We're taking a bit of a breather while the world rearranges its underpants. Meanwhile, the other blog is here.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Three methods of expansion

In the old days upstairs a customer would come in, queue to return their books, be told that they've got an item on the reservations (holds) shelf, be given the book and then queue to get it issued to them and stamped out. Now, the customer queues to return their books, is told they've an item on the reservations shelf, walks over to the enquiry desk where they queue to get given the book and then goes back to the counter to queue to get it issued and stamped out.

The reason? Staff were complaining about having to keep bending down to get the books from under the counter. Given that there's about three acres of space behind the counter it wouldn't be beyond the wit of library managers to put some shelving or trolleys in there for the reserved stock. Except that Doreen says they can't do it because "someone might take the trolleys out and shelve the books."

3 comments:

Ladybird World Mother said...

I have found you again!! Could not for life of me remember what your blog was called.
Hooray!

Webrarian said...

RFID/self-service will put paid to all that nonsense.

Kevin Musgrove said...

You're one of life's optimists. We've being "investigating" self-service for upstairs since 2001 and the only decision to date is that "it has to be in beech." I haven't worked out what "it" is yet and probably don't want to know.