Thursday, January 10, 2013

Today at the libray (Total craziness)

I have so far been on the desk for only two and a half hours. Here is a semi-random sampling of today. Total craziness.

Critique of Pure Reason. The edition currently in at our branch is part of a 'Great Books' series put out by my beloved Alma Matter...in the 1950s. I say in an unjustified authoritative voice, "It's old, but it's put out by a very good university so you can be confident that the translation is pretty good."

Three copies of directions to the new location of the legal aid clinic that used to be here on Thursday nights, despite the fact that it stopped meeting here about four months ago and the TOTAL number of questions I have gotten about it in the intervening period is one.

On your wireless network I can get to every website except the library's.

Find me the book with the will form you found me months ago. I lost the photocopies of it I made. Then she leaves behind some other papers.

I absolutely cannot explain the concept of a 'temporary' drive on the computer that you can save to only for the duration of your computer session. Several approaches fail.

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King, you can't find it because it is in paperback, yes I know it is insane that paperbacks have a separate section (especially because this applies to fiction and to NOTHING ELSE), I am 100% with you on that.

How do I get on the internet? Twice. Not from people who meant, how do I get on a computer, but from people who were on desktops and didn't recognize the Internet Explorer icon.

The first incident since we got the scanner where Group A is taking full advantage of the 30 allowed minutes on the computer to which the scanner is attached and Group B came to the library exclusively to scan something. Fortunately all parties are good-humored and patient.

I can't get into this website, it is saying that I have the wrong password, can you help me? The answer to this question should be 'no,' except that 90% of the time you don't actually have to know the password to solve their problem because the problem is actually something else. In this case he was misreading the password the organization had assigned to him: That's a 'c,' sir, not an 'e.'

I am looking for Night but I don't know the author, and for Their Eyes Were Looking Up at God. They are "for tenth-graders"--that is, for school. I really hope she wanted Night by Elie Wiesel and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, because that's what she got.

I really, really can't log into the computer.

2 comments:

  1. Your job sometimes seems eight zillion times harder than mine.

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    Replies
    1. Well, I don't really have to know how to research. So that balances things out some. And I can update this blog or surf the internet when I don't have any customers, whereas academic librarians have faculty projects to work on.

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