BS: Only Librarians Will Care....

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Mar 08 - 11:19 AM

I've just had Dana Stabenow agree to be interviewed (via phone) for our new Library radio show!

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: Wesley S
Date: 13 Mar 08 - 12:24 PM

You mean we're suposed to take the books back??

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: Gulliver
Date: 13 Mar 08 - 09:50 PM

I was working in a charity shop the year before last when an elderly lady came in and dropped a couple of books on the counter. One of them was a library book (of the very library of which I am a director!) with a "due back" date in 1943. I told her (mock-serious) that as this was a library book we couldn't accept it, and that she had better take it back to the library immediately, and ask them to be lenient with the fine. The poor dear became so flustered that I had to take pity and explain that I'd take care of it. It's now back in its original place on the shelf.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 13 Mar 08 - 11:39 PM

I was a librarian for the last decade or so of my working life. I can't match the 'overdue' stories, but I do remember a lady who sheepishly explained that she had come in to pay for a book that had been destroyed. It was a dog training book, and evidently not a very good one, because Fluffy had shredded it. :)

Sorry I can't share the optimism so often expressed as to the future of the profession--IMO, Al's internet changed the reference librarian's job for the worse. We're no longer asked to guide people to good info; we're asked to help them get on the web so they can take their chances with info posted by everybody and anybody. Oh, well. Someday civilization will collapse under its own weight, the lights will go out in New York, and we will start over.

CC
at 921 Chicken

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Mar 08 - 11:55 PM

We spend a lot of time at the university library where I work introducing all types of students to good reliable databases and how to evaluate sources. It's critical to learn critical thinking when dealing with The Internet.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Mar 08 - 08:43 AM

We once found a used condom used as a bookmark. We discard everything and charged the patron, who paid without a word of protest.

The Internet is only another tool for information and, just as with printed material, people have to learn to approach is critically and with a jaundiced eye. There is much good and much bad or irrelevant on the World Wide Web, just as there is in print.

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 14 Mar 08 - 04:09 PM

SRS--You were in a university library, hopefully dealing with people who better understood the info game. I was in a County branch. At the risk of sounding like an elitist SOB, which I ain't (elitist, that is), there is not the same sensitivity, IMHO.

And shame on you, Rapaire, for discouraging recycling! I'm sure if everybody did what they did, it would stop global warming dead in its tracks.

Seriously, sure folks have to learn a critical approach, but that's just it. How is a public library reference staff going to help them do that--or even make the point that they should--if they just bring their new laptop home and have at it? Professors have captive audiences, who have to go to class (at least sometimes) if they want to graduate, so the profs make them aware of information pitfalls, and good librarians reinforce that. Where I worked, we had no draw. In the last decade, door count went up but reference count went down.

CC

Subject: RE: BS: Only Librarians Will Care....
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Mar 08 - 05:03 PM

'Sodd. Our door count last year was over 325,000 and the reference count topped 91,300. Both were up from previous years. Total reference contacts were over 1.2 million (e.g., Where's the bathroom? is a reference contact but we don't make it part of the reference count).