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AllNewJonasSalk posted:I wanna hear about lovely patrons who refuse to pay fines. You got any stories about that? Several jobs ago, we had a guy who racked up approximately $50,000 in late fines and replacement items. Only about 10k of that was actually on his account; he'd get locked out, plead with the circ librarian and the director, and get temporarily clemency, only to steal poo poo or lose things again, so we'd lock him out once more, etc. When we eventually quit giving him access all together, he'd get someone else to check books out for him. After a few years, he stopped being a regular patron, but he'd still drift by every so often to try and scam a new volume every now and then. Can you, library staffers, puzzle out how this sorry state of affairs came to be? I've given you all the clues you need. Law library. 
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Nov 9, 2018 16:23
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Cythereal posted:Escaping retail did not free me from them. The law library had a high proportion of older patrons than the other places I've worked at, which is maybe not surprising. Most of them were actually pretty professional, barring this one guy who went absolutely ballistic because we wouldn't sell him a piece of our catalog. It was one volume of a pamphlet and wasn't what he was actually trying to find, but by god, we'd better rip off the state for him or else he'd have us fired! And when he dies, he's going to donate a lot of money to our parent institution! Which, like, it's a law school, dude. It's primarily self-funded, and you're not dead yet, sooo. There was a huge reserve section for study guides and assigned reading, so of course we'd have the people who put off their assignment to the last minute all fighting over one copy of a book. The law library twist is that your class ranking is important as all get-out if you want to make it into one of the big national firms, and obviously the easiest way to do this is to ensure your peers fail, rather than to study hard. Every so often we'd have somebody slip in at open, check out a reserve item that was going to be hugely popular that day, and then hide it somewhere in the library. Rapidly compounding fines were apparently worth it to potentially sabotage everyone else's grades, since obviously you'll be the one making six figures on graduation while the rest of the proles are stuck clerking. Turns out lawyers are kinda dumb and short-sighted.
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Nov 20, 2018 15:37
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I would have killed for Chick tracts. At least they're small and disposable. We had Gideon day a few times a year. Some of the more enterprising students would get rid of their unwanted bibles by shoving them into the book return. Mostly, though, they just left them on the tables and in the carrels. I think one year I ended up with sixty-some copies crammed into one of my desk drawers. The Gideons were pretty nice about the whole thing. They were always sorta surprised to see somebody heading toward them with ten pounds of mini-bibles, though. Speaking of, what's the weirdest thing you guys found in your book drops? Ours were surprisingly tame, just a family of squirrels and a diaper from someone who didn't see the trashcan across the sidewalk. Another branch had half a bottle of some really nice bourbon dropped off on a gameday. Rumors abound of someone trying to use it as a coke drop back in the day, but I was never able to find anyone who was actually present when it was discovered.
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Nov 28, 2018 21:00
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Dang, you guys have eventful lives. Only threats of violence I got were from campus police and one of the librarians. I did my stint in the municipal library world in the Southeast. I'm kinda curious as to how it stacks up compared to elsewhere - did you guys have more Danielle Steele or Nora Roberts? We had waaay more Roberts at all our branches.
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Dec 3, 2018 21:06
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I've seen exactly one of those little community libraries in my neck of the woods, which is along a distant stretch of road in the wilderness, with no sidewalk going by it. It's well-intentioned, but nobody's going to stop on the shoulder of a 50+ MPH back road with blind curves to browse for a book. I suspect in general they're not more common due to the eight month summers where it's ~100 degrees and at least 90% humidity. Cythereal posted:I've never seen one here in Florida. Yeah, like that.
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Dec 12, 2018 20:47
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Just think, that young lad will eventually grow up to pay taxes and vote. Most of my coworkers were the regular kind of low-key library weird. The standouts were all abusive narcissists, because there's always at least one in any library hierarchy.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:56
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Cythereal posted:Here is one way to spot a clueless librarian, from the last public library I worked at. Yeah, sounds about right. One of the academic libraries I worked at had the campus police called - by patrons! - multiple times for a passel of chronic masturbators, and all we got from admin was "but they're not hurting anyone." Also, you say that like librarians aren't clueless until proven otherwise.
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Dec 22, 2018 19:37
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Cythereal posted:We are not a public library. I get where you're coming from, but this is a failure of your administration. If you're publicly accessible, the public will assume they can use your services. In an ideal world, this would mean opening up those services to the general public and happily footing the bill, but, y'know, library administration is what it is, so what you've got is probably the best possible option at this point. Are you filling out an incident report every time someone asks for something they can't have, or just when they're being a nuisance? Because if it's the former, holy poo poo, your access services head needs to be screaming at the director 24/7. Skinnymansbeerbelly posted:I love not being able to check out books directly from my alma mater's library. It's so much more efficient to be required to do ILL pulls through the county library. In addition to what Lutha Mahtin suggested, it may be worth asking your local library if they can negotiate a borrowing arrangement from the campus system. It's how the local systems work around me, but it may take enough interest from the community to make it worth your county's while. I know this is "have you tried rebooting" territory, but have you contacted your alma mater's library system directly? Or failing that, alumni services? If they don't purge their patron rolls regularly, you may still have limited borrowing privileges. My home institution and former employer kept everybody, plus their immediate family, for a hundred years. Which did make it tricky to discriminate between duplicate accounts sometimes, in fairness.
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Jan 22, 2019 21:47
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Having run the fab lab at one of my libraries, can confirm they're useless bullshit that gets funded because someone out of touch with reality read an article in a journal written by someone even further out of touch. Spend your money on new items for the collection, programming for underserved demographics, raises for the staff, or even new seating before you buy dumb toys.
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May 24, 2019 03:44
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I got trained using LC Easy and yes, it does look like that. LoC best sorting system, deal with it.
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Sep 16, 2019 02:18
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Cythereal posted:Y'all are making me really, really not miss libraries. There are always more librarians, and they are always worse. But the good news is, the bigger a piece of poo poo they are, they more likely they'll be promoted!
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Dec 2, 2019 22:48
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I'm out of the business, thankfully, but my current job has something similar. You have your curb person wear mask and gloves, client pulls up, shows their ID inside their car, pops their trunk, staff put their stuff inside, close trunk, end of transaction with minimal risk of infection. The trick is you have to do all your inventory and checkout ahead of time, and if the client refuses to cooperate, then you're worse off than you were when they were your plain vanilla kind of shithead. Instead of demanding to see your manager, they'll absolutely try and slap your mask off for not letting them commit theft because they didn't arrange anything ahead of time.
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Mar 20, 2020 22:36
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I worked in a large academic library for a good while, and while I could put up with stalkers, violent lunatics, and pedophiles - as I say, I worked in a large academic library - I don't think I could productively work with the guy who took a pop at Ronald Reagan. With all the time I'd be spending making fun of him for missing, I'd never get my tasks done.
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Jan 30, 2023 23:31
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It's also entirely possible someone moved one or several of the books out of the D section into the Ps because It Looks Better This Way, and then whoever was shelving wasn't paying sufficient attention or stopped caring, or the staff just haven't gotten around to repairing the entropy in that area yet, or enough people got confused because it's clearly P-for-Pete and the staff gave up. There could be a ton of things going on here. The children's section is always kind of a lost cause for good sorting, 'cause they're kids and they literally don't know any better. Theoretically speaking, putting books back on the shelf is preferable to chewing on them or hitting another child with 'em. If you see someone who isn't a library staffer loving with the material in the regular stacks, though, you are legally allowed to strike them. Don't worry, the internet said it's okay.
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Feb 5, 2023 21:34
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I would never forget technical services, because you dweebs would take three or four weeks to intake a new journal issue with a catalog entry stretching back decades, and my rear end at the circ desk has to explain to faculty why they're not getting their requested articles any time soon. Not bitter.
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Mar 12, 2023 04:10
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Halloween Jack posted:I remember we had these law journals that we got in print because the digital subscription was more expensive. Hey, I did those at my law library. Did you guys have the supplements where you had to literally shove a booklet into the pocket in the back of the binder?
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Oct 8, 2023 03:22
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Tippecanoe posted:After over 10 years in a public library in Canada and getting my MLIS I might have a shot at an academic librarian job. My public library job has good job security and benefits, but it is getting so so stressful commuting and dealing with the public. By contrast the academic library job is a support role, leading a few technicians and working regular office hours in a hybrid environment. However, it's a one-year contract, with no possibility of renewal, and while the chief librarian told me they'll be looking to fill a few permanent positions soon, I'm not sure how seriously to take that. Literally every librarian at my old job worked on a one-year contract, renewed at the discretion of their immediate superiors, all the way up the chain to the appointed director off libraries. This is so they could be faculty, but kids table faculty like adjuncts. It was very important everyone knew their place, you see. You can't beat the hours compared to public librarianships, the money is way more secure, and it's assumed you'll need to do your time before you're in the system until you die, so I wouldn't be very concerned about the temp contract. I'd go for it in a heartbeat, if you're not entirely in love with your current library and responsibilities. Carefully consider avenues for promotion, however, because if the library system is worth half a drat, you'll be waiting for vacancy by mortality or a sudden new funding source to magically appear, like the maker space or machine learning fads getting attention from a VP or something. You'll also need to learn to abuse the staff if you want to make any kind of executive position, so start practicing on the undergrads right away.
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Oct 12, 2023 07:03
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Maybe this is an artifact of the southern US library experience, where the local and state governments are always looking to close libraries because That's Socialism, but we always took everything that wasn't obviously covered in semen or mold. Granted, 99% of that intake went to the Friends of the Library bookstore and then recycled whenever they needed space, but it was at least given an attempt at a new life.
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Mar 4, 2024 08:06
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Believe it or not, it's true. LoC is objectively better than Dewey.
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May 16, 2024 20:36
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