an amazing idea to him. And, honestly, the Caz contingent of BOCES kids generally needed that separation and intervention. I had a couple of friends in the program, actually- one girl with severe dyslexia who was smart, but gun-shy about challenging herself in general (she went into the florist program and is doing really well) and one guy who was just a fuckup redneck (culinary school until jail.) Quite a few of the students from my school from Special Education DID go to BOCES, but plenty went on to college, too. It just gave certain kids more options and choices. I never would have been interested, but now I wonder if more of my friends who weren't very academic should have entered the program. But, yeah. "Retards" all the way down. Kids were so lovely when I was in high school. Coasterphreak posted:To be fair, they probably did that to keep kids like me from disassembling on a whim. My classroom usually has a "toolbox" with old VHS tapes and things for kids to take apart and try to put back together...or turn into something else entirely! It's great, as long as nothing in there is sharp (I check every time it's used to make sure there are not sharp or broken bits). Haven't spent much time with the new crew yet and am not sure they're ready. Hopefully by March, though. And on that note, most of the rest of the books are obnoxiously dull, but not as funny as the previous six titles. I am disappoint. We have, in total, six books that are actually stories. I think everything we have is a Guided Reading Program reject. No DK Discovery books, no Magic Schoolbus, no Terry Deary...gently caress, I don't even have the goddamn Hungry Caterpillar! I managed to scrape together about 10-12 Roald Dahl and American Girl books from my own collection, but nothing that's really at their level. ARGH. E: Retards All the Way Down is my least favorite John Green book. Fleta Mcgurn fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jan 4, 2019 |
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Jan 4, 2019 13:01
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I attribute a significant amount of my personality to having torn through Roald Dahl books over and over when I was little. Every kid worldwide should have him as required reading.
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Jan 4, 2019 18:55
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I grew up on a diet of Tom Clancy, Orson Scott Card, and Greg Bear. I'm surprised I wasn't damaged worse, honestly.
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Jan 4, 2019 19:14
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my library had So Much raymond e feist. so much. I honestly thought midkemia was the height of fantasy literature. it left room for improvement later in life they had some piers anthony too, I noped outta that when the underage protagonists started engaging in sexual urine play and I think there was much worse to come how the hell did piers anthony get his books in kids' hands without someone like putting him in jail or something? maybe not jail, but it was hard for me to avoid his work, let alone find it, how did he pull that poo poo off? e: I probably learned most of my vocab from Calvin and Hobbes
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Jan 4, 2019 19:27
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Cythereal posted:I grew up on a diet of Tom Clancy, Orson Scott Card, and Greg Bear. What's so bad about Greg Bear?
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Jan 4, 2019 19:41
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StrixNebulosa posted:What's so bad about Greg Bear? He tends to get weird, and one of the novels I loved most as a kid was Anvil of Stars. That book is seriously messed up and bleak as hell.
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Jan 4, 2019 19:42
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Aunt Beth posted:I attribute a significant amount of my personality to having torn through Roald Dahl books over and over when I was little. Every kid worldwide should have him as required reading. Lol. Met a guy who owns a buy-here-pay-here car dealership next to the dog-track in Tampa. His name? "Claude Vladimir". I asked if he had a dog or two, it got a smile. Dammit Fleta, now you need books shipped internationaly and Haier is nowhere to be found.
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Jan 4, 2019 19:56
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