Out of contorl

One of the things I always do at a new library, since I do so much computer help, is log on to one of our computers just like a patron would and try things out, just to get an idea of what the patron experience is like. I try to predict common issues that I will see by doing things like choosing the Windows "log off" button instead of the library's computer management "end session" button, trying to save files to weird places, and so forth.


Usually it's not immediately obvious that anything in particular will be an issue, but I logged on to the computer at Mystery Library and I noticed that the volume control icon on the desktop had somehow been relabeled "volume contorl."

Saturday questions

First call of the morning is my boss from downstairs. Can I check for two books and send them down on the dumbwaiter?


Say hi to a coworker from my job at the community college. Oh my goodness, you work here too!?


Second call, a surprisingly interesting reference question: Can you tell me who is the lighthouse keeper for a particularly lighthouse in Michigan? The lighthouse she's interested in is the Grant Traverse Lighthouse, and it turns out they have a program where  you, Jane Citizen, can stay there for a week and be the lighthouse keeper! I don't know if that is at all relevant to what the patron was interested in, but I hope she tries it out. (I give her the contact information for the museum affiliated with the lighthouse so that she can call them and get more information on the lighthouse keeper situation.)


A 7th grader calls. She wants to volunteer at the library but needs help with the application. Among other difficulties, she doesn't know the word 'applicable' and has to spell it for me over the phone so I can identify and explain it. After several minutes, I gently inquire whether she has a parent who might be able to help her with the application. "Oh, I didn't think of that..."


Can you help me find Bitch is the New Black? She has the call number but doesn't know what to do with that information.


The Haunted House Diaries is checked out, but I can show you other haunted places materials. You're really writing a paper on this?


Nicest phone patron (the anti-Mac) calls. All his calls start with "I wonder if you could help me with..." He just wants the phone number of the local UPS store.


Patron comes up: 'I think the guy on computer 39 is very drunk. He is talking to himself and falling over and he's dropped his wallet three times." When we call Security to come check on him, he says, "I think he's petting an imaginary dog." Fortunately, the man leaves peacefully with a police officer.


Angry man: There are three people over there and they came and sat down and all they are doing is just talking!


I can get change for a ten dollar bill downstairs, right? Actually, I think we have it up here.


I put these two books on hold but they're not ready yet. Can you show me where to find them? It's tough to explain to people that there's not someone waiting by a computer screen just watching for holds to come in. We only pull them a couple of times a day! Normal stores don't do anything like this at all ("Hi grocery store staff. Please collect a carton of eggs, a gallon of milk, an onion, and a loaf of bread and save them under my name. I'll be there to pick them up in half an hour.") yet somehow the fact that it takes us, like, hours to pull people's books for them seems to annoy many people a lot.


Is this the right elevator to get back to the main floor of the library? Sorry, I usually go to [small branch library]? Thank you so much, have an amazing day!


Is there a bathroom on this floor? Thank you!


(Why is there a negative correlation between how tough/annoying a question is for me to answer and how pleased patrons are when I help them? The people who ask the easiest questions are almost always the nicest.)


What are the hours of the library through Wednesday?


Are you familiar enough with the scanner to help me scan something in and edit it? (Not how that works, sorry!)


If I highlight something on a website and then print, it will just print the highlighted part, right?


The same conversation about highlighting and printing again, 30 minutes later. Same patron. This time I walk her through how to copy and paste just the part she wants into Word.


Guy searching on a jobs website can't make it show jobs close to where he lives (this is because the website isn't working properly.)


Okay, now I want to copy things from multiple web pages into the same document. Can I do that, too?


Computer virus help for the job search patron. Word help for the printing patron. Neither will come up to the desk; they just keep waving me over as I start to go back to my desk after helping the other one.


Printer troubles.


Can you look at my cover letter? "I'm not any kind of expert on...yeah, I can help you fix your grammar, anyway."


What Is The What by Dave Eggers (love that title) and where is the fiction section?


(As I am doing 'roving reference' i.e. making a sweep of the floor to see what patron misbehaviors are happening and/or what aftermaths need to be dealt with) 'Excuse me, are you one of the reference librarians? Can you tell me if this 'Great Fish Bay' has any other names and what modern day country it's in? And can I get a printout of a map?"


Excuse me, what time does the library close today?


I'm trying to find a book. The catalog says it's here and the call number is 921 Mitner, but your 900s go straight from 920 to 923. Oh no, it's in Biographies, sorry!


Boss from downstairs again: Now can you send down The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks?


Request Allen Carr's The East Way to Stop Smoking from another branch. Good for you, sir! Good luck!


Can you show me where this call number is? Also, do you have anything about this in large print?


Are there maps of town I can look at?


Did you move the biography of Thelonious Monk?


Do you have The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis?


If you wanted to listen to internet radio here, what are the rules?


Young volunteer comes in in person. Still has a lot of questions about the application. I ruthlessly pass her off to our Youth Services Librarian.


Our oddest phone patron calls for some info on home security systems.


Well, it's 5:45, so Loud Background Noise Woman will be calling any minute now. I'd better get off the blog since talking to her always requires opening a million browser tabs.

Some (ir)regulars

"Can you write down how to spell 'Sabrina' for me on a piece of paper?"
"Sabrina?"
"As in the teenage witch."


A sound from the 600s like someone is throwing up. Coworker: "As much as I don't want to, I'm gonna go investigate that."


'Sabrina' patron: Do you have a pen I can borrow?
Me: Sure, just bring it back when you're done.
Patron: Hmmmmm....no. 
Me: I'll pretend I didn't hear that.
Patron: Come on, you should know me by now! I'm just kidding.




I have my arms so far inside the jammed printer it feels like I'm doing surgery.


Patron who is always picking fights with the staff: Personally I don't mind that she is on her phone, but when I've been on my phone I've always been told to get off.
Jaded staff member: We changed the rule.
Patron: I guess rules are changing every day now.
JSM: Yep, I guess they are.


Guy who came up and introduced himself and shook my hand once stops by just to chat, no questions.

There is a guy who has recently made it into my Top 5 Most Disliked Patrons list because he insists that the public computers have all sorts of problems. Every time he comes in (which is most days) he stops by the desk and says something like "I just hope the computers don't have any problems today." I always tell him to show me as soon as he sees a problem so that I can see the error message, but until today he's never actually been willing to do that. He just vaguely describes the problem on his way out. Today for the first time ever he actually shows me an error message! However, he claims that he didn't do anything, it just popped up, and that there is no pattern to when/how frequently the message appears. Two steps forward, one step back.


Do you have a movie...um, gosh. This is going to be hard. I don't know the name. It's with Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, it's set in Detroit. It doesn't have 'vampire' in the name, but it's kind of about vampires?"
Only Lovers Left Alive, 2013, she knows a LOT more than your average patron who doesn't know the title of the item he wants.


Walk past a guy reading the newspaper. He makes eye contact and says hello to me. I say "Hi, did you need some help?" and he responds belligerently with "Help with what?" Sorry sir, usually people don't talk to me as I'm walking around unless they want something.


Get two books out of storage for one of our regulars (he likes a lot of the same books as I do so he's one of my favorites). He points to the two titles he wants on a themed "Great Stand-Alone Sci-Fi" bookmark and it somehow comes out that I created that bookmark. He wants to know, "Oh wow, are you the book sleuth!?"


And, the toughest question of the night: A little girl points to a big cutout of Superman (which we have in keeping with our Every Hero Has a Story summer reading theme)--"Is he real?"










I said most people don't think so, they just like to tell stories about him. Did I do right?

Weekend refgrunt

Today's refgrunt I hope will be a good one. Three different patrons have asked me things about how the library works, which I always like.


The first guy in lets us know that none of the computers have been turned on. We had a program last night which probably caused this, no big deal, we get an excuse to get up and walk around to turn all the machines on, and the guy is a regular who knows enough about computers to just press the power button rather than having a meltdown.


An older black man in a fedora and long coat comes in, dressed in what I think of as 'classic sharply-dressed old black gentleman' style. He asks me where I went to college--Chicago. Oh, that's where he's from! We have a nice thirty seconds of reminiscing, but sadly, he wants to know "If you owe the library a lot of money from a long time ago, what can you do to get that sorted out?"


Teenager: How can I look up books by a particular author?


Phone: How do you place an interlibrary loan?


Help a guy enter his birthdate on a web application. State of Michigan, giving someone a calendar tool that starts on this month, in 2015, is not very helpful for helping someone enter a birthdate!


Lots of phone calls this morning, relatively speaking. Coworker on downstairs desk asks me to check our dumbwaiter (yes, dumbwaiter)--is the door all the way closed? It won't come down.


Excuse me, where's the restroom?


Elevator doors are stuck half-way closed and flailing feebly like a bug that's been stuck on its back for a long time. You can help them by forcing them to open all the way again and letting them start over. I can't wait for the renovation coming in the fall.


I hate all phone calls that start with "Can you please go to w, w, w..." He wants to know about "miniature ultra-sensitive microphones." But his demanded website doesn't have any.


Phone: What version of Office do you have on your computers?


Teach someone how to use the enter key. Second one this week.


Now, how do I indent this? (She doesn't know the term 'indent,' but that's what she's describing).


I need help with printing. Oh no, please don't put that money into the copy machine!


I need help with copying (different woman).


Do you have a bathroom on this floor!?


The elevator is really acting up again.


Checkout desk calls: Patron called about a dropped hold but it's supposed to be on the shelf up there. I can find  the other volumes in the series, but not that one. Grr.


Is your romance downstairs? (Oh, romance section!)


Do you have Local True Crime Account? I'm related to that woman. It's in our local history collection so you can't check it out, sorry. That's okay, can you show me where true crime is instead? Yes!


This is embarrassing, but...I don't know how to turn the computer on.


Rude "Can you give me the number for..." guy calls for a local car dealer. He always talks to you as though you're a moron, and I've never heard someone say "thank you" in a less-sincere way.


Help someone with numbered lists in Word.


Downstairs keeps changing their minds about whether our spazzy elevator should be 'out of service' or not, so I keep taking down and then putting up the sign. At one of the times it's up, a man reads it and then asks, "The elevator's out of service?" What did you think "The elevator is out of service" meant?


Do you have a section for oversized books? I did the worst thing you can do with a book you love--I lent it.


I really hate telling poor people that they have to pay for the copies that are their mistakes, but I did show her how to do it and tell her to let me know if she needed more help, so you've got to draw the line somewhere.


Now Numbered Lists needs to print.


Do you have a stapler I can use?


True crime woman comes back--she's decided to put that first book she mentioned on hold after all.


Physician's Desk Reference.


If I give you the name of a vice president, could you tell me when he died? We go through four, all of whom died in the month of November of various years. He is so excited! He says "You are so helpful, and so quick!" (and so full of questions I would like to ask you, sir!)


The elevator is still behaving very oddly.


How would I upload a picture I found online to Facebook?


How do I print some copies? (I hate the copier vs. printer guessing game)


Copier (different patron, first guy wanted to print) is out of legal-sized paper.


A new variation on "Can you watch my stuff?" No, the bathroom being "tiny" doesn't mean we will change our We Will Not Watch Your Stuff policy.


Adorable toddler daughter of my coworker and his wife stop by! Extremely cute! Coworker makes her ask "Miss Emma" if it's okay for him to go downstairs with her and pick out some picture books. For once he'll get the 15-minute break that we are supposedly entitled to, but etiquette says you never get to take on the desk.


The copier is jamming.


Now it's making 8.5x14 copies when a different patron wants 8.5x11. It's starting to compete with the microfilm reader for Least Favorite Machine.


To get on the computer, do I just put my number in?


The woman who didn't want the legal-sized copies says that the news article she is copying is about her son. He wrote a book!


Here's a good question: How do you find out if a family member who died left a life insurance policy? If you were in Michigan, you might want to contact the DIFS OFIR at http://www.michigan.gov/difs/0,5269,7-303-13222_13250-275328--,00.html. Michigan government websites--their links are the worst, but their acronyms are pretty bad too. This question starts off alarming: "Where would I find out about death insurance? Someone or other died and left money to my cousin. This was in 1979..." but it turned out all right, except for the lady whose son wrote a book trying to interrupt to tell me more about it.


The self-check machine is saying I have something overdue. What is it?


Purchase request for the son's book. The only way I could deflect her from telling me about it ad nauseum, and it actually looks like it might be a good fit for our collection.


Brain teasers? Also, how do we get on a computer?


You can't get on the computer because you owe us too much money. They are super rude about it.


Another person, a kid, also can't get on the computer. Her card is expired and she doesn't owe any fines, yet she, like the fine-owers, has to go 'all the way downstairs' to renew her card. She's totally cheerful.


Another phone call from the guy who calls all the time yet thinks we are idiots. He wants to know how to spell "pesticides" and "fertilizer" and keeps asking me if I'm sure I'm telling him the correct spelling. Then he talks to me for about two minutes about how the library should be open until 9 p.m. on Saturdays for 'family hour.' 9-6 like we do now is okay, but I'd really like to have an hour with my own family on Saturday nights. Of course, I don't say that to him.


Someone wants to borrow the book of tax forms, still.


Regular: "You might want to call security in case that gets out of hand." He walks away before I can ask any questions and I can't figure out what the 'that' might be.


How do I change the page color in Word?


Phone number for a bakery...in Los Angeles.

The Fifth Native Americans

Woman: I need a book on the first Native Americans. Not the second or the third or the fifth, the first. It's for the Boy Scots.
Me (in more diplomatic terms): What?
She wanted books about Native American history and culture in 1492 and earlier.

Marx Translations Guy is here but he does not come over and talk to me for once. Too bad a little because I found a 1906 Modern Library edition of Capital in the stacks earlier this week and I kind of wanted to tell him about it.

Tax forms x2.

A man who came to look for his lost hat is angry because apparently someone (not a staff person) found it and threw it away.

Woman with two small children: Do you have the magazine Consumer Reports, in print or online? We have it in print but we keep all issues behind the desk because people steal them, and we had it online until the CR publisher decided it wasn't worth their while to offer it through our e-magazine service. I tell her all this and she leaves without taking advantage of my repeated offers to help her photocopy what she needs from our print issues, but at least she is annoyed a how publishers treat libraries, which is a small and morally-ambiguous victory.

Woman who just walked in the ground floor entrance of our clearly one-story building: Can you tell me where the tax forms are? [note: they are fifteen feet behind me over my shoulder, directly in her line of vision] [She points at the floor] Are they downstairs?

Artist guy I translated a flyer for once: I have a picture book in Spanish and I need to translate it to English, what should I do? Establish that I can help him send an email copy to his bilingual son in California. Dodged a bullet there but start getting dollar signs in my eyes about the idea of setting myself up as a document translator.

Young man: By any chance did someone here find a phone?
Me: About how long ago was it lost?
Him: Mmm...about ten minutes.

Place an interlibrary loan request for a book about Texas Confederate stamps and a purchase request for some Irish Country tales.

The print release pay box makes the rare choice to accept a five dollar bill--for a ten cent print job. It sounds like someone has been having good luck at the slots.

A guy asks, "excuse me, do you have paper?" and I was zoning out so I stare at him for about three seconds like I have no idea what he is saying to me. Embarrasing.

Paper guy: I need to fax this letter to an email.
Me (silently): Uh oh.

Go over to check on  the catalog computers--sad to see a search for 'dispicable me 2'--no results.

Parenthood, the DVD, for a guy who owes us the case of a previous DVD he checked out--but this is Customer Service's problem, not mine.

Coworker: Yaagh! Oh sorry. I thought I had popped my contact lens out, but I must not have because I can still see.

If you logged out of the computer your document is lost. I'm so, so sorry. There is nothing I can do no matter how sad you are.

Lady with a pile of library books, pointing to *my* book display: That is so great!
Me: Thank you!
Lady: But I already have so many books. I will have to come back.

Self check machine troubles--the self-checks and the copier are my favorite library technology because they are the only ones that send out distress signals when something is going wrong.

Pointing to the printer: Excuse me, do you help with this part too?

Can't find a lady's hold for ages until I figure out it's an interlibrary loan so it's held for $2.50 in ransom behind  the counter.

Take an abandoned bag to the lost and found. When I pick it up I see it has a COMPUTER in it!

Little girl shouting over and over (more in excitement than anger): It's time to go! Time to go! Time to go! Time to go!

Refgrunt of the second weekend in a row

Librarian supervisor: Can you check and make sure the people I just let into the program room really have a reservation?

Old man in motorcycle gear wants a biography of Betty White.

Anxious phone call: I can’t get into the online catalog on my home computer! It starts working of its own accord as I am taking her information and she thinks I have somehow fixed it remotely: “Oh, this is so great! I’ve been trying to do this for an hour, thank you so much!” and hangs up.

You can’t check this Pete the Cat out on your card because it is on hold for someone else. Let’s find YOUR Pete the Cat.

Can’t find a hold—it is a science kit that has to be picked up at the branch from whence it came.

Confused, and fairly so, by the “string not found” problem.

Husband can’t find his wife’s hold on the shelf—it’s just been run through and is still in the back.

Phone call: Desperate mom from neighboring city has a daughter who is required to read Mara, Daughter of the Nile, first published in 1953 and last published in 1985. Unsurprisingly, if we ever had a copy it did not survive. I use Worldcat to find out who else supposedly has it and pass her on to them.

Loud kids: Has anyone seen my dadeeeee? Daddy is two ranges away and shushes his kids repeatedly but ineffectively.

Book of Elsewhere.

Questions about the bookmark contest. I’m really hoping someone from our branch will win this year.

Needs help because he is searching for ‘dinosour books’ in the catalog.

Roar of a Snore.

Please don’t climb on that extremely poorly-chosen piece of public art in the children’s area. You will fall and need stitches and your parents will sue us for a million dollars.

Where does this computer print to?

Looking for story collections: Just got a card and is trying to obey the 5-item limit for first use and still get enough for his kids to read for the whole week. Clever idea, I thought!

Unjam the printer, and then reassure it about paper size.

The printer refuses to believe that 8.5x11 paper is loaded into tray 3.

The new computers are causing more trouble than benefit—people are still confused about all the changes. This man is concerned because the logged-off screen doesn’t look the same as it used to.

Do you not have wifi anymore?

No, it’s just down, sorry.

A regular I fear working with (he just might be our laziest patron) needs help photocopying two pages out of a textbook and then wants information on “Mother Jones” by which he means “child labor” (this is of course revealed later. Then he wants to know if we have some nutty small-press book called The Gift of Community and when we don’t and it turns out only five Texas libraries have it according to Worldcat, he wants to know where he can buy it. A, the paper he gave me from which to look up the title was a printout of its Amazon page, and B) when I say that he can buy it on Amazon, he says how can I do that, can I give them a call or something? Then he wants to know how much it will cost—I read that it costs $8.75 new or from one cent up used, and he says, okay, so how much would it cost?

Mr. Copy and Paste hopes I can maybe enlarge some text on a website—I can for reading, but not for printing, which is what he wanted. Oh well. He accepts the answer with good grace as always.

Observe a patron actually put her hands up to defend herself against the belligerent and rude tone of our worst circ staffperson.

I just logged on and the computer just shut down!

There is no tactful way to say that by far the most likely explanation is that you just bumped the power button with your hand. Sorry.

The printer is still waaaay on the fritz. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

Can’t find The Queen of Versailles on the shelf.

Wifi is down, sorry.

“Where is the printing section?”

Can you please turn your headphones down?

Call for Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus. Then a call to another branch to make sure they really had it before the lady drove over there.

I heard you had a fax machine?

The fax doesn’t work for her.

A computer shut down while a hiccupping kid was in the middle of using it : (

There is 20 minutes of Saturday left but it’s usually a time of total craziness so I’d better stop here.

Cradle of democracy and "The Public's University"?

At the library in the last two days:

-The city put up a whiteboard in the library lobby for citizens to write their comments and suggestions. Someone wrote "This place is geto!!!" 

-Two simultaneous calls to the reference desk. My colleague and I each take one. On mine, a woman calls to complain that an online database is not working. As soon as I get off the phone with her, I realize my colleague is talking to someone with the same problem, who said to her "my sister couldn't get on either!"

-The guy who spends his days writing mysterious grids of numbers is apparently scanning and emailing them to an unknown second party every time he 'finishes' one.

-A kid wants five books about "how candy is bad for you and how many calories it has."

-A man shouting about how someone is "a lying, manipulative b****" into his cell phone gets mad when I tell him to "please take your conversation to the lobby" and nastily repeats my request word-for-word to whoever is on the other end of the phone.

-Mr. Can't Copy and Paste (Because He Can't Generally Select Text) successfully copies, but somehow his computer has lost awareness of the Microsoft Office suite that I am 110% sure is installed on it.

-Shelfreading, I pull a book on the publishing industry from 1988 and a 1999 book on webcams to ask my boss to withdraw.