LISNews: Librarian News

What IT Professionals Can Learn from Librarians

If you think about a library, librarians are very techie but also very service oriented. Our librarians are exposed very intentionally, and have been for 15 years, to this intermingling of cultures. I’ve often said our help desk at the university would never be able to work for an uncaring IT help desk in the private sector. ... Librarians listen very well and will do anything to get an answer. The last thing they would say is, “I’m sorry. I’m going to send you a manual.” In libraries, the reference desk is very high on the status. It’s just the opposite in IT organizations. We have movement out of both, both laterally and vertically. It was a grand experiment that’s worked out very well.

Librarian restrained on Austrian Airlines flight
Passengers had to restrain an Austrian librarian following a mid-air dispute at the weekend.

Customers said that a 32 year-old lunged toward one of the crew members onboard an Austrian Airlines flight from Washington to the company’s base in Vienna, but didn’t make contact. Reports said that he had consumed wine and a sleeping tablet and became upset and aggressive when flight attendants refused to serve him additional alcohol.

DLK: Here’s a thought – maybe we should create a “Work Like a Patron” week, where we only use the library like our customers do – use your library’s wifi (bonus points for using a Public PC), search using the patron version of your catalog, maybe even sit at those lovely desks in the library. Or hang out in a cafe, accessing all work- and library-related stuff from outside of the building. Use the front door, and see the library through your patrons’ eyes.

From The Millions, an excellent article by Steve Himmer:

One recent morning, my almost four year old daughter started crying out of the blue. I asked her what was wrong, and she wailed, “I don’t have a library card!” So with a proud paternal bibliophile’s heart swollen in my chest, I strapped her into her car seat and we set off for the library in search of a library card and — at her request — in search of Tintin books like those I’d told her were my favorite stories at the library when I was young.

We went first to the branch library in our end of town, a small, round building with walls almost entirely of glass. All those windows, and the books behind them, make it look pretty inviting, and we parked our car in the lot and I held my daughter’s hand as she skipped to the door, bubbling over with excitement. Unfortunately, it was closed; I’d known municipal budget cuts had reduced the hours of all library branches, but I’d thought that only meant it was closed on Fridays. Instead, it meant this branch — and all others, apart from the main library downtown — were open only a couple of hours four afternoons through the week. No mornings, no evenings, no weekends. -- Read More