Library Technician

Madame has decided one of my suggestions for promotion is ok! She is sending contents lists from our current subs out to people in the organisation. She makes it easy and copies and pastes the lists from the web sites, and is making mailing lists of people in different sections, but if the serial doesn't have a contents list on the net it won't get sent out. So far. She could decide to get me to type them up.

We have already have about 5 emails back on the first day saying they are interested and we have one request for articles already.

Part of my suggestion involved buying a scanner and scanning the lists and then they could be emailed out and that way we can do all of them, but that does require money and we don't have any. I wonder if she will give credit to me? I'll let you know...

I've been really interested in the reactions to the Monowi Library story Pop.: 1 Plus 5,000 Volumes by Stephanie Simon in the LA Times. Lots of people have linked to the article and some have even commented on it. Most of the comments have been about the emotional reactions people have to the story, 'warm fuzzy' or sad. A few have linked it to the story about Salinas libraries being threatened with closure about the same time. A lot of the library community have noted the story but not commented on it.

In some ways I suppose library staff don't feel the story really fits in with 'real' libraries. It isn't funded. No one gets paid. There's no circulation system or collection development policy. Monowi Library is not fighting for existence as many libraries are. It isn't threatened with closure. It isn't being used by politicians to score point on their way to election. People aren't having massive fundraisers or donating thousands of dollars from their golf winnings in order to get enough press to guilt trip the funding body....

Someone saw a need and filled it. Luckily Elsie had another source of income so she could open the library without funding. Without funding no one gets paid to work there so you can't keep control of the collection so therefore you don't need a circulation system which certainly keeps costs down even more. Without anyone keeping an eye on the people borrowing no one would know if the books aren't coming back, but then we can't really control that effectively in public libraries anyway. If anyone is taking the books and selling them elsewhere no one will know. Certainly cuts down on the stress levels. I suppose some books are donated which would keep the numbers up enough that visitors will find something to read.

I just wish I had a source of income that would allow me to run a library / free book exchange like that. At this point I need to work full time and so I can't do the same things as Elsie. I like what she does. Feels very anarchic. In the original taking-personal-responsibility type of way. I envy Elsie and I'll send a few books to her library to keep that dream alive.

Be careful next time you decide a convenient lie to a customer can provide you with a shortcut to explaining policy, you never know who is across the other side of the counter. A little while ago a lib'n at my local library was mortally embarrassed when she was caught out in a lie. They were charging me an odd amount for an ILL and when I questioned how they came up with that amount she just said they pass on charges that are passed on to them. If she had simply explained the policy fully which involved an admin charge I wouldn't have questioned it. Imagine how the silly thing felt when I said 'I'm a library technician and I know how the charging works. Public libraries and the State Library have reciprocal ILL and you won't get any charges for that. Actually you should have guessed by the fact that I just gave you a Kinetica print out of the locations. Don't try to pull the wool over your readers eyes.' Classic.