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My library has been closed to the public since mid-March and our community assistance has been largely reactive instead of proactive. Staff's been cleaning and shifting and long-time-project-ing though.
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Apr 2, 2020 03:48
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I can tell you from the experience that if a book goes missing often enough it'll stop being replaced. The last place I worked, we stopped buying certain comic and manga series because they kept walking off. I know transmetropolitan was one of them but I am not sure if watchmen made that list.
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Apr 19, 2020 19:39
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The libraries around us have either closed or gotten their budgets and staff cut. The place I used to work for, they furloughed all their part-time people. We're open! And masks are encouraged but not required!  I would be happy doing curbside forever. Is it just me? The building being open means people are going to use our building, no matter how many signs we post saying "find your poo poo and get out" and no matter how much furniture we remove. Our patrons with instable housing, our mentally ill patrons with no place to go, our lonely patrons craving human contact. I wish we could be open to provide our services as well as a clean bathroom and air conditioning. State law forbids us from requiring people to wear masks and distance in our building. I'd feel differently if we could enforce that.
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Jul 10, 2020 23:53
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I was hoping you were among the folks adjust hired. 
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Aug 23, 2020 03:23
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One of the places I used to work, kids kept putting mulch from the flower beds into the book drop and their solution was to redo the landscaping to take out the mulch. Then the kids started putting other crap in the book drop. It's not like they didn't have security cameras outside--I guess putting one next to the book drop would be too much of a hassle unlike ripping out the flower beds.
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Nov 5, 2020 16:16
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My library system eliminated fines on kid and teen items but kept them for adult items. This happened before the pandemic. They also did a thing where kids and teens could do activities to get older fines waved. I think it's worked out pretty well. We have a large community of young parents who check out dozens of picture books at a time for their kids and even a day late on those could block an entire account depending on how many the parent checked out. If an item's overdue by 6 weeks or more, it's charged to the person's account, but bringing the item back erases the charge.
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Dec 8, 2021 02:45
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My Lovely Horse posted:What do you do if you've already purchased a replacement copy and they bring it back? Once someone's paid for the replacement, we don't give refunds, even if they find the book and bring it to us. Occasionally we'll take replacement copies if the replacement is brand new and the ISBNs match. The staff have a little bit of leeway to decide the best solution for a given situation and it's one of the things that I like about my job.
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Dec 8, 2021 20:09
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Leperflesh posted:How does this work with VPNs? I could live next door and be using a VPN and appear to be in Norway. If I'm logged in to my work VPN I'll appear to be in Texas (I'm in California). To use my library's online services, patrons need an active library card, and if they live outside the state and don't work or own property in the state, they need to pay for a card that lasts about a year. We also started to offer online sign ups for cards during covid and kept it around, patrons just need to come into the library within 60 days with proof of residency or else they lose access. For most of the big public library eLending services, patrons can't get in without a card number, so it really doesn't matter with them if you're using a VPN as long as your card works, and a permanent library card requires human intervention somewhere along the series of steps.
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Jan 17, 2023 21:18
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Also, BISAC doesn't poo poo all over fiction like DDC and LC do. The official ways to class fiction in both follow the literature rules. Not 100% sure how clunky they are with PS in Library of Congress, but in Dewey, they make an audible thud. We sort our fiction by author last name (or first word of title if it's multiple authors), no diacritics.
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Jan 24, 2023 23:25
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Foxfire_ posted:How do you romanize non-latin alphabet authors? We have a world languages collection and I'm guessing the cataloger goes by the English MARC record for the author names for those. (We buy most of our in-process catalog records from a vendor.) I'm not sure there's any standardization there on our part, other than "well this vendor that we pay a dollar a record for says this is what it should be so I guess that's what it is." Knowing how to do a job right and seeing the job done wrong and not being able to do a drat thing about it is painful.
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Jan 25, 2023 07:15
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I am a big fan of cuttering by character, especially if it's a comic or Disney property or some other collection of works with a bunch of different authors but features the same character. Bookstores do it that way, why not libraries? What bothers me is when a library decides to do something going forward and doesn't do any retrospective cataloging or processing at all. That might work if items are weeded or discarded from the system on a regular basis. It's highly annoying when I can look at a shelf and see five or six different cataloging and/or processing methods because nobody went back to change anything.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:16
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 OMG DID YOU KNOW THE CATALOG'S DOWN Literally the only time anybody remembers or cares about technical services.
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Feb 21, 2023 19:21
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TBF library IT is a whole 'nother issue. Weirdoes in public libraries, indeed. Every so often there are good graybeards who have it as a retirement job for the health insurance, or folks with newly minted degrees who want to get some experience before chasing the six figure jobs. Then they face the toxic lifers and either find another job, burn the gently caress out, or become one of them.
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Feb 25, 2023 21:54
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Our local library has a great kids section but is there a reason lift the flap books for toddlers aren’t more common? Do they just get destroyed too fast? Yes. I mend books for a public library and our board books disintegrate really fast, especially ones with moving parts. Granted, we have a lot of families with young children at my branch.
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Apr 11, 2023 04:14
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Erainor posted:Hi goons! Demco makes book display easels. https://www.demco.com/demco-reg-economical-all-purpose-wire-easels You can also get similar ones at the dollar store where they keep the picture frames. They won't work for super thick picture books but if you've got the 9x9 squares those should work fine.
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Jul 17, 2023 22:11
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Leperflesh posted:that said, why would you have to pay to recycle paper and cardboard? you can just put it in the blue bin The glue and fabric from the binding fucks up the recycling process, even with paperbacks. I've guillotined my share of 1970s chemistry textbooks to recycle what I could and trash what I couldn't.
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Mar 4, 2024 21:39
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