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Man, I'm jealous now. I've been in libraries for years and dedicated library A/V person would be my dream job. Doesn't seem to be a position libraries in my country do, though.Cythereal posted:Also, hands up any other library vets who have caught people having sex in the library. Once I happened to look into a study room and saw the occupant lying prone on the floor. Took me a second to properly register that and go "hang on, I should probably actually check on them." Then I saw they had their shoes neatly put in a corner, cleared themselves some space, and were just taking a nap. Most people just put their head down on the desk but whatever, they booked the room, it's theirs for the day. I don't think I have any great stories about our patrons. Coworkers and management though, and the building itself, hoo boyo. Cythereal posted:One of the funny things about working in an academic library is that porn is in fact allowed on library computers. And they offered me the job 
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Oct 25, 2018 08:57
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Once I had to tell a lady that she'd already racked up €80 in late fees for some books she wanted to renew. I braced myself for a big ugly discussion, but all she said was "oh really? Shoot, but I guess it happens", all very calmly. After she'd paid and left I looked in her account to see what she'd been so hooked on. Ten books on conflict management. e: speaking of which. We had a policy that anyone who triggered the theft alarm got written up, accident or not. Most people were understanding, once a guy kept complaining about how ridiculous it was as I was writing and topped it off with "you must feel so great doing this." Yeah mate, fantastic, it's the only reason I come in on Saturdays, I've been sat here the past six hours just waiting for you. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Oct 25, 2018 |
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Oct 25, 2018 15:34
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Just the other day I read about a lawsuit where a professor sued her university library for charging her €2250 in late fees. 50 books, more than a month late, presumably none on conflict management.
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Oct 25, 2018 15:54
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Yeah they say they want you to inspire fun in the people around you, but you set up one measly karaoke station and it's off to the head librarian's office with you
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Oct 28, 2018 15:23
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Like I said. Jealous. I still got a full Rock Band setup too, so doubly jealous. Actually kinda toying with getting rid of it, since I haven't touched it in years, but also not sure where it would be appreciated. For sure not our local library.
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Oct 28, 2018 20:30
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My Lovely Horse posted:Just the other day I read about a lawsuit where a professor sued her university library for charging her €2250 in late fees. 50 books, more than a month late, presumably none on conflict management. God, the comments on it though. "Works out to about €45 a book, she could have bought them all new for that." "Not really if they're textbooks, try more like €450 apiece." "well get them used off eBay, do they have to be brand sparkling new, WHY DO LIBRARIES SPEND OUR TAX MONEY SO FRIVOLOUSLY" "i got ten books for €15 at my library's book sale this is clearly absurd"
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Nov 6, 2018 08:53
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JacquelineDempsey posted:SNAKES ALIVE! e: that's my dream way of getting fired, getting busted wearing nothing but a loincloth playing a pungi at a tangle of RCA cables My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Nov 15, 2018 |
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Nov 15, 2018 14:39
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Cythereal posted:Something I've seen before was a woman checking out a group of books on how to escape an abusive relationship and how to divorce someone.
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Nov 17, 2018 13:17
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Personally I'd rather have gone for a library assistant qualification than the proper librarian degree, in retrospect. The latter gets you locked away in offices and meetings, the former has you actually go out and do poo poo and talk to patrons. And at my last job me and an assistant both got saddled with the same lame-rear end genuine grunt work data entry job, so it's not like the degree really offers any protection from that sort of thing.
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Nov 22, 2018 18:12
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Which one is the one with the chef? I just remembered I was marking that as a Christmas present for my girlfriend earlier this year. One of her books is named The Very Virile Viking and I keep thinking of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and giggling e: The Angel Wore Fangs. Cheers, myself.
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Nov 29, 2018 13:35
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bad posts ahead!!! posted:I love libraries but i'm a germophobe, especially during cold and flu season. What's the best way to wipe down a book without damaging it? Or should I try not to care so much?
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Nov 30, 2018 07:47
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JacquelineDempsey posted:St. Jerome bless you. I mean, even as a lowly shelver I loved the fact that my job was a preservationist of history, an archivist, The Keeper of Knowledge... But at some point you just run out of shelf space and there's no reason to keep crap like that around. You can get all that info online, and if it happens that Trump pulls a nuclear war and all the computers get EMPed, I don't really think anyone's gonna care about a PC bug from 18 years ago. We need to keep physical shelf space for more important things that will help the human race and culture survive. The university library I worked at last still had some books with extra materials that came on floppy discs, and the head of the computer science department would fight tooth and nail to keep some public terminals that still had floppy drives. That, I figure, is completely okay because in the university setting, you may need the historical perspective. Questionable if the floppies are even still readable, of course. Uh, I hope I'm not coming off as criticizing you harshly here. I totally agree with the Keeper of the Knowledge stuff in general, just in my experience, some institutions are better suited for it than others. bad posts ahead!!! posted:is there a way to be a librarian who doesn't do a lot of talking to other people? like sorting, stocking, etc? or do librarians generally share duties?
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Dec 2, 2018 11:17
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el dorito posted:I think I’ve read a single Koontz book back in the day but this is the best endorsement that I’ve ever read about an author and now I’ve got a terrible fever and I’m about to raid my local library or used book store for more Koontz because that is the only cure for what ails me Just get Watchers. It doesn't get more Dog Story than that. You move beyond Watchers at your own peril.
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Dec 5, 2018 07:52
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My town has got one. It's always full of absolute poo poo. Not, like, bad genre fiction, just... imagine there's announcement of a weeding project around the corner, and you can immediately think of a handful of books you're gonna throw out. Or actually think of the handful of books where every time you see them you hope the next weeding is coming soon. That's without fail the kind of book that's in there, exclusively. Well, I say exclusively, maybe the good stuff just gets picked out quickly. I'm only ever there to get rid of my own stuff, which it's fantastic for.
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Dec 12, 2018 08:58
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You can, but there's no guarantee they'll carry it, and unwanted/unannounced donations are indeed a bit infamous among librarians. You can always call up and ask them if they'd accept a copy, though. That alone will make you stand out as considerate among the general book-donating public.
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Dec 12, 2018 17:08
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Animale posted:Basically I got a ton of stories about her old building flooding (mostly the children's level that had a bunch of nannies taking kids there) due to poor construction that the city will not acknowledge (the same architecture firm that designed it was hired to update the main branch which was designed by a famous architect they didn't take into consideration that people would use that library). It happened so often we got into a routine. That first time we scrambled to get everything to safety, after that we had buckets and rolls of plastic tarp everywhere. Coming in and seeing another row of shelves covered in plastic became a regular thing. One time I came in and someone had constructed a truly marvellous contraption from a whiteboard, a tarp and the ever present buckets to redirect the water flow. It got to the point where if you saw a leak you'd just grab a bucket from the stack in the corner, place it and move on with your day. Turns out the city's major shopping centre was planned or built by the same guys, it also has a glass roof, and it too leaks like mad. You'd think the city would have caught on to it after the first time. grassy gnoll posted:The standouts were all abusive narcissists, because there's always at least one in any library hierarchy.
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Dec 14, 2018 08:11
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You could always ask some public charitable organization in your town if they'd like one made.
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Dec 21, 2018 08:37
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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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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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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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Today at my new job I was taken aside during orientation and informed discreetly that I might encounter people being strange about my office, possibly making comments like "oh, so that's where they put you...", and advised to not be put off if that happened, but that the lady who'd occupied that office before - who was not my predecessor for the job - had in fact killed herself; although from what I understand, not actually in the office.
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Feb 20, 2019 19:22
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I never walked into the break room in my first week and got involved in an animated discussion about the right way to slaughter chickens and rabbits before
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Feb 22, 2019 23:50
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They took me round to meet everyone in the building, and around 17 people said "I'm sure we'll run into each other a lot", by the 7th or so the phrase had lost all meaning. Special shoutout to the very friendly but clearly deranged lady who went on an animated monologue about my surname, which sounds somewhat like a predator animal, telling me she was sure I was very nice, not at all like the name suggested, "cause hearing it you immediately think, grrrr, don't you", baring her teeth and making claw gestures, and leaving me very thankful there weren't 16 more around greeting me the same way, which isn't to say I don't appreciate a work environment where you can make animal noises at coworkers you're meeting for the first time.
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Feb 23, 2019 10:54
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I'd back you up too, but I think I'd want to have a chat with that professor. That's a weird requirement in the first place, and it would be fair to point out that the deadline extends past availability of all requirements. (Granted, if you need the articles for the assignment, logically you can't go to the library last anyway.) At my last job some faculties required students to bring confirmation slips that they attended our library introductions. It was pretty common for people to put that off until shortly before graduation. Our inofficial policy on that was, if you pulled off getting to graduation without needing the library intro, hey, more power to you, but you do have to attend one to get the slip. e: if you were smart you'd arrange for a special intro session with your buddies who also put it off and then we could just run you through the basics in five minutes pro forma. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 08:30
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welp Around a month ago I applied for a job in a public library I used to work at ages ago. Great library, interesting field, great city, all that jazz. Didn't hear back but I figured they were taking their time or weren't interested. Long story short: four missed calls from their office tipped me off to the fact that apparently they sent the invitation to yesterday's interview to the entirely wrong address. I'm not, like, massively pissed off, but in light of the fact that my current job is YET ANOTHER fixed term contract and that one would have been permanent, I'm wondering if I'm not maybe too chill about a few things. At the very least I want whoever hosed this up to own up and explain the situation, if only so I'm not forever That Guy Who No-Showed And Didn't Even Answer The Phone to them.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:52
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So I did in fact move recently and I did in fact send them an old version of my CV by accident, which had the old address, that one's on me. However I also gave them my current address in the cover letter, and quite frankly they could have noticed that and asked, and anyway I'm having all my mail redirected so even if they did send the invitation to the old address - which they did - , I should have received it, or else they should have had it returned as undeliverable, and then asked. It seems like it just got lost in the mail. Although I'm not quite buying that two different letters from the same sender - because naturally they had also sent me a confirmation of receipt - just happen to get lost independently of each other. I'm gonna have to look in my redirection setup. Scheduling another interview would be a bit awkward for many reasons. For example, they of course had the other candidates in on Tuesday and selected someone, and I imagine it would be extremely difficult to hold another special interview just for me and remain unbiased. Really not entirely fair to their selected candidate now either. Well, at least I was able to get it all cleared up and there's no hard feelings. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Mar 7, 2019 |
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Mar 7, 2019 14:36
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Youtube space or general media production facilities, a/v editing suite and such One library I interned at had and still has a vinyl digitization setup, that's only become more relevant since then; officially it's for their own collection but I'm sure they let you bring yours in. Meeting space for clubs or D&D and stuff although I learned from The Anime Club that's actually a thing in the US? Maybe? Generalized maker/hackerspace beyond just 3D printing, or at least cooperating with one maybe for workshops and stuff
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May 23, 2019 16:25
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also heard from my old job: a buddy got into trouble with the department head for writing a private e-mail while on duty at the circulation desk Like I know for a fact that there can easily be 15-20 minutes between visitors and there's a limit to the amount and complexity of office work you can take with you to a public-facing position and still be, well, available to the public. Speaking of which, also have it on good authority that the department head herself regularly works circulation, but takes so much admin work with her that she's glued to her terminal while down the counter the second circulation worker is hustling to get everyone serviced. He suspects it wouldn't have been as big a deal if it hadn't been an e-mail to me and I can't even really call that paranoid based on experiences
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May 23, 2019 16:37
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I'm about to take a 33% pay cut for a new job in exchange for getting back into university library reference/circulation, being able to walk to work, and hopefully less cringey coworkers (still librarians tho so y'know). New job is still fixed term, but all things considered I'd rather have another year of reference on my resume than cataloguing, which I loathe passionately.
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Jun 3, 2019 11:47
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I'm sure it's gonna be fine, I spent a year at the front desk before and it was pretty much the best. At the very least it's gonna be better than my current gig, and even if somehow it's just about the same I'll still be doing better in terms of free time, commute and such.
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Jun 5, 2019 08:55
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Job update: it owns, my bosses are supportive, my coworkers fun to be around, my stress levels have dropped to sub-basement levels and I'm spending each day just completely chilled and unfazed. There's talk of a fulltime position and the words "permanent contract" have been thrown around. although one of our regulars did waltz in drunk yesterday and passed out/shat himself in the elevator, that sort of thing probably wouldn't have happened at the courthouse library
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Aug 31, 2019 11:09
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Oh I didn't know we've worked at the same place.
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Sep 7, 2019 19:07
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German librarian here: yes of course ignore the article. Actually these two are great examples: Die Haut is roughly grammatically equivalent to, say, The Cure, while Die Krupps is a standard plural like The Beatles. And you ditch the article for both.
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Oct 21, 2019 15:04
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I retag all my music files before they go into the proper collection that serves as Winamp's library folder. I remove any article that simply designates plural (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones; also Die Krupps), I leave any article in that accompanies a proper noun (The Cure; Die Haut). My unscientific reason is that it looks weird having just "Cure" in your list of artists, but not "Beatles". I also fill in the ARTISTSORT tag without any articles or indeed spaces or special characters, it's also where I enter artist's personal names surname first, and I intend to figure out one of these days how to get Winamp to sort by that field.
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Nov 6, 2019 19:27
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That reminds me of yesterday. Not much of a story, let's just say yes, he had extended the loan on his DVDs that had been due on the 28th, and he had done it in time, but only by a week so they were a day late yesterday.
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Dec 7, 2019 15:43
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:There is definitely a large large contingent of architects who hate that people and their silly needs keep getting in the way of their beautiful buildings Our building won an architecture award. Our reception area is cramped, we're currently running into major trouble redesigning the space because there's just no room, meanwhile there's a large empty lobby right outside our doors. Gotta have exhibition space 4 weeks a year! Also the untreated wood they're so proud of that makes up our floors and countertops is splintering like mad and makes it so you can't write on top of it. You never notice that sort of thing until you have to fill in multiple forms a day. This is a university that's famed specifically for its architecture department. e: don't even get me started on the trend where every library built in the last ~15 years has to have curved shelves.
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Dec 25, 2019 09:54
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Oh yeah our reception counter also has this wooden beam running along so we can just slide books right under it, and it's exactly the right height to block any face to face visual contact between us and any visitors in wheelchairs, we have to either stand up and loom over them or hunker down and peer through the book slot. Silver lining: we're redesigning the entire reception area next year, somehow I ended up on the committee, and I have made it my mission in life to push as hard as I can for getting rid of that beam and the untreated wood. Mind you since we're still dealing with architects we first had to convince them to not put up shelves so visitors couldn't even see us behind the counter coming in
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Dec 26, 2019 22:43
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A reputation for a staggering suicide rate and three levels of stacks with an easily scalable railing and a large empty concrete area in front of them, you say!
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Dec 27, 2019 09:13
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That's right, it is actually all going to filter down to the very bottom, isn't it. Where no one's gonna clean ever unless the library has got like a giant roomba. Oh well, silver lining, no more having to handle the lost & found, people can just crawl under the stacks and get their phone back, although it really isn't gonna help with the upskirting issue.
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Dec 27, 2019 10:01
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MetaJew posted:The library is functioning as intended. Everyone knows you go there to look up things.
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Dec 27, 2019 21:47
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