Just what we needed to put the icing on the cake: last night's showers went straight through the leaky colander that is Catty Library's roof and took out all the People's Network PCs and the counter terminals. The enquiry desk and the network hub, for once, are unscathed, sort of: when I arrived to survey the damage the librarian at the desk was sat on a chair in the middle of a puddle with rubber matting under the computer processor.
It was a truly depressing sight. All the mad talk in this plan or another about how wonderful our services are going to be: this is our working reality. All the windows have been boarded up since Xmas while the workmen work on the roof and the lights have all been shorted out, so staff were issuing books to customers who chose them in the dark. The smell of damp and old pigeon shit; the plaster crumbling from the walls, and the ever-present buckets in the middle of the floor for catching the water. Wonderful.
What makes this even more distressing is that the network connection to this library is hopeless but we're not able to upgrade it because the heritage officer tells us we can't put a network connection on the roof because it would clash with the anti-vandal railings. It's OK for the working interior to be like a derelict pissoir but let's not have a box the size of a biscuit tin on the back of the building.
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