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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm interested in hearing the "The woman who got shot to death outside that first library job" story, if it's not too awful. How about the story about the widow of a guy who was shot in front of the library i used to work at?
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Nov 13, 2018 15:16
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StrixNebulosa posted:If you're up for it, I'll take it! sure, it's not going to be as long as the other weirdo posts in the thread but, content is content. For starters: This is in the Netherlands, in a medium-sized city. A year or so before I started, there was a drug-related murder in front of the Library. The guy got shot 6 times, his wife was standing next to him, many librarians had to make statements. His wife was hit hard by the murder and after about a year she turned up at the library every day and each day we could see her sliding towards alcoholism. The thing that puzzled us was how she managed to get drunker during the day without leaving her spot in the library, she didn't have any cans hidden around the shelves (like other ones tried and failed at) and she didn't have a bag. What she did have was this:  A carton of mineral water. One day she dropped it because she was too drunk and.... well you guessed it, it was filled to the brim with cheap vodka. She quickly gained the nickname Mrs. Bar-le-duc because of and was banned from the library for about a month. After the ban was lifted she returned, still troubled (lots of mood swings: picking fights with staff one day, apologizing profusely the next), but trying to become better (as she was barred from viewing her granddaughter). Just before I quit my job there I saw her sitting in the children's section with a little girl: turns out she was sober for a year and she was allowed to see her granddaughter and visit the library with her.
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Nov 14, 2018 08:56
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Cloks posted:DONT TOUCH THE PC, you work at a library in the Netherlands? What software suite do you use? I used to I quit working there in 2013 and then had a short stint in an academic library. All In all, I worked for about 14 years as a librarian. One of my final projects was my involvement in the development of the new national library catalog as an expert user, but I never saw it get past the development stage. When I first started at my little old library we used Concerto, then we moved to Bicat, Bicat/Wise, and when I left we were using plain Wise.
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Nov 14, 2018 19:35
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Cloks posted:I work on Wise, which is why I asked. thank you for your service, that system was so much better than the stuff I had to use before.
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Nov 15, 2018 16:18
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Cythereal posted:Working Saturday at the library again, just had to save one of my student workers from a nontraditional student. Old people coming up to me and asking for help in the most condescending way possible really brought out the bastard in me and they got an avalanche of subtle insults about how much of a dick they were.
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Nov 19, 2018 09:41
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JacquelineDempsey posted:On the subject of collections and shelf-reading: who other library vets here is old enough to remember having a half shelf worth of space taken up by books about the Y2K bug issue? Even as a new hire, I was all "Okay, it's been over a year now, and the world didn't end, and I don't have anywhere else to stuff all these new-fangled books on HTML in the 000s, can we PLEASE get rid of these?" I still found some books when I started interning in 2004, I had to move heaven and earth to get rid of them. Man, deselecting was such a fight and whenever I was assigned a bunch of shelves I knew I was "the enforcer".
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Dec 1, 2018 20:18
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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. I have a minor in archive management, they taught me the archivist mantra: evaluate, select and destroy. It's been an immense help to my weeding habits. regarding violent patrons and me: The one time I was a witness to this, it was an older white dude getting an earful from a dude he told me to look out for because he was Morrocan. I let that one play out and then told the white dude to leave because he was being a massive racist. The rest of the stories from my libraries involve overdosing junks, the most well-behaved patron being a massive drug dealer and a prostitute using the disabled toilet as a service station.
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Dec 5, 2018 12:58
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Pham Nuwen posted:Become the little free library hero: arrange all the Netscape 2.0 For Dummies etc. books in one corner, then come back after dark, grab them all, and throw them away. yes, little free libraries are generally bookshelves for people who can't throw stuff away. so let us help them! btw, did your avatar come from Bailey illustration? (nws)
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Dec 13, 2018 20:00
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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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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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Lutha Mahtin posted:how many drunk undergrads do you have to kick out in a typical semester lol. bonus points if you can break this stat down by time of day None, my biggest issue in the University Library were the belligerent Business School students who had their expensive study paid for by the company their worked at. The drunks were most likely faculty staff.
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Mar 18, 2019 18:59
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Captain Mediocre posted:Dear thread of captive traumatised librarians, have any of you done much work in public libraries? What things do you most wish your public libraries had had that you weren't able to offer? I'm aware that 3D printing services are becoming a thing in many libraries and I'm wondering if there's anything else like that you think it would be cool to be able to do to meet the changing needs of your patrons. If you have anything strange and cool that you have been able to do I'd like to hear about that too. Another ex-public librarian checking in (and one of those who got the useless media/fablab dumped into his lap), confirming what has been said before: In my experience, the most useful thing you can do as a library is nothing of the sort like 3d printers (that no one knows how to operate) unless you make a deal with someone to haul theirs to the library every 6 months (which is a special event that attracts a lot of people). That soft of flashy stuff usually ends up in brochures, but will never be used. What you do is usually a lot more mundane: Open classes for kids to learn on how to use digital sources for their homework, Teaching people on how to search jobs online, My library had a "form brigade" that came by every so often to help people fill out forms. I have held classes that taught kids how they could influence local politicians so they would build a new skatepark or what have you.
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May 24, 2019 12:11
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JacquelineDempsey posted:I got tapped to do a radio show, and I've decided, as a former library serf, that the theme is gonna be "A thru Z". Every week I'll bring you stuff by the letter [whatever]. I'm having a blast sifting and ripping my collection of CDs, but one thing is nagging me: I have a lot of German bands. Do I list these under "D" because they are Die Haut, Die Krupps, etc, or under the [whatver the band name is after the German equivalent of "the"]? This reminds me of the anger people had at us sorting Icelandic and Japanese authors according to the nations custom, oh the anger people directed at us for putting Yrsa Sigurđardóttir under the Y and not the S and them getting even more huffy when we pointed out that it would be improper for us to put it under the S. Oh Falsehoods people believe about names! DONT TOUCH THE PC fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Nov 15, 2019 |
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Nov 15, 2019 12:27
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T-man posted:My alma mater was apparently still running partially on FORTRAN mainframes in 2015. In my post librarian career I had to support FORTRAN-77 at a physics institute  Leperflesh posted:Plus, some 70 year old programmers are poor and still need work. That reminds me of a story from one of my programmer colleagues, who relayed a story from his programmer grandma (yes he was a third generation programmer) about how an ex-colleague was whisked away from a mountaintop in his retirement by a company that needed his ancient programming skills to unfuck a multi-billion-dollar industry.
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Nov 20, 2019 12:31
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The reason I have the job that I have (IT administrator), is because the library made it clear they would never have enough money to pay me a living wage and then hosed up the tax return forms in such a way I had to pay back 3000€ in a year and then blamed their administrative gently caress-ups on me. (I got it back after a year, after being denied clemency, because one guy actually looked at my dossier and found that I shouldn't have been hit with the fee)
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Dec 3, 2019 14:53
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Still better than dealing with middle schoolers though My branch was close to a very upper class high-school (sons of diplomats and CEOs), those kids were the worst. Eat the rich and their children.
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Dec 4, 2019 09:24
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Oh man, is this the academic library version of "muh taxes pay your salary" I strangely witnessed version of this at the tennis club I used to frequent in my youth, some dude got on the court without membership and tried to get the groundskeeper to leave him be with the statement: "I work at <Local Bank>, we sponsor your club, so why do I need to be a member?". edit: In my brief time at the University Libary, I had to deal with the fact that a colleague had granted privileges to many professors (she was notorious for it) and I got into a lot of arguments with them because of it. This was good training and came in handy when I joined the IT-Team at a physics institute and had to deal with another breed of people who thought rules only applied to other people. DONT TOUCH THE PC fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 17:33
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. I always think that argument is hilarious. I mean, I pay taxes too, but that still doesn't mean I can walk onto an army base and drive off in a tank
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owlhawk911 posted:i've been super jelly of libraries that have them since i first saw one, and would totally use it. mostly for little car bits, weird trim clips, mounts for stuff, etc buy one, there's zero change that the person who knows how to operate that thing will be in when you want to use it.
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Dec 22, 2019 08:49
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Mr. Prokosch posted:Why is it disruptive to the rest of the library's operations? Because it's a boondoggle paid with money that libraries don't have, and don't have any plans for because basic operations are already stretching the budget/people thin. At best it's paid with money that's part of a tax-avoidance scheme. That sort of income can only be used for that specific purpose, which might as well be a pile of money lit on fire, joker style. 3D printers are the ultimate, "libraries need to do modern poo poo", claptrap that people who don't know what libraries DO say they should do. edit: basically this: Cythereal posted:It's a common problem. What most library users want is really quite simple: more books, especially bestsellers, more public computers, more quiet study rooms, things like that. Libraries throughout the US also tend to be desperately under-funded, and rely heavily on grants and donations. However, these grants and donations want to know what their money will be used for, and the vast majority of people who run these things and decide who to give money to and how much money to give find those basic library functions that people want to be boring and not worth spending money on because after all that's basic functionality of the library and why should they give libraries extra money for such things? And librarians want to be writing articles in magazines about how they're hip and on top of new trends. The whole thing about donation-based charity (for tax write-offs) is that it's actually more wasteful than taxes, you're always stuck with a bunch of stuffy old white people that want stuff that their grandchildren rave about, not actual useful stuff that will be used for years to come. DONT TOUCH THE PC fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 08:10
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Cloks posted:As a frequent patron and community member, I appreciate their summer lunch program for kids and classes that prep immigrant parents for public schools much more than I would a place to 3D print stuff. Those are a lot better, although I have to say that a lot of librarians overestimate their educational skills, which reduces the effectiveness of these programs.
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Dec 24, 2019 09:02
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Uh, are librarians actually leading those classes themselves? I've only ever seen guest presenters actually teaching those types of programs in my system. In the Netherlands they were, because actual qualified personnel was too expensive.
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Dec 24, 2019 10:20
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:I posted this to the interior design thread, but it feels relevant here as well. the Special Collections of the UvA (Aniversity of Amsterdam) library had a glass bridge over the entrance, it took them about a week to put some privacy tape on it, this… god... edit: my partner just informed me that TU Delft also had this issue with grating in their library.
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Dec 24, 2019 20:53
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