Abuse Your Local Librarian

[Clara Bow]

Our school's library is very user friendly. There are general use computers downstairs, research only computers upstairs in reference, plenty of study carralls and four card catalog database computers. It is neat and everything is fairly easy to find. If you prefer the old fashioned card catalogs, they have one in the reference department upstairs. There are also study rooms, video viewing rooms and plenty of space to move in the aisles.
Sounds nice right?
Every day that I go in there however....
People are constantly hassling our librarians! The latest thing is trying to get around the textbook rules. Textbooks used in classes our school offers are for reference use only. No checking them out, do not even ask. Yet people seem to believe that if they are rude enough, the librarian will let them take the books out. Never mind that someone else may need the book.
People also seem to love to abuse the library equipment, using the viewing rooms for nonacademic material (a no-no) and then showing their tails when the librarians have to run them out. And they like to ask the librarians to watch their stuff while they wander to the bathrooms.
My favorites are the ones who make no attempt to use the card catalog database or files. They walk straight to the desk and ask where things are. When the librarians try to show them how to use the resources they get hateful with them, "Can't you just go get it for me? I don't have time for all this *feces*"....
The joys of being a librarian are myriad...I am constantly ashamed of my fellow students.

[kathrynne]

And here, I thought this was an invitation! 

People never cease to amaze me with their rudeness. The liberry* stories I've been reading here give me chills.


*Sorry, couldn't resist!

[CalabashCorolla]

People are constantly hassling our librarians! The latest thing is trying to get around the textbook rules. Textbooks used in classes our school offers are for reference use only. No checking them out, do not even ask. Yet people seem to believe that if they are rude enough, the librarian will let them take the books out. Never mind that someone else may need the book.

Yay, librarians! 

Reminds me of the course reserve problems we'd always have at the branch I worked at. People would often wait until the last minute to even think about checking out a reserve book that the ENTIRE class needed to use, and would proceed to get royally p*ssed off if the book wasn't back on time. Well, all we can do is fine people $.20 per minute for overdue reserves, we can't hunt them down and force them at gunpoint to return the book. Then they would invariably ask us who checked out the book, which is of course illegal for us to divulge, and would get irate when we wouldn't tell them! Umm, sorry, but if you really needed the book so bad, then you should have checked it out more than a day before the assignment on it was due! 

[Sirius]

Although I have no doubt that these horror stories are the truth, I just can't imagine acting the way these children act in a library.  My parents started taking us to the base library when I was in first grade, and my dad always stayed with us, since he was the one who liked to read.  If my sibs and I had gotten out of line, we'd have been put back into line really fast, and would have had to apologize to the librarian for misbehaving.  

[Yarnspinner]

Auntie,

I wish you were one of my patrons. 

It's true we're here to help people seeking information.  I'm all about research and will happily search out books in non-fiction because in this day and age, they no longer teach Dewey classification to school students.  (Old fogie digression:  when I was in the third grade, I may not have understood Dewey, but I DID know how to search for books on the shelf using it.  This is not a skill taught today.)  OTOH,  it drives me insane when someone can't even locate a fiction book when they know the author's last name.  If you are too lazy to search the FICTION shelf alphabetically by author's last name, how on earth do you expect to read the book???

I loved the "ask the librarians to watch their stuff" line.  At our main branch, there used to be a group of--we'll call them "gentlemen of the roads" who would spend all day every day playing chess in the fiction reading room. They had been known to occasionally lift wallets, had tried to order pizza in the director's name, and generally take anything that wasn't nailed down.   One day  a woman reported to administration that her pocket book had gone missing.  "Someone stole it?"  "Oh, no," she said brightly "I asked this nice group of men to watch it for me."  The director smiled and said "I'm sure they are still watching it for you ma'am...it's just that now they have taken it with them." 

Calabash,  we have a similar problem with the infamous Summer Reading assigned by the local high schools.  Each branch has at least one to three copies of each title the high schools choose.  They are on one week loan status.  And there's always some joker (and their parents) who wait until the eleventh hour, then scream at us to retrieve the book from the current user.  One woman wanted me to call the current borrower and demand they return the book RIGHT NOW!  Hellooo...reality calling!

*sigh*  I keep reciting "I am making a difference to some one...." in addition to reciting "five more years, five more years..."

[merkay]

Our mantra at my library is "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."  This is what we tell the kids who come in the day before a project is due and discover that all the books have already been checked out, and the kids who come in and just plain can't remember what the assignment is and expect us to know what they are talking about. 

I get a lot of pleasure from helping kids find the information they are looking for, but I can't be bothered to care when the kid doesn't care themselve.

I would also like to take this time to rant about the teachers at the local elementary schools who tell every kid in their class to come to the library and get the same darn book.  I'm sorry but we don't have 20 copies of a certain book, or 20 books on a particular subject.  The first few kids get what they are looking for and the rest of the class is SOL because the teacher couldn't be bothered to check with us and see if we had what she was assigning.  The kicker is, we visit every school at the beginning of each year and tell the teachers that we will work with them to round up all of the books they might need from other branches in the city if they just give us a little notice. 

[kherbert05]

Our mantra at my library is "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."  This is what we tell the kids who come in the day before a project is due and discover that all the books have already been checked out, and the kids who come in and just plain can't remember what the assignment is and expect us to know what they are talking about. 

I get a lot of pleasure from helping kids find the information they are looking for, but I can't be bothered to care when the kid doesn't care themselve.

I would also like to take this time to rant about the teachers at the local elementary schools who tell every kid in their class to come to the library and get the same darn book.  I'm sorry but we don't have 20 copies of a certain book, or 20 books on a particular subject.  The first few kids get what they are looking for and the rest of the class is SOL because the teacher couldn't be bothered to check with us and see if we had what she was assigning.  The kicker is, we visit every school at the beginning of each year and tell the teachers that we will work with them to round up all of the books they might need from other branches in the city if they just give us a little notice. 

I would never do that to the librarians or my kids. What we do when resources are limited is the teacher checks out the material. We keep it in our rooms and the kids work on it there. Of course we have a district policy that work done at home can not be graded, so projects are completed at school. (Has to do with some obvious cheating. I am going to start another thread because story is long and would hijack this thread)

[Sophia]

These library horror stories are shocking.  I am in my library a couple of times a week, and I never see anything like this.  A couple of times recently I had to ask the librarian about where to find something, and both times they wanted to walk me to the shelves.  One time the computer had crashed and I wanted to know the approximate number for a non-fiction book.  Another time, I couldn't even think of the first three letters of the author who wrote "Texas" and "Hawaii".  I never see teenagers misbehaving.  I never see kids running wild.  People actually use the group meeting room.  No one smells.  No one is loud.  Until this site I defined a bad library as one that didn't have the book I wanted, or when the librarians scowled at me for chacking out many books.  Neither of which has happened at my library. 

[emeraldsage85]

My old boss used to have the policy "the library is for everyone." This of course, included a man who was stalking me while I worked there. What was more concerning was that he had a very long police record of child molestation and exposing himself to young women. My boss's solution was to ban him for three months and then allow him back in again. He should have been banned indefinitely, but thankfully he moved to another town. Last I heard he was in jail for exposing himself to a little girl.

[Lisbeth]

My old boss used to have the policy "the library is for everyone." This of course, included a man who was stalking me while I worked there. What was more concerning was that he had a very long police record of child molestation and exposing himself to young women. My boss's solution was to ban him for three months and then allow him back in again. He should have been banned indefinitely, but thankfully he moved to another town. Last I heard he was in jail for exposing himself to a little girl.

Would someone have had to be murdered to get your boss to ban him permanently?  That's disgusting.

[freakyfemme]

I agree with most of your post, except the part about asking the librarians to hold onto personal possessions.  Really, HOW much trouble would it be for the reference desk people to put my backpack or my clarinet behind the desk while I go upstairs/to the other room to get some books that I've already looked up on the computer system?  They wouldn't even have to actually *do* anything, I'd have peace of mind about my things not being stolen, and I wouldn't have to drag them with me.  Besides, I think I'd be able to recognize my own clarinet case, considering the fact that nobody else at my school has one like mine.

[NYGirl100]

I agree with most of your post, except the part about asking the librarians to hold onto personal possessions.  Really, HOW much trouble would it be for the reference desk people to put my backpack or my clarinet behind the desk while I go upstairs/to the other room to get some books that I've already looked up on the computer system?  They wouldn't even have to actually *do* anything, I'd have peace of mind about my things not being stolen, and I wouldn't have to drag them with me.  Besides, I think I'd be able to recognize my own clarinet case, considering the fact that nobody else at my school has one like mine.

I'm sorry, freaky, but I have to disagree with you.  You personally know that you won't take that long, but you're only one person.  The librarians cannot do it for everyone, and not everyone would be as considerate as you in coming right back.  Plus a lot of them have to move around to look things up or to help other people, and if your things are stolen while they're gone they and the library can be liable for your missing things.  The bottom line is that watching your possessions, even for 2 seconds, is not their job and you should not expect them to do it, even as a "favor," because it can rightly interfere with their duties. 

[FolkRockFan]

freakyfemme: if a librarian agrees to watch somebody's things, even for just a few seconds, then the library - and the librarian - are responsible for anything that might happen. What if somebody hands over a backpack with a leaky soda bottle in the pocket? If that soft drink gets onto another patron's things, or onto some of the library's books, then the librarian will be the one who has to pay for the damage, listen to the verbal abuse and otherwise eat dirt.

It could be argued that the librarians could give each item a visual inspection to make sure that no accidents happen...but from what I've seen at various libraries, these men and women already have too many things to do and not enough time to do them.

[blue_bunny_paz]

I have to agree that it could be a problem. If, for instance, the library is busy then no one can keep an eye on whatever you have left there all the time. What if the librarian has to leave the desk? What if someone leans over and steals it?

I think in reality it would be too much trouble to do for everyone who wants to leave something. and what if they forget and go home without it?

[CalabashCorolla]

Auntie,

I wish you were one of my patrons. 

It's true we're here to help people seeking information.  I'm all about research and will happily search out books in non-fiction because in this day and age, they no longer teach Dewey classification to school students.  (Old fogie digression:  when I was in the third grade, I may not have understood Dewey, but I DID know how to search for books on the shelf using it.  This is not a skill taught today.)  OTOH,  it drives me insane when someone can't even locate a fiction book when they know the author's last name.  If you are too lazy to search the FICTION shelf alphabetically by author's last name, how on earth do you expect to read the book???

Heheheh, wait until they get to college and have to deal with the Library of Congress catalogue system. It makes Dewey Decimal look like playing tic-tac-toe. Then again, you can teach the kids library science, but you can't teach them common sense, it seems. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I only had to memorize the alphabet, not apply it to real life. 

Thankfully, most of the questions we got in our branch were along the lines of where a certain group of books with similar call numbers were located (as in, the NA### books weren't in the same pace as the TR### books). But we all hated it when patrons wanted us to do all of the work of finding and obtaining a book for them. Umm, the books ARE arranged in a logical order, if you take about 10 seconds to figure it out. We don't shelve them completely randomly just to throw off the patrons!

On the other hand, when some smart-aleck tried to re-shelve a book (even though we had lots of carts and empty shelves labeled "RETURN USED BOOKS HERE"), and put it in the wrong place, and a patron came up in a panic and said they couldn't find the book, and got mad at us that it was misplaced even though it wasn't our fault, and it took us forever to track the book down...GRRRRRRRRRR