#libraryblogging

my workplace has the 4 day work week and they manage this by making people work long hours that burn them out so they quit lol

Patron was looking for LSAT resources today, and the books I helped her find had stickers on them warning that they did not come with the online resources. She asked what that sticker meant, and I explained that originally those test prep books would come with a one-time use code for additional online resources, but that we can’t really include that code with the library copy, since it can only be used once (if we even had the code to begin with when we acquired the book). I was offering her some tips for where she might look to find those resources (doing an online search for [textbook name] + online resources or looking for LSAT prep subreddits), as usually students help each other out in terms of not having to pay for those things, and someone will likely have shared a copy somewhere, when my coworker was coming in for the shift change. Coworker, overhearing our conversation said, “or you could just ask chatGPT.”

i feel like an npc at my job and i love it

imagine the busiest public library in an inner city borough regularly has only three staff members working. for like two hours (or more! last week it was four hours one day) at a time. these staff members take breaks and have to go off the library floor to do urgent admin tasks sometimes. this regularly means that there are two people on the floor. maybe only one of them is at a desk. one of them might be having to read to a school group, or going to the back room to get a box of paper or some books that have been delivered from another library. so you’re the only person there right now for the public to speak to. you haven’t got any security guard cover because it’s not 3pm yet. there’s a long queue of people. the phone is ringing. you need to place a stationery order on an arcane work system because the receipt paper for the printers has vanished and if you don’t order it you won’t get a replacement. this system has no proper written instructions, so you have the video tutorial that your employer shared five years ago — it is of course slightly outdated — open on your screen, muted, because you work at a library, and you have to keep scrubbing through the subtitles to try and work out what you’re supposed to write in one particular box. the council that operates the libraries often forgets that library staff exist and they not everyone works in an office. there are teenagers yelling and laughing around you loudly so you can’t hear what the library patron you’re speaking to at the desk is saying. the teens are eating food at the computers, even though there are signs up telling them not to and you’ve repeatedly asked them not to eat in here because the library has a rodent infestation due to library patrons eating and scattering crumbs and debris everywhere. it’s two hours until close. you’ve been emailing the external provider of a key library IT system for days because the library printer keeps printing in colour instead of black and white, which is a good way to haemorrhage money. the technical support person promised the issue would be fixed by two days ago and then stopped replying to your messages. the IT manager in the libraries is on leave for another week and so is the only other person in the library who know how to use any of these systems. when you email the council’s IT they take days to send basic cryptic replies. someone else told you about something that’s broken and you can’t remember what it is now.