Friday, October 31, 2008

Strange things patrons do

This is an example of one of the many strange things I experienced while working as a Service Desk Manager. There are so many more to share but this one was odd. What I like most about this incident was my colleague's sense of humor as she described the situation. Having great people to work with when you encounter strange events does make the day brighter.

A stranger barged into the library passed by the service desk and made himself welcome in the closed reserve room. This greatly distressed my desk staff as they were very baffled by this person's brazenness. He began to pace around in the small room while talking on his cell phone. He paused at various times looking at several things books, microscopes, slides until he found the corner where we keep the anatomical models. There, then, that's where he stood and proceeded to feel up the skeletons. We could not determine why this man was there. It was a very unusual way for someone to enter the library. He was asked several times what he was doing and if we could help him with something but he did not respond. He just continued to talk on phone. He departed only after his reception dwindled. Which was not unusual as that room is in the worst place possible to be talking on a cell phone.

I wanted to know how did he know the skeletons were back there? The best response for summing up the situation was from a colleague she put it this way "I don't know if he knew that the skeletons were there or if he was just delighted to find them."

Monday, October 27, 2008

Amazon's Kindle

How does Oprah's endorsement of Amazon's Kindle affect the way libraries will provide services? Oprah is a very persuasive person and this show (Oprah's Favorite New Gadget) she devoted to promoting the product will certainly influence people. The hefty price is going to cause many people to not go out and buy it now, though it won't be long until the price comes down. Yet this is going to impact libraries. Where do we go from here? Are we thinking of ways to encourage these and other forms of technology to be used by our patrons? It's something to ponder.