Libraries, books, inter-library loans

[Williamsmith]

While I agree that my response is probably more like a two year old temper tantrum .....I feel justified in stomping my feet since the online query of the catalog misinforms a patron about the availability of a title and its location. Any IT person worth his or her salt could correct the situation so that a query at any time along the path of checkout and return will reflect the proper status, availability and location.

My complaints fell on deaf ears simply because nobody cared about a situation that affected only one patron. Well, they underestimate this one patron and his ability to fix stupid.

[Meezer_Mom]

Public libraries exist for all, regardless of who has "paid more" in property taxes. That freeloading child whose single mother has a voucher for rent, may be the nurse taking your vitals in 10 years. The homeless man making use of the free computer could be looking for services to become stable enough to re-enter the workforce. Point being, those free services frugalistas use to avoid opening their wallets can make a world of difference for others who don't have a wallet to open today.

Shame on anyone who doesn't get that.

[goldensmom]

Public libraries exist for all, regardless of who has "paid more" in property taxes. That freeloading child whose single mother has a voucher for rent, may be the nurse taking your vitals in 10 years. The homeless man making use of the free computer could be looking for services to become stable enough to re-enter the workforce. Point being, those free services frugalistas use to avoid opening their wallets can make a world of difference for others who don't have a wallet to open today.

Shame on anyone who doesn't get that.

Thank you for your insight. I accept your rebuke and am humbled. I confess that I am not as enlightened or as well informed as some on this forum and never intend to offend but apparently I have and I apologize.

[rosarugosa]

Williamsmith: Do let us know if you succeed in "fixing stupid."

[bae]

Williamsmith: Do let us know if you succeed in "fixing stupid."

We used to call this sort of thing "work to rule" in the union, and it was generally an attempt to get some silly rule re-examined.

[Williamsmith]

Williamsmith: Do let us know if you succeed in "fixing stupid."

Right then, I will be sure to report any success straight away as I'm sure you will all be waiting in anticipation. But I warn you, fixing stupid can be a very complicated process. I suspect the librarians will continue shipping books crisscrossing the county like a spidersweb as long as the mailing funds hold out. It's a very large county and there are strict rules after all.

[LDAHL]

My mother was fond of saying "You can educate ignorance but you can't fix stupid". Often in the context of something stupid I had recently done.

[Gardenarian]

Not a money-maker for our library - as I said, they don't charge the patrons.

Our library has but a single site - the books being asked for do not exist in the collection. Someone in "collections management" decided that nobody ever needed to read the first book in the Dune trilogy, or the 2nd Harry Potter book. And so on.

Bae - I've been a librarian for over 30 years and these are a couple of my pet peeves. I suggest you talk to your library director about the ILL nonsense. Not everything is available on Amazon - musical scores and older scholarly works are particularly difficult to find. They should put a system in place where if it's cheaper to purchase it, then they should do so. ILL costs can vary greatly depending on the item; I'm sure in some cases it is less expensive than purchasing.

The series problem is one that drives me nuts. A lot of small libraries only have part of a series. What use is that? It's like buying half of a book. They should either get the entire series or discard it. When it was my responsibility, I made sure that we had every book in a particular series, cataloged the books to reflect its place in the series, and in some cases (Asimov's Robot books comes to mind) created a list of the series books, in order, and pasted them inside the cover.

My library has a number of people who complain about the taxes. My feeling is, if you can afford to own twenty tax parcels worth over ten million dollars, then you shouldn't gripe about funding the public library. The library is one of our most visible institutions, but is certainly not the most wasteful.

[iris lilies]

Even those in "collections management" (ah, it's a real thing, not a quotable faux thing ) can't always know volumes are missing from a series. Those pesky library users check books out and sometimes don't return them. and there is no software to alert library staff "hey, you are missing volume 2 of the X Trilogy." That's why I wanted ILL requests to be sent to my collections management staff, those requests sometimes acted as alerts to holes in the collection. Or sometimes a volumes is withdrawn due to condition and no one checks to see if all others in the series are intact, the popularity of the series, and if it should be replaced. That is more problematic when there are 17 branches and volumes in a series are scattered over the library system.

[Florence]

I had no idea that the cost for inter library loan was so high. I've used it quite a few times but will be more discriminating in the future.