Week 6 - Bestsellers, AOL, and the Old Mex

Pretty slow day (again). Worked with a 20-year vet of the system who normally works at the same branch as Sunday Librarian 2. S/he was nice and showed me how to do something potentially useful on the computer. I volunteered for downstairs again, and she was fine with that and checked back a few times during the day to make sure I didn't need a break. Nothing too exciting happened -- had another person spend a good portion of the day looking at porn on one of the computers. I'm going to save my remarks on that for a separate post. As for the patron interactions, they were few, but yielded one real hardcore librarian question!

• Showed a middle-aged woman how to place money on a print card.


• A young South Asian woman needed to borrow a pen. I lent her one. She returned it later. Awesome.


• A middle-aged woman came in with a bunch of book review clippings from the local newspaper, including the paperback fiction bestseller list, with half the items circled. Of the eight books, one wasn't yet available in the system, one was supposed to be on the shelf but wasn't, and the other six were all checked out, so I ended up placing holds on all of em (none of which I've read): Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great, David Baldacci's The Collectors, Donna Leon's Quietly in Their Sleep, Vince Flynn's Act of Treason, Nicholas Sparks' At First Sight, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. Also requested Karin Fossum's The Indian Bride. I've not read any of these, although I did read Norweigan author Fossum's first crime novel (Don't Look Back) and enjoyed it a great deal.


• A middle aged woman came over to leave a reminder for the branch manager regarding her inability to renew books or place holds from her home computer. Apparently everything worked fine at the library computer, but for two months it hasn't worked from home -- when she tried to log into her library account she got gobbledygook (ie. pages of server error codes). I wrote out the message and then asked her to show me what she does, to see if we could replicate her problem. Rather oddly, she logged into her AOL account and then searched for the system's website through their search box, even though she knew the URL. As she had said, she was able to perform the tasks she needed to from the library computer. I was pretty stumped, although I suspected that there was some kind of setting on her home machine interfering with how the system's servers were interpreting her requests. I said I'd think on it, but suggested that she try accessing the system's web site directly from home, instead of going through AOL. About half an hour later she called back and told me it worked! Now, I'm no techie -- but I know that when in doubt, eliminating AOL from your life can solve a lot of problems.


• Toward the end of the day, a middle-aged woman came in looking for books for her 16-year-old's AP history report on "the politics and economics of early Latin America." Finally, a classic reference question! In school we learned how to take very broad requests like this and conduct a "reference interview" to tease out further information and narrow it down a bit. Alas, since the student wasn't there, the mother had to call the audibly annoyed teenager for more info. We eventually learned that "Latin America" actually did mean everything from Mexico to Patagonia, and that "early" meant 1000AD. While the woman looked at books on tape, I poked around a bit for a general history which might provide a starting point. The only thing I found on our shelves was The Penguin History of Latin America, which seemed broad enough to meet the student's needs. It struck me that looking at some stuff on the Aztecs and Incas might help, but we didn't have anything useful in the adult area. There were a few things in the Juvenile section, but those seemed pitched unlikely to help someone in AP History... The mother and I discussed the possibility of consulting a local academic library, or even another branch located in a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population (and thus a collection that should theoretically be stronger in Latin American history). She seemed satisfied, but then ten minutes later the teenage daughter showed up with more info. Apparently we were supposed to be turning back the clock a little and checking out BC, not AD, and some bunch of folks called the "Old Mex, I think?" Er, yeah...that would be the Olmecs. The system actually had some good Olmec stuff, but mostly on their art, only two or three history books. Of course, the kid needed something this afternoon and wasn't interested in waiting a few days to have books sent over. She said "no thanks" and walked off while texting -- a living cliche.


• Minutes before closing, a young man came in breathless, looking for Robert Kaplan's Warrior Politics (I've read other Kaplan books, but not that one). For some reason, our copy had been discarded (probably damaged), so I had one sent over from another branch.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 6
Year: 3 for 44