too early in the morning for me thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

Hoping my cousins made it through Ophelia fine. Have two sets of cousins in NC. THe ones in Raleigh I'm sure are fine. The ones in Wilmington since its coastal, I'm a little more worried about. I figure since Ophelia seemed more wet than destructive they're fine relatively speaking.

Found out something highly disappointing and pathetic about my new library. Well this part isn't the new thing....yes I'm in a rural setting, yes the library is relatively small but it's bigger than both the one in WI and the one in FL. However, you can only look at the books online. It's literally just a card catalog. Their entire website is non-functioning other than to be a card catalog. You can't put books on hold. You can't renew books you have nothing. Even the exceedingly rural library in Three Lakes population well under 1000 (unlike Jackson where I'm at now which about 7,000+)

There is no one on staff under the age of 50 and none of them are competent with the computers. (actually heard one of them yesterday say "If'n I had knowed it was you...) Well I went in with a bunch of new mysteries to look up, about 12 of them. I found ONE and that included nothing by Martha Grimes who is a long standing major name. I was commenting on that and they said well we can do interlibrary loan. I said they're not in the system. Finally a 40 something woman came over (finally someone who's not older than my mom worknig at this place) and she said the computers here don't show other libraries in this county. I stared at her and said are you seriously telling me you have a computer system that isn't hooked up outside of this library at all? 'no we don't'

We had started a county wide card catalog in my college library back in 1989. These people have nothing. So if I actually even want to look up a book I have to stop a librarian. This is beyond pathetic.

Comments

[tinpanalley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the Raleigh-Durham area, we're just getting a little wind.

OMG! That library! How annoying! I mean, I can appreciate antiquity in some places, but a library is a place for educational purposes as well as leisure. They need to step it up!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that's good that you're just getting the winds.

The weird thing is they have all this computer stuff for learning for kids but it mostly just sits tehre

[druinsanity.livejournal.com]

wow that sounds irksome.... the library that is.

And I hope your family is fine as well. Im glad that you know that some of them in that area are.

Hope you have a good day.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

very irksome and thanks. I'm sure they'll be okay. I ask mom

[rivin142.livejournal.com]

I can't believe a school would do that. Maybe they'll get better... Aren't they focusing on stepping up their programs?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

this isn't the school. Sorry to confuse. This is the local library in Jackson which is the biggest town for abuot 30 miles

[rivin142.livejournal.com]

oh. Okay. That's a bit more reasonable... Still creepy, but more reasonable.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i've never actually been in the school library which is pathetic of me

[rivin142.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is reason enough to go...

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

if only there were free moments at work

[jen-nsync-landl.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is irritating. My new library is the same way, and I think I'm still shell-shocked. My old library in CO had a video and dvd library full of old movies, foreign films, musicals, etc., oodles of books, and a catalog that linked it to the entire CO network of public *and* university libraries in the state. The library in Macomb is in an old house, uses a paper card catalog, and is pretty much linked to nothing.

Looks like we'll be buying a lot of books, eh? Hey, if you're a big mystery lover (as I am), maybe we can work out our own traveling library?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

ready to cry? There's not a bookstore within 60 miles of me. I do order some through Mystery Guild. maybe we can. Media mail is rather cheap

[jen-nsync-landl.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, we don't have a bookstore, either. LOL I do have lots of Martha Grimes, though. ;) And I'm think the UPS person who delivers from Amazon is gonna get to be really familiar with my address right quick!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I hear you. I found out my college library will get books from ANYWHERE in OH

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

That's amazing to me. I lieterally would go nuts. The again, Im nooked up to all 63 libraries in the county which is why I'm able to borrow so many cool CDs.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

no interlibrary loan on cds at ALL

[mzzgoddessblue.livejournal.com]

the computers here don't show other libraries in this county.

Er..neither are ours. Our computers have the internet obviously, and you can access PLS (Public Library Services) on it, meaning it has the catalogue of everything available in Queensland, but not what library it's in. So you request it through PLS Brisbane, and they send it up to us and we loan it out to the customer. Now, the customers themselves cannot order it - we do. So they tell us what they want, we request it, and books are sent every Friday.

When I used a library in Brisbane, I would look up a book, request it using my membership number, choose which library I wanted to collect it at, and then they'd contact me when it arrived at that particular library. However, we are a Country Lending Service library. Meaning, well, meaning we suck.

The books on the shelves in our library itself, are not online. Except on the loans desk computer. There is a 'shelf list' which is a big folder with heaps of pages in it, that is the catalogue for people to see if a particular book is in our library. However, the shelf list is extremely out of date, as when Brisbane sends us the new one, they are going off what we have on our computer. And that's out of date too. And even tho' I've mentioned MANY MANY TIMES that Dumb Bitch should ring the chappy in Brisbane who is the expert in our particular loans circulation system (Aurora) to find out how we can print out what our computer says we have, so we can do a stocktake, she still hasn't gotten off her arse to do it. So there are many times when we'll look up a book, the computer says it's on the shelf, we go looking, it's not there, we check it's loans and returns since 1991 and it hasn't moved in 4 years, leading us to realize that the book is not in the library and has either been stolen, or went back to brisbane at some stage and was never taken off the computer....and she still won't get off her friggin arse and spend 5 minutes on a phone call to find out how we can rectify this.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

you guys are just plain screwed