Spirit messages

I get a 'phone call from Milkbeck Library:

"I'm calling on behalf of the volunteer who's doing the family history session. He can't get any of the People's Network PCs to log onto the network."

Two points here: the person ringing was the member of staff responsible for that day's running of the library, including providing access to the Internet for the public; and it's their job to have logged those PCs on at start of play,

Sigh...

Infinite similarity

I really am sick and tired of this fucking place.

The hand of the world is wounded by its own skill

The council's email servers are struggling because of overcapacity. Which is to say that they're full.

It probably doesn't help that librarians will insist on sending out 15Mb of high-definition photos that they've already put in the library folder on the intranet to 54 colleagues within the library service.

Or that half those colleagues don't check their email...

Pavarotti's ferret

I'm definitely due some holiday...

• Three 'phone calls about paper jams in the lending library printer.
• A 'phone call about a print job that wasn't being printed (because of one of the paper jams)
• A 'phone call asking what is meant when a book is marked "unavailable" on the catalogue
• A 'phone call asking why a lost book isn't available for to fill requests
• A 'phone call to say that there'd been a mistake typing in a borrower's name and address and what was I going to do about it
• A 'phone call asking what Milton was doing about a project I hadn't previously heard about

I want to shout: "for God's sake, get a grip!" but seeing as how half the staff has its hands around the throat of the other half...

Tearing away the false tinsel to reveal the real tinsel underneath

There's scaffolding up all over Helminthdale town centre and the place is being tarted up.

Apparently.

The old, blank wooden boards that cover the windows of the shops and pubs of the area have all been replaced by new, shiny wooden boards with ginormous photos on them to make them look lived in and prosperous.

Thus it is that to the passer-by on the Penkridge Road omnibus the old Earl of Derby's Post House has been transformed, apparently, into a spacious up-to-the-minute computer training suite.

Kitted out with 28b PCs running Windows 3.1.

(If you have to ask the question you can probably guess the answer.)

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."

The rhapsody of the impending evening

'Phone call from the Lending Library. It's Lola.

"We've decided that the PCs in the foyer should be changed into 15-minute express kiosks. Can you come up and change them for us?"

It's five o'clock on the Friday afternoon of a very fraught week and they decide now's the time to start fiddling with the public access systems.

Only my consummate professionalism prevents the answer being: "fuck off and don't be so stupid."

Luddite optimism

Multi-functional devices.

If you know about multi-functional devices you don't need me to say any more.

If you don't know about multi-functional devices it's an act of Christian charity to keep you in blissful ignorance.

That's another Tuesday morning rattled.

Height restrictions apply

As I mentioned the other day, the first and foremost priority for the library service is the number of visitors a-coming through the doors.

Time was we'd employ small youths and pensioners to sit by the teapot for a week making five-, six- and nine- barred gates to record the number of people that might have come in when they were talking to a friend who'd popped in to return their library book. These days we're much more scientific, with the white-hot heat of technology employed to record our visitors with pinpoint accuracy.

Roadkill Library is next door to a children's centre with a busy day nursery and a couple of doors down from a primary school. It's the sort of area where the children get by as best they can during the day (what we used to call 'latchkey children'), using the library as a refuge and stopping place where they can read a book or play on the computers or generally just do what small children are wont to do.

So the device that records the visitors at Roadkill Library doesn't record anybody less than five feet tall...

If the chocolate in the fountain tastes bitter it's because it's been laced with my tears

I've been tidying out some of the folders on my laptop. I look at the odd bits of workings-out; the reports and recommendations; the outline plans and sketches for things we could do and deliver and I feel an overwhelming sense of misuse of purpose.

Looking at the service development and achievements at work over the past five years I could have just as usefully spent my time sitting atop a Belisha beacon with a bottle of vodka in my hand, singing bawdy songs at passing policemen.

Every man is divinity in disguise ...it is God playing the fool

A colleague writes:

"When the phone call starts “this is Andrew”, it is the start of what can only be a period of serious misery. (Andrew is affectionately referred to hereabouts as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.)

"Anyway, the left hand counter PC had somehow, and mysteriously, got itself in a state whereby it wouldn’t reboot. Quite how it had got there is a mystery which would baffle Mr. Morse, Mr. Homes and Mr. Fu Manchu, as Mr. Blofeld wasn’t for letting on as to how it had become so afflicted. He did say however that efforts to reboot had involved pressing F2s and F12s, which was somewhat worrying as messing around with such is a typical, nasty trick at this library.

"However having visited and rebooted, resaved stuff they may have F2 ed off, and F4 ed a couple of times things seem ok, well all except my temperate demeanour and stress levels. I suppose it could have been worse as Mr. Blofeld was elsewhere, probably plotting to take over the world beyond with Mr Scaramanga, and his faithful assistant was, hopefully, heading into the sea, not out of it. "

These days I don't think I'd have the patience for that sort of nonsense: if they've fucked the PC they can fix it would be my response. Stories like this from colleagues in other library services remind me how lucky I've been with most of our front-line staff over the years.

My head's completely curly-wurly

Conversation with Milton:

"You know that web stuff you've been working on? Well, I've been talking to some people about a product that does pretty much the same thing. They've been using it in other libraries and they reckon it'll do the job. I'm seeing them tomorrow. You can come along if you want."

I can come along if I want? Three months' work potentially down the toilet and I can come along if I want.

Asking Liberace to powder his own piano

A 'phone call from the Reference Library.

"The new PC in the Ref. office isn't printing," says Eileen.

"Are you getting any error messages or anything?" I ask.

"No, it just says 'Printer can't be found.'"

"Which printer is it set up to use?"

"I don't know."

"Which one should it be using?"

After a full minute's silence I blink first.

"I'll come up and have a look at it."

(The techies amongst you will have guessed that it's the printer on the Ref. desk and that for some reason somebody had changed the PC's settings to print to a non-existant printer.)

Twilight in the tropics

The new energy-saving motion sensors in Noddy Library are a huge success. A huge success. Every so often there'll be a shriek in the reading room when the lights go out on some unwary reader.

Lexicography

I usually complain that Library Staff don't have a good word for me. Not today. After discussing a particularly long-standing problem at Epiphany Library (so long-standing and tortuous a problem that neither I nor Thelma could remember or work out why the problem ever arose in the first place) she said to me:

"Well I've got a good word for you: Snafu."

I'll get her at playtime.

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.

The sheer preposterousness of this part of the quest

I promise you that this is true.

From: Kevin
To: IT Support

PC tt551 in the lending library won't log onto the network. We get a false domain message. We have checked all the cabling and have switched keyboards to make sure there's no rubbishy input. Still not logging on. I suspect this is the same BIOS problem as we had with all those PCs at Raccoonville Library the other week.


From IT Support
To: Kevin
We're having problems connecting to this PC remotely. Can you log on and get the IP address for us.

Security is our watchword

Saturday's our busiest day so we hire extra staff to act as counter fodder (this isn't a sudden conversion to the principle of the application of resources to the demands of the market: it's been going on since Adam was a lad).

Of course, only logging onto the network once a week, and sometimes not even that, they may forget their passwords. And the IT Section aren't available on Saturdays so we can't ring them then to ask for the password to be reset. So we ask them today and find that the rules have changed.

If the person involved can't/won't ring the IT Section to get their own password reset we have to get the head of service to fill in a form authorising it.

Liebensraum

There are things you don't ever want a system administrator say to you.

I bump into Jim Lettuce, who's mildly boggled.

"We've just had a training session on our new performance management system," he tells me.

"How'd it go?"

"OK I guess. But the bloke doing it said something very odd. He said: 'you really have to admire Hitler for his ruthless efficiency.'"

"Was he being inappropriately ironic?" I ask, from experience.

"No. At least not judging by the emails he keeps sending us."