Come On, Get Happy

I was summoned to a catalog station by an unhappy patron. She was unable to place a hold on an item. Usually, it's a glitch typing in a card number or forgetting a password. But she had all that info right. The problem was with the item. There were three copies of it in the system, but all were in "Missing" status. I told her that.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Probably that somebody claims that they returned something and either they didn't or that the item was mis-shelved."

"So when do you find out which it is?"

"Not sure. If it doesn't turn up in a few months, they will probably get changed to 'Lost' status."

"Does that mean you're going to buy more?"

I told her that I didn't know, but offered to get her the card of the person who selects video. The patron got a little upset. Or maybe it was more annoyed. Somewhere between the two. Let's call it Upnoyed.

She explained that this was the first season of the show, and she couldn't just start from season two. What, then, she wanted to know, was she supposed to do? (The series, BTW? Drum Roll.......The Partridge Family.)

Among the things that I did not tell her:

You could get a life.

We have something like 45,000 books on the shelf right now.

Season One of the Brady Bunch, Hogan's Heroes and I Dream of Jeannie are all on the shelf.

Volunteer?

The Lives of Great Athletes

A guy asked for the phone book. He took it away. Bringing it back, he expressed his disappointment in the quality of the phone book. Nobody he wanted to call was in it. I offered to look people up on ReferenceUSA or some of my favorite E-stalking(TM) sites. Initially, he resisted this idea, preferring to complain about the phone book.

Finally her relented. As I looked up the first person in RefUSA, I started to get the life story, which, you can probably imagine, I really wanted to hear. He was here to meet somebody. (Whew! Thank God! For a minute there I thought he wanted to check out a book!) His friend was not here at the appointed time. The man had ran here from the nearby town of Nowheresville which is about 9 miles away. He paused for admiration. This was not forthcoming. I don’t mean to brag, but your friend the deskslave has been known to walk as far as three blocks if that’s what it takes to get more beer.

He did not want to lug his cell phone during this Pheidippidean journey and thus could not call the tardy friend. I even offered to let him use the library phone, which was met with a patronizing explanation that the phone number was on his phone, the implication being that nobody could possibly memorize a few digits. While I searched, he continued to flip through the phone book, muttering things like, “My my my not good at all,” and the ever-popular “this is ridiculous.”

The friend was not listed. Other friends who might have known the number were likewise not listed. Precious moments of this, my only life, passed doing this. I’ll never see those moments again.

At last he tired of the game and told me that he would use the phone. He snatched the cordless phone that we let patrons use and began punching numbers while I told him to punch nine first. After a few digits, he got the fail tone, so I got to tell him to punch nine first, which he found absurd (who doesn’t know to do this?). He must have gotten an actual answering machine, because after a fashion he said, “It’s me. Pick up.”

“It’s me,” kills me because literally everyone on earth can say it and it will be true, so in absolute terms, it’s pretty meaningless. The monologue continued with, “Pick up. Pick up. Pick up! I know you’re there!” Eventually, somebody (perhaps a long-suffering spouse who was out in back digging a shallow grave) picked up. Our friend, whom I’ll now call Waldemar Cierpinski in honor of the controversial winner of the 1976 Olympic marathon, then engaged in the hated “chat wander,” whereby a person on the phone strolls around the library while talking on the phone. I had to go over and actually shush him! I began helping somebody else, which took me away from the desk. When I got back, the phone was back in its place.
“Your friend asked me to thank you for all your help,” my colleague at the desk told me.
“Really?”
“No, just kidding. He didn’t say anything to me.”

I'd Like Defective Librarians for 200, please, Alex

This man is responsible for getting rid of the ratty quilting magazines that were more than five years old that we used to have but nobody checked out so they were recycled and really needs to hear about the stupidity and injustice of this at great length even though there are teens who want guest passes so they can look at porn?

Saddest Day as a Librarian, I Think

On the same order recently, I had both the bowdlerized version of Huck Finn and the book by Nicole Polizzi. I don't really get the first, and had to be told just what a horrible thing the second was. Evidently, Ms. Polizzi is known by the nom de guerre "Snooki," and has taken upon herself the task of sharing herself with people who don't get MTV. I admit that I'm a snob, but I don't force my snobbishness on the readers of my community. But this one hurt.

The Seven Library Dwarves, A Call For Entries

So far, I have as candidates:

Texty
Hostile
Stinky
Entitled
Spectrum
Ring Tone
Noisy

Let me know what you think!

Such A Reference Ninja, Part 217

I gave a computer guest pass to the nice man who spoke only a little English. He was super-polite and friendly and all was well in the world. A little while later, he came back up to the desk brandishing the pass.

"Oil well," he said.

"Oil well?"

"Oil well," he stated emphatically. He pointed to the pass to emphasize the oily nature of the well. "OIL" point point "WELL" point point wave pass in front of deskslave.

"I'm sorry..."

I was both flummoxed and nonplussed, which is a bad state I try to avoid at all costs. Flummoxed I can handle. Nonplussed leaves me unmoved. But together?

I asked him if he was having trouble using the code on the pass. Indeed he was. He took a deep breath and invited me to look closer. He placed a pudgy yet curiously flat finger over the password part of the pass. "I yell?" he questioned.

"You....?"

"Eye...?" he began, his voice rising as though he were starting a question. "O'Dell?"

I gave the pass a good squint. The code was something like

XP3sl

The toner was a bit speckly. The small, non-halogen, non-LED lightbulb over my head glowed weakly. Fifteen watts, max. He couldn't tell if the last character was an I or an L. "I or L" was probably what he had been saying.

"Ummm..." I began. "That last letter? I think it's an L."

He smiled and let the Black Belt Reference Ninja with a thumbs-up and a smile.

Such A Reference Ninja I Am

The woman on the phone said she wanted a book called History of Pie. It sounded like a great book. I love baking and am always searching for ways to make a better pie crust, but we didn't have History of Pie. We had all kinds of books about pie, but nothing with that title. Undaunted, I told her about one of my favorite cookbooks, and one I have learned so much from. It's called The Pie and Pastry Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Ms. Beranbaum is not just a baker. She's a chemist, too, so she adds that knowledge to baking part, so you really get a very well-rounded pie education.

As I told her about it ("the author talks about the chemistry of each recipe, so you can understand what you are doing and not just following the instructions...") I could tell I had gotten it wrong.

She talked about The History of Pie a little more and I finally figured it out.

Oh, yeah. Black Belt Reference Ninja.

No, I'm Actually an Exhaust Manifold. But Thanks for Asking.

Ereaders are the latest tool of Satan, sent to drive me to an early grave. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the devices themselves. If I had boodles of spare money and my retirement was secure through a bursting IRA and substantial investments and the house was paid off and the car was in perfect running condition and the kids’ college savings accounts were brimming with cash and the appliances were all EnergyStar-rated and my wardrobe was not shamefully out-of-date and threadbare, I’d probably be the first one to run out and buy one. Nope, it’s not the gizmos. It’s the people who buy them or get them as gifts and then plonk them down in front of me and expect me to show them how they work, often with quite a bit of heat and impatience in their voices.

“Lug them into the library?” I hear you exclaim, “Why should anybody expect a humble library deskslave to make an ereader from goodness-knows-where work?”

Excellent question. But you see, deskslave central is part of a consortium of libraries that purchased the digital rights to squoodles of ebooks that patrons can check out just like real analog books. Thus, the patron’s reasoning goes, if the library provides the ebooks, they must, ipso facto, show me how to use my device so’s I can get them on my fancy new ereader. Canny reader that you are, you have already figured out the flaw in the reasoning. Just because the library provides something doesn’t mean that we can or will show you how to use it. We provide books, but it is not a reasonable expectation to take one up to the desk and get all huffy because you cannot read. Likewise, if you do not know how to operate your DVD player, you would be looked at strangely if you placed it on the reference desk and demanded to know what the deal was with this darn box and these stupid DVDs we bought.

Still, most of us will give it a shot when the bewildered ereader owner comes in with their difficulties, even though none of us own an ereader. And I admit, it is a little hard. The manufacturers make it VERY EASY to buy things through their store, but damnably tricky to get the freebies from the library.

So it was today when the sprightly senior citizen lady came in. She couldn’t figure the durn thing out, so she thought she’d come in to the library where we’d show her how to use it on our computers. The biggest problem with that is that the library’s crack IT team has not gotten around to installing the ereader software on any of our machines and forbade us from doing it ourselves. I told her this, but she steadfastly refused to believe it.

“But they’re your books!”

I went through my little script as kindly as I could (large consortium, not really our books, consult the website, IT team not in a hurry, call me from home and I’ll try to talk you through, etc), but she wasn’t buying it. I think she thought I just didn’t understand what she wanted, so she went through her script again (your damn books, you get them on, look--there’s a damn computer, put the book on my spifftastic ereader with it right now). Finally, I think she figured out that she wasn’t going to be downloading anything on her nifty new device at the library. She was mad, and decided that what she needed to was put me in my place. She leaned in with the kind of smile that indicates anything but mirth and said, “You are a library, aren’t you?”

There were many things I could have said, but I opted for, “I think you know the answer to that question.”

Frequently Heard at Deskslave Central

Neither the federal nor state solons have graced us with tax forms yet. So I get to have a variation of the following conversation several times a day now:

Caller. Do you have tax forms yet?

Me. No.

Caller. Why not?

Me. They haven't arrived yet.

Caller. When are they getting there?

Me. I don't know.

Caller. Why not?

Me. They don't tell us, they just show up.

Caller. How am I supposed to do my taxes?

Me. I don't know.

Actually I try to be a little nicer than that. I genuinely feel sorry for people who haven't discovered the miracle of licensed tax preparers. I think they are better than most healthcare professionals when it comes to improving the quality of people's lives. I used to do my own, but I think I probably save money having somebody who is not, you know, clueless doing my taxes.

The Truth is Trumped. Again.

It started off as the sort of reference call I love. The caller wanted to know what the entry requirements were for Mexico. I first went to the State Dept. website and read what they had to say (unless you’re going to Ciudad Juarez or some other border city, you need a passport and you need a passport to get back into the US, so get a durn passport). Then I went over to the Mexican government website that was linked on that page and read a similar passage to him, this written by representatives of the very nation he wished to visit. I thought I was done, but the patron objected. He had something he had printed out at some point that said you only needed your driver’s license and one other piece of ID. I asked him when he’d printed it out, since the State Dept thing was effective beginning in March of 2010. He didn’t know, but thought it was a more than a year. I told him that he probably had the old stuff and that things had changed. He objected again, referring to a printout that I could hear rattling in the background. I asked him where he had gotten his printout. Again, he could not remember.

We started a circular conversation that went something like:
Me. Both the State Department and the Mexican Embassy say you need a passport.
Him. Says here I only need a driver’s license.
Me. Both the State Department and the Mexican Embassy say you need a passport.
Him. Says here I only need a driver’s license.
Me. Both the State Department and the Mexican Embassy say you need a passport.
Him. Says here I only need a driver’s license.

I finally offered him the number of the nearest Mexican Consulate. He started to write it down, but stopped and tried to begin our little dialog. “But it says here...” And who can blame him? It was easily the most profound exchange since Plato and Eryximachus threw down in the Symposium. I had to bring it to an end, though. “Here,” I said brightly, “I’ll transfer you to the Consul’s office and you can ask them yourself!”

It was a weird interaction--each time I read the relevant info, he just got more convinced that the outdated document of uncertain provenance was the truth. Here’s what a dork I am: it reminds me of a study conducted by a political scientist named Brendan Nyhan who found out about something he named “The Backfire Effect” where a correction to a misapprehension can actually increase the person’s belief in their misunderstanding.