The Book-Check Girl speaks again, aka Library Rant: The Sequel.

The BBQ Pit
21

Once for a paper on body piercing I had to look up some fairly…interesting…sites on a school computer. This was not in the library, but it was definitely on school property. I had to print a few pictures, too, since my printer was broken.

I kept waiting for security to come in and chew me out for looking up this stuff, though I really DID need it for a paper! At least the lab I was in was empty. I suppose I could have dragged them down the hall to the professor’s office to verify that yes, I was in a human sexuality class…

People who abuse library books are below pond scum. I don’t even abuse my OWN books, let alone somebody else’s.

22

**

**
This just cracked me up.

Carry on.

23

It seems to me there are a few things the library could do about some of these problems, like locking the book drop during the day, and putting up a “no cell phones” sign.

24

I can’t speak for Antares’ library, but ours here at U of C are all but plastered with “no cell phones” signs.

But that requires working with the assumption that people will read and obey said signs. And some assumptions even an economist can’t make. :stuck_out_tongue:

25

Thanks. I’ve been pissed off about this one for three decades now.

Some misbegotten by-product of a genetic experiment involving Scotsmen and sheep came into the Public library in Colinton (just outside Edinburgh) when I was still in high school. Aforementioned son-of-a-sheep-shagger went to the fiction section and carefully tore out the last five or ten pages from each Agatha Christie mystery in there.
:wally

So there’s a whole bunch of mysteries that I have read almost all the way through, but still don’t know how they end or whodunnit! :mad:

26

This didn’t happen in a university library; it happened - repeatedly - in the Bristol, Va. public library. I’d be reading a book I’d checked out, and find ‘corrections’ to an author’s spelling, vocabulary, and punctuation written onto the pages.

The ‘corrections’ almost invariably deserved the quotes; they were almost always wrong. Fucktards.

With cell phones, I’d love to see a law passed authorizing confiscation of the phone if used in any indoor area posted with “No Cell Phones Allowed” signs. I’ve got this fantasy of Conan the Librarian coming up to one of these talking-on-cellphone-in-library jackasses, grabbing the phone away, and immediately crushing it underfoot.

27

**JerH ** said:

We had a variation on that theme I suppose you could call the “Audrey Method.” When we caught one of the annoying goat fisting shit stains, and Audrey was around, we’d send her to deal with them. Audrey was another student that worked in the computer support department with me. She was somewhat petite, very attractive and completely fearless. She’d walk up to the porn surfer and say, loudly, in the sweetest voice possible “I’m sorry sir, the library computers are not supposed to be used for adult entertainment. If you need to look at porn please do so at home.” You have no idea how embarassing it is to be caught surfing porn, in public, by a pretty girl. Nine times out of ten the offender turned beat red, closed his browser and left the library post haste.

** whiterabbit ** said…

I never once mistook a student doing legitimate research on a, ahh, risque topic for a porn surfer. There is a huge difference between the body language of a porn surfer and a student researcher. Students tend to have study material on the desk with them, and often take notes when doing research (imagine!) the porn surfers sit kinda hunched over leaning towards the monitor one hand glued to the mouse the other… I don’t want to think about their other hand… They also don’t tend to take notes :slight_smile:

And finally…

**Antares ** I listened to a few of your songs on mp3.com Nice work! You do indeed make pretty music.

28

My school library bitch:

Those students who take resources from other students… You know, you set a couple of book on a table, go to retrieve something else, come back and a book is gone.

Or one time, I was working on a word document on a library computer. I had to use the washroom. I saved my document to a disk and left. Not even five minutes later when I returned, some stupid jerk was sitting at the computer. She had closed down Word and was surfing the net. There were five empty computers all around her, she specifically chose to use the one I was using. As far as she knew, I hadn’t saved that file to disk. The word document was open and maximum size, there’s no way she accidentally thought the computer was free. (Not to mention my stuff piled around the computer.)

I asked her why she had done this. She just kinda shrugged and went back to her surfing. I also had a website open and when I minimized her window to bring up the website I was visiting (to write down the website address I needed), she FREAKED. Wenchbag. heh

29

tiggeril – I have been lucky enough to never have experienced this, but I’m sure that’s just because I spend most of my time stuck behind the desk. That is pretty evil and icky, and if I ever do happen to run into such a couple, they’re sure as hell getting a talking-to.

shy guy – I know the big-ass noisy study groups all too well. Especially with the athlete study-hours program (mentioned in the old thread - student athletes have to spend at least four hours a week in the library), they come in in massive groups, talking and howling and being general asshats. There are the nice respectful study groups who come in and work on projects, having civil conversations at an acceptable volume level, but they’re in the minority. Our library is very comfy, there are porches on all levels with big windows and comfy chairs and sofas (people actually take naps on them all the time, which I don’t mind, I’ve done it myself), and it’s very good for group work, but it’s not a socializing environment, dammit.

TheFunkySpaceCowboy – our library is open to the public as well, they can come in and use the resources, but if they want to check anything out they have to jump through hoops and spend a total of $35 to get a “courtesy patron” card. A surprising number of people do. I’ve never had to deal much with all the computers. Our library is, IIRC, one of the most technologically equipped on the east coast. We’ve got dozens of computers pretty much everywhere, and even if they’re all taken, you can check out a laptop from the media desk and use it, with internet, basically anywhere in the library that you can sit down. As far as I know we don’t have too many problems with people fucking up the computers. Some people, I’m sure, look at porn, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting caught at it.
As for people chatting, there are enough computers in the library that you can pretty much always find an open one somewhere. A lot of people use AIM Express in the background while they’re working on other stuff, I’ve only seen a few that are just surfing and chatting. I can’t really bitch too much about that, the Circ Desk computer has AIM installed on it, and whenever I’m at work, I’m online. :o The one time I desperately needed to print out a paper and I couldn’t find an open computer and didn’t have time to go to another floor, I just asked a girl who was just chatting if I could use that computer for five minutes to print out my paper, and she was nice enough to let me.
Our one hacker problem happened last summer, and it was actually a student who’d been around for a long time, had worked in the IT department, was an assistant to the choir director, and was heavily a part of the student newspaper. Nobody really liked him much, but he was into just about everything. Being heavily into the IT department, he had a lot of passwords, and he managed to get in and fuck up the system. They caught him, though, and even went to his apartment and confiscated his laptop, and through that discovered that about half his hard drive was filled up with gay kiddie porn. :mad: Yeah, he’s in jail now, and nobody’s really unhappy about that.

But either way, I agree, I love my job. I’ve been there for my entire college career so far. It’s a great environment and a great job and great workers. It’s just the “patrons” that piss me off.

And thanks for the praise! Good to know the self-plug sig is doing something!

iampunha – I’ve never really had a problem with people putting trash all over the library. Occasionally people will come up to the desk with their garbage and say “Do you have a garbage can back there?” which I understand because there’s not a readily visible trash can around that area. All the actual garbage cans are these shiny gold cylinders with black tops that barely look like trash cans. So I’ll usually just grab my trash can from under the desk and hold it up for them to throw their stuff in.

As far as paying for damage to a book, once a book is checked in, I’m pretty sure there’s no way to tell who had it out last. This is a privacy thing for the students, and I kind of understand, because maybe you don’t want the whole world you were reading “Mars and Venus on a Date”. So if I don’t catch the vandalism until after I scan that little barcode, then I have no way of knowing who did it. So unless the book’s been ripped to shreds, then usually it’s just let go. I do my best to clean up the books some if there’s obvious scribbling or stuff. For example, the “Lumpy Sucks Cock” was in pencil, so I did my best to erase it but the lines are still there and he pressed so hard they’re practically engraved in the cover. That patch that was ironed on was not ironed on very well, so it peeled off, but did leave a glue stain. I wish we could kick the asses of everyone who hurt a book, but it’s just not possible.

Super Gnat– I’m not sure why we don’t lock the overnight bookdrop during the day. I honestly don’t know if it’s possible, with the way the door on it works. I’ll ask my supervisor about that next time.

Mr. Moto – Sorry, he was just the first thing that came to my mind? Who am I allowed to condemn these bastards to listen to? Maybe the Barney theme song?

DanielWithrow – I hadn’t thought of that. Hmmmm… makes sense, really. Honestly, though, the pranksters don’t usually run away. They usually go and stand outside the door and wait for the friend they screwed with. Which seems a little stupid, but their lack of intelligence has already been established. I will have to check on that, though, thanks.

Lizard – I honestly don’t know why we don’t have a “no cell phones” rule. I really don’t. Another thing to ask the supervisor about.

Scruff – Did you turn those books into a librarian and tell them about the problem? Library workers need to know these things, or else nothing ever gets fixed. :stuck_out_tongue:
It’s good to see that I’m not the only one who’s ever had to deal with idiots. I love my job, really, but I hate my peers. :slight_smile:

30

How dependent is that system on using names? It occurs to me that one could use someone’s school ID number (usually their SSN, but sometimes a number assigned by the school in case the student didn’t already have a SSN) for check-outs and such. That way, unless you knew the patron personally, you’d have no way of knowing who was checking out what and it would allow you to keep a list of who was checking out what without even knowing who (name-wise) it was.

31

[quote]
The prank goes like this: Friends A, B, C, and D come to the library in a group, and while you’re studying or doing whatever, while friend A is distracted, Friend B, C, or D hides one or more library books in A’s backpack.

[quote]

God, did this happen to me so many damn times when I was in 8th and 9th grades. It was to the point where the librarian didn’t even blink when it was me setting off the alarm. Sometimes they’d cram three or four books in there. :mad:

32

The checkout system uses the barcode number on your student ID card, which is actually a bunch of numbers which are the same for everyone, a number that indicates how many cards you’ve had (if you lost your first one and this is your second one, for example), and then a 7-digit student ID number. The card itself has your picture, your name, the barcode for scanning and then then the barcode number laid out in arabic numerals on the front. I scan your card, and the number is attached to the rest of your information in the system. I can instantly see what books you currently have out, if you have any fines, if you’re a proxy patron for any professors, and some other stuff, and I can even get your phone # and address. In the absence of card, I can also go in and search by name or SSN and it will bring up this information. They make library employees sign confidentiality agreements for a good reason. We need all this information for a good couple of reasons: We need name and address so we know who to send overdue notices to. It lists all the books you currently have checked out because that way, if you want to renew something, you don’t have to have the item with you, I can just pick the one you want out of the list and renew it for you. And you can’t come in and say, “I didn’t check this book out, why am I getting a fine for it.” If you leave your card in the library and it’s turned in, we’ll scan it, look up your phone number, and give you a call to let you know you lost it. The fine system’s pretty self-explanatory. So there’s a lot of reasons that it can’t go solely by an ID number.

If I do an item scan on a book that is currently checked out to someone, then it can show me buttloads of information on the item, including how many times it’s been checked out, and if it is currently checked out to someone, then it can show me who. If I don’t have the book itself, I can search by title, author, call #, barcode #, etc. But, all this is dependent on the book being charged to a patron at the time. There is no button in the patron information that tells me all the books you previously checked out – unless you’ve got an unpaid late fine for it, in which case it’s in the fine details list. If I scan a book that is not charged to a patron, then it will show me how many times the book has been checked out, but won’t show me to who(m?). So once I scan the barcode into the little “discharge” window, there’s pretty much no way to know who checked it out last. And the book discharging process is pretty much automatic for me by now. Usually I don’t do a good look at the book until I’m date-stamping it and sorting it for the cart, and by that point it’s too late.

There’s also the matter of that it’s pretty much impossible to be sure when the vandalism was done. There are thousands upon thousands and thousands of books in the library. Some of them have been checked out once or never since the library acquired them 40 years ago, and some have gone through ten different “date due” grids in 5 years. Nobody’s seen and inspected every book so it’s impossible to prove when most of the damage was done. There’re 8 different student workers at the circ desk, so the person who checks a book out to a person is probably not going to be the one who checks it back in, so we can’t even check that way. So even if we could tell who the last person to check out the book was, it wouldn’t do us any good if we couldn’t prove they did the vandalism. ::sigh::

Okay, now that I’ve hijacked my own rant into a discussion of library technology… back to the bitching!

Stupid kids!! :stuck_out_tongue:

33

Librarian here–just checking in to say ‘hear hear’ and to let all of you know that providing ‘conversation areas’ in libraries is all the rage now. I can see the point (group study areas are useful) but every library should still have designated quiet areas for those of you who need that to study.

As the designated ‘porn stopper’ in our library, I have to say that my favorite technique is meander by repeatedly and ask them if they’re PC is working ok. Even the most dedicated porn viewer gets the point after a few such episodes! :wink:

34

The library at my old college used to have, basically, conference rooms for group study sessions. They were walled off and the glass between them and the outside was very thick, so you could get a loud study session going and not bother anyone.

35

I have to admit it’s nice to hear that the problems we had in our library seem to be common problems in pretty much all of them.

** Antares ** said

This reminds me of an insider problem we had near the end of my second year there. The Circ Manager got caught skimming cash from the copy machine takes. He’d apparently been doing it for years, every since he took over the cash collection and the bookkeeping (big accounting no-no) and was fixing the books to cover it up. Eventually someone in the library noticed something was fishy and reported it, the police set up a full blown sting operation, with hidden cameras and everything and caught in the act. Funny part is he was only getting $100-$200 a month out of this little scam, if not a lot less, as a manager with something like 15 years working for the Uni he was earning something around $45k a year. Now he’s in jail for quite literally stealing pocket change.

No one missed the guy though, he was a real asshat. Turns out in addition to being a petty theif he was also having an affair with a student worker, who was younger than his oldest kid, really disgusting. But that’s not all! About the same time as his arrest people started noticing that nearly the entire circ staff was composed of attractive young women. It seems that his unoffical hiring policy was that the only qualifications that mattered for circ students was whether or not he’d like to sleep with them! To my knowledge he only ever found one girl with low enough standards and self esteem to go along with him.

At first I was thinking how odd it is that you have so relatively few computer problems from your patrons but have buttloads of asinine behavoir towards the books to deal with, when I remember it as being the reverse when I worked at the library. Then it occured to me, I only heard about the type of stuff you deal with second hand from my friends at the circ desk, and usually only about particularly egregious cases. I’d be willing to bet that your IT folks have to deal with troublesome computer users just as often as I did.

Be sure to keep us posted with more great rants as library patrons continue their assault on your sanity! In an odd way all this bitching about library patrons is making me nostalgic :slight_smile: