"We had four enquiries. One was: 'have you got a pencil?' Another was: 'can I borrow your pencil sharpener?'"
She is not impressed. Nor, indeed, is Posy who took her turn yesterday. They're both unhappy that they're having to sit at the enquiry desk while the reference library staff sit in the back doing things we know not what.
Especially when it turns out that one of the things they've been doing is typing out "Do not remove from the library" labels and sticking them all over the magazines that we've bought for the family literacy groups to borrow. They were only in the Reference Library temporarily for a month.
And we won't going into the items we've found that they've ordered by 'phone without an official order number; not from the authorised supplier; and to be paid from a budget they wouldn't have even if all the budgets weren't frozen...
8 comments:
Do you think Ref staff can communicate telepathically across hundreds of miles of snowy waste?
How else can you explain the similarities (though ours are well brought up ladies and would never do anything as naughty as ordering without an official order...)
Webrarian: I strongly suspect that Ref staff work by means of morphic resonance.
Would this ring any bells with you? It does me!
You can take comfort in the knowledge that the librarians who spent all that time and money getting the master's are in a dying profession and will never get a payback for their school expenses. There is nothing being phased out faster than so-called "professional librarians" across every niche.
First, hospitals got rid of the requirement for degreed librarians, then prisons, then public libraries. Just feel sorry for them instead of feeling angry at them...they're probably not much more incompetent than anybody else. Or get the degree yourself, online, for cheaper than they paid for theirs, probably, and take one of their jobs. Then you can order things illegally too!
I want to join the ref library staff!
Well you'd expect the budget to be frozen in this weather. You should hear the wind today.
Ms. Cow: sadly, I've spent the last two decades watching librarians making themselves functionally redundant. Once a quarter there's a flurry of "what is the future of the profession?" debate, generally childish, and never a hint of "the world is changing, what are librarians bringing to the party." In real life I've tried to make the case locally and nationally for librarians but their indifference to the question was astonishing and deteating.
Macy: No. Think of the child. Don't imagine you'd be able to shuck off the skin once you left the building.
Pat: that'll be the cakes and ale
or even "defeating"
"never a hint of "the world is changing, what are librarians bringing to the party."
Isn't this true! Cow just plowed through an interview with a bunch of college presidents who were asked to consider, given today's economic realities and the falling value of a bachelor's degree, making the degree available in 3 years instead of 4. They were universally against it. Wouldn't even consider it.
It is truly amazing how much people and entire professions can hide their heads in the sands. As a (former) librarian who works in another field, mostly libraries seem to serve now as providers of internet to those who don't have it, and dvd rentals.
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