Trying to ease their dyspepsia by swallowing a raincoat

We live in uncertain times, the twenty-first century is sniffing round our heels and Call-Me-Dave's Austerity Britain is biting us on the arse so I suppose it's understandable that I'm a bit tetchy.

I'm doing a workshop to try and persuade some of our librarians that the internet is an information and communications medium. In a few cases it's tough sledding. In the end, I crack:

"How many of you have mobile 'phones?"

All hands go up.

"How many of you take photos with your 'phone."

Most hands stay up.

"Who's on Facebook?"

Half the audience.

"Who buys stuff online?"

Most of the audience.

"How many of you have gone on a mobile 'phone course?"

None.

"A digital photography course?"

One of the people who doesn't use her 'phone for photography.

"A Facebook course?"

None.

"An e-commerce seminar?"

Of course not.

"Don't tell me you can't use digital technology without training then."

Four engagements and a hospital visit

"Hettie's been on the 'phone," says Maybelle. "She says that one of their customers has been in twice today to use the computers and what should she do about it?"

I'm surprised at the question.

"The same as she has been doing for the past ten years, surely?"

I don't know why it's an issue, it's not as if people are fighting for the computers at Catty Library. Libraries love a bit of rationing.

"Lady Chatterly's Lover," a tale of simple farming folk

Frog is ordering some stuff for the Story Time Dressing Up Box - bits of cheap fancy dress costume that the kids can put on when they join in with the stories he's telling.

"It took me ages to find out what those leggings actually are. Technically they're 'Early Period Hose'," he tells us.

At the end of the month I suspect I'm going to have to explain to the Internet Naughtiness Police why somebody was looking for "early period ho's" on a staff PC...

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity

Some people have spent the day at Internet Librarian International 2010 some people have.

I wish I could explain why I shall spend the rest of my life laughing at a coincidence.

Perhaps when I write my memoirs after I've been demobbed.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one

I've given more diplomatic answers...

Julia's just come back from a meeting of Librarians What Talk At Tables.

"Leamholt's got a really active Facebook page. Why aren't we engaging with social networking like that?" she asks me.

I hear myself say:

"Strictly speaking, you're not even engaging with the World Wide Web."

Got the T-shirt

A gem from the always-excellent "Not Always Right" site.

A bit like the DVD extended edition

'Phone call from Eileen in the Reference Library.

"A gentleman wants to know if he can download some software so that he can run a programme on his USB stick."

"Has there been any time in the past decade where we've let customers download and run programmes on our PCs?"

"No...

...So what should I tell him."

"Sorry, no you can't?"

"OK."

I have this conversation with her once a fortnight.

Many exciting happenings to titillate the casual visitor

We're feeling better about our corporate IT bods. We've just found out that colleagues in a neighbouring library authority can't access The Bookseller's web site because their council deems it to be an entertainment site and have blocked it.

When you look at the world, God must have been joking

I was going to ask the world what, exactly, librarians are for. I really am that annoyed. Anyone who has any dealings with librarians will tell you that anything that requires any input at all from them, let alone an actual decision, is such hard work that you might as well give the game up as a bad lot to begin with.

"The People's Network's going to be putting loads of PCs and the internet in all your libraries. What services do you want to provide with them?"

"We're setting up an new library web site. Could you let me have some information about the services you're providing?"

"There's a load of government-funded activity going on in the council to meet the e-government deadlines. We seem to be well-poised to be able to deliver quite a lot with very little extra effort, which should win us all sorts of brownie points with the councillors. How do you want to progress this?"

"We're putting together a few pages of links to web pages that our customers might find useful - children's reading sites; readers'/writers' pages; book review sites, etc. I'm sure you'll have some that you've found useful. I'd be grateful for any suggestions for entries."

All the above have one thing in common: response was there none. If selecting and describing information and reading resources for the public to use isn't the job of a librarian, what are they for? I won't go into the details of the latest disappointment: I love Frog like a brother but every so often he reminds me that he's a librarian.

Having spent most of the past two decades trying to develop and deliver public services using the interplay between librarians and the corporate IT department I suppose I should celebrate that I've managed to do anything at all. I suppose.

An then that's that Tom-fool, taking yet another bit of paper over to the bin. We've finally sort of had it confirmed a bit that he's retiring at the end of the month, which we're assuming is 31st January. We're reckless that way. He is, however, going to be coming back every so often on a voluntary basis to "tidy up a few loose ends." (Warning Doctor Smith! Warning Doctor Smith!)

Noreen asked me to go and ask Julia and Jack Harry how they wanted some stuff bought last year for a special collection cataloguing. The first part of the ensuing waffle involved two librarians wondering out loud whether they should go on the catalogue in the first place.

"After all, they weren't bought from the book fund."

It was left to me to point out that in principle all library resources should be on the catalogue so that people knew we had it and the auditors could see what we've been doing with the money. After another ten minutes of slinging peanuts down the Grand Canyon I'd had enough, pretended they'd answered the question and went away and did what I should have done in the first place.

Most efficacious in every way

Oh deep joy.

This council's network is never exactly speedy. In fact, we've never really managed to regain the heady line speeds we got used to when we installed our first internet PCs back in '97. Back then you could watch a web page load in a minute or even less. Younger members of staff scorn such ideas as being tainted with the rose-tinted glasses of the purest nostalgic blarney.

Top of today's treats is not having access to our web site. Or our web catalogue. Or our suppliers' catalogues. Or our personal folders. Or USB devices. A combination of network mapping "anomalies," a massive anti-virus upgrade and a corporate internet filter that deems all corporately-derived traffic as being spam appears to be to blame. Or at least, it does if you piece together all the explanations provided by the IT Section over the past three days. Delaney's donkey's probably in there, too, somewhere.

The public PCs are generally better as they're on a different network. Having said that we're still having more fun than we really want. British Standards Online is being a pig to make available, primarily because there's no British Standard for providing a customer-responsive information service; Amish Online isn't available because the buttons don't work; the internet security update is stopping emails' opening; and nothing's going to the network printers.

Happy days...

You should never vex a stranger

'Phone call. From Catty Library.

"A lady's come in to complain that somebody's set up a false Facebook account. Can we find out who it is and put a stop to it?"

"No," I explained.

The key is there to open the tinThe tin is there to keep the Spam in

Between us Frog, Milton and I have determined that there are three council projects on the go to provide "a children's web site." None of us are involved in these projects and we're not sorry either.

The projects are run by the usual suspects. To my certain knowledge there have been eight projects "to create a children's web site" in the past ten years. All of them have been a dead waste of time and money. What happens is:

• A bunch of highly-paid senior manager get together to talk about "the need for a children's web site."
• They meet again a bit later to confirm what they said the first time.
• They meet again to talk about all the things they could do, usually referencing Nickelodeon and the BBC children's web sites of the day.
• In meeting four or five this morphs into a discussion for the need for a directory of children's services so that they can make sure they're all included in the site.
• By meeting eight a spreadsheet will have been created that will be circulated to all services asking them to provide the necessary information in the cells indicated.
• Meetings nine and ten involve paying a consultant to come in to see how the spreadsheet could be turned into searchable web content.
• Meeting eleven is the discussion about content delivery sites.
• Meeting twelve, if the project gets that far, gives the OK for a site to be set up some time, funding permitting.
• Meeting thirteen never happens because it's unlucky.

A couple of times the web directory has actually been published on the web. And that was the end of it. You couldn't find them but they were out there somewhere. Of course, the directory isn't a children's directory, nor a children's web site, or even anything remotely useful by the general public. The big deliverable output is just a user-unfriendly snapshot of services that could, and should, have been listed on the Council web site. Especially as they just used the Local Government Service List as their template. After a year each web site disappeared from view and the cycle began anew.

Back in the old days, in a previous incarnation, I was involved in a few print versions of this game. My protestations that they needed to build an updating mechanism into the process fell on deaf ears. "This is just a one-off publication."

People could never understand how I delivered the second and third versions of the directory in half the time it took to do the first.

After crossing the mattress I decided to burn my socks

Come back to my desk to find a note from Sybil:

Reference Library rang. They've got an irate customer who wants to know why she couldn't get onto a web site. They don't know which web site it is but it's something to do with Ireland.

She's coming back in an hour.

That narrows the field down a bit.

An hour later, sure enough, the Reference Library rings again to find out why she can't get on. Eventually they give me the URL. It isn't a valid URL. Which is why she can't get on...

I Google the information I can guess from the "URL" and find a site that sounds like the one they're banging on about. I email the Reference Library the link, asking that they try that and see if it works.

"The lady is very annoyed that it was blocked and wants to know what you're doing about it."

"The URL was invalid. I've sent you a link to the site. Give her that URL and she should get on OK."

Five minutes later I get another 'phone call from the Reference Library.

"The customer is irate because she is still being blocked. She wants to know what we're doing about it."

"Can I just check which URL she's trying?"

This time it's a different one again.

"OK... well when I try that I get a message to say that that page will not load. That will have been misinterpreted by the public clients as a block."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing. If that page won't load it's out of our control."

"But we've got it on our staff PC here."

"With that URL?"

"We searched for it on Google and got the site."

"Does it have the same URL?"

"It seems to be working alright."

"What happens if you type the URL you just gave me in the address bar and press 'Go'?"

"We don't need to: it came up when we searched for it on Google."

"What happens if the customer searches for it on Google the same way as you did?"

"If she types in that address she gets a message to say it's blocked. She's very irate."

"Is she typing that address into Google?"

"We searched for the site on Google and got it."

"What happens if you enter the URL you just gave me."

"We found the site on Google."

...

I swear on all that's holy that this is a precis of the conversation.

If this is how they handle a referral to an in-house 'expert,' what on earth happens when they pass enquiries on to external agencies like The Small Business Unit across the road?

Come to think of it, that would explain much about the local economy.

Navigation

Maudie's in the doghouse. T.Aldous wants to send somebody directions to the library.

"But he can't send the link to Multimap any more because it doesn't have the new roundabout on Penkage Lane on it. So I've got to find him some new directions. And all the sites I've tried don't have it either. So I checked with the AA and the RAC and they don't yet either. So all the directions are wrong. And it's all my fault, apparently.

"And the best of it is that his visitor's been here three times already."

I'll act like I'm surprised

What is the point of Beattie ringing me up from Raccoonville Library with this mindset and such impeccable timing?

"I've been trying to get onto the Internet all day and it won't let me on, it says that I have to work offline."

"Was the PC really, really slow when you booted it up this morning?"

"Yes."

"That's the cause of the problem. Sometimes the network connection gets so slow that the Internet permissions time out. No idea why, it shouldn't happen, nobody's ever explained it to me, but it happens. The only way to sort it out is to close everything down, log off and log back on again."

"I can't be doing that: I've a long queue of people waiting to have their books stamped out."

This harks back to the time when the Marx Brothers played in the US Open Golf Tournament

How long have we had internet access in the reference library?

"We've got a problem."

"What's up?"

"One of our customer's just tried to get onto a web site and can't get on. It says that the server is unavailable."

"And...?"

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"It's the server at the other end, the one holding the web site, that's unavailable."

"But the customer wants to go on that web site."

"How many other people have you got on the computers in ref?"

"A dozen."

"Are they on the internet OK?"

"Yes."

"We don't have a problem. We can't do anything more to help. Cheery bye."

I want to see you there behind me leading the way

"Set aside next week for working on the People's Network," said Milton last week. So I did. And we have done Jack all on the People's Network. Oh, to be sure we

• Looked at the new bookings management system that's been installed.
• Looked at a new PC.
• Talked a great deal about what we could do.
• Listened to the installation engineer as he offered to help us set things up.

and have done Jack all. I couldn't work with the installation engineer to set anything up because I don't know how Milton wants us to be using the People's Network in the future.

"We'll go through the manual and see what settings we want," he says.

"We will decide what we want the system to do in practice and then find out how the system does it," I insist.

All in all a dead wasted opportunity. The installation engineer's been and gone so I'm on my own now with the sure and certain knowledge that some time in the future I'm going to be required to pull a dead rabbit out of a hat.

If we can bring one smile to one little face someone will have slipped up somewhere

We start 2009 on an uncharacteristically useful note.

Sybil's spent all week trying to get hold of an audio version of Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy" for a visually-impaired customer. This isn't the easiest of searches, not made any easier by said customer ringing the library once a day to complain that it's non-arrival is a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act (completely unfounded: we don't discriminate against any self-important tosspot of any kind).

"It'll be just my luck for him to do a WorldCat search or something and find it first time," she says.

"He's online then?"

"I couldn't find it on Project Gutenberg."

"Have you tried LibriVox?"

She did, and lo and behold!

We can jack it in now, we've had the win for the year.

Sort of everything I've never wanted

Three 'phone calls so far today on the same theme, all from upstairs:

"We keep being thrown off the network."

"Yes, there are major network problems. It's affecting everyone in the council."

IT know about it and are trying to nail it but it's been going on for three weeks now. Every day they send everybody an email to say that there's been no progress and that we'll continue to have network problems for the foreseeable. I've sent emails to this effect to all library staff both via Outlook and the library management system. Sybil sent an email to this effect on the LMS last Saturday. I think we have established that there are major network problems.

"But we keep losing the connection to the People's Network."

"Yes, there are major network problems."

"So when's it being sorted?"

"IT are looking into it but they've spent three weeks so far on it and still not found a solution. It's something we're just going to have to cope with until they can nail it."

"But why can't we print to the network printer?"

"Perhaps because there are major network problems."

"But why won't it print?"

I wouldn't mind if these were new members of staff, all of whom take these problems in their stride.

Please God, don't let the network problems affect the reference library at Dutch Bend. I couldn't bear the conversation.

You're playing my tune out of tune

We're the latest library authority to receive a letter from the Performing Rights Society telling us that we have to buy music licences for each of our libraries because we're provide public access to the internet and customers may look up a site with music on it.

I'm asked for input on a response. I suggest:

Dear chancer,

Why don't you just fuck off.

Yours sincerely