This time of year brings many students back to the library who have been absent all summer long.  We get our fair share of college students, high school students and graduate students as well.

Last night a young man came up to the counter to see if we had a text book he needed for one of his law classes. He said he was trying to avoid purchasisng the book.  I don't know if he was a law student, a paralegal student or what. Sadly, we did not have the book he needed.

The question is did I answer his question? Technically I did. Could the transaction end there? Technically yes. If I had ended it with the statement..."I'm sorry but we usually don't carry textbooks, and this is one we do not have" could I have done my hatch mark saying I had answered a reference question.  Well....I say no.

This young man needed the book, and I knew how to find it for him.  That is the real reference interview and process.  Librarians are called upon to find many different things, and we have so many more tools available to us now than in the past  Often I hear librarians say that they no longer answer reference questions, and they are basically internet clerks. The internet and the computer have become the new reference question. I didn't stop with our catalog, I didn't even stop with World Cat...libraries in California had this textbook but not the right edition. I showed this guy how to get into walmart.com and amazon.com and search for the title and how to buy it. What I was able to reaffirm for him is that we had exhausted all of our possibilities and now he could feel confident that the only way he was going to get this book was to buy it.

Before he left the counter, he shook my hand and told me how much he appreciated my help. I then put my hatch mark down for answering a reference question.

 The other day, an incident happened at the library that I know occurs at lots of libraries throughout the country on a regular basis. A customer violated a "rule" that is perceived to be extremely important by staff. This time it was a cell phone. 

You know the story. woman on cell phone talking loudly, other internet users staring at her and a staff member coming up and saying please keep quiet. But, there was a miscommunication. My staff member thought the woman was ignoring him and was not using a quieter voice, and the woman was trying to just tell the staff member to wait a minute with her hand. 

Our library allows cell phone use. We got tired of being the cell phone police and spending half our day asking people to talk outside, turn off your phone, etc. Maybe in the future, as I see other establishments now doing, we may go back to a cell-less library, but the cells are here to stay for now. What insued with this incident was one that I know could have been avoided. 

The first thing I saw when I left my office, was my staff member yelling from the reference desk, "No, you keep quiet" and the target of his anger getting up and coming toward me. This is a lady who is a regular at our library and she knows the staff quite well. She admitted to me that yes she was too loud, but the HR person on the other end could not hear her, and she was trying to get an email address to send her resume in for a job application. That is when my staff member walked up, told her to be quiet, when she didn't respond, he then told her that he would cut off her internet session because she wasn't following the rules.

I knew what needed to be done with this situation. I talked to my staff member in private and told him that I wanted him to apologize. I saw how wrong he had been because he had escalated the situation too quickly before knowing what the circumstances were behind the loud voice.

Our customer told me that she was embarrassed in front of all of the other customers, and in front of the HR person on the other end of the phone. 

The three of us met, we heard each other out, I apologized (my staff member did not) and I know that difussed the situation. This customer was ready for battle and wanting to take this issue up to administration, but that simple "I'm sorry" softned her and she apologized as well. Yes, I let my staff member off the hook, but I hope he took notice that sometimes WE are wrong and need to acknowledge this.
 

On the desk. Monday, August 25, 11:00 am
I love the desk. Even though I am the reference supervisor, I like being out there to see how my staff is doing, and to get a feel for the day and what people are needing.

As I was getting ready to finish my shift, a young woman came up asking if she could copy on her own paper. Normally, we let people do this with our assistance because the copier is quite finicky about what type of paper it likes. When she showed me her paper, I thought no that's not going  to work...you know, 5 X 4 thin wedding announcement type paper. 

When I told her our copier would probably eat her paper, I also asked her if she had gone the Fedex/Kinkos down the street...yes but they said they couldn't do it. I knew this was not true, because I had just had my daughter's senior recital announcements done at Fedex/Kinkos using the same type of paper. 

I felt like a hero when I offered to call the store and get the right answer...of course they can do it.

I guess I believe that we are the answer source no matter where the answer might be located.