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[This year's December Days are categorized! Specifically: "Things I should have learned in library school, had (I/they) been paying attention. But I can make that out of just about anything you'd like to know about library school or the library profession, so if you have suggestions, I'll happily take them.]
Most of the people who come into the library are seeking knowledge, information, or at the very least, a place to go where they can watch porn without being judged for it at home. (Because once there are kids in your household, United States Standard Moral Guardians will insist that all environments be sanitized for them, let they come across anything those Moral Guardians deem inappropriate. It is a good idea to not leave things about where someone who isn't yet capable of understanding can find them casually, but parents are also humans and do not give up the right to be humans when they become parents, even if it seems like it.) They can be anything from solicitous of assistance to entirely standoffish about your presence near them, but if something comes up, they're likely to listen to what you have to say and come away with new knowledge on how to do that thing again if it should come up. Even the ones who are terrified of the technological nightmare of modern living learn that the library is place where they can go to get help in navigating the new space. Many people appreciate the resources and knowledge that the library provides, sometimes through direct experience, and sometimes by understanding in the abstract what kind of safety net is spread underneath everyone when there is a robustly funded public library in their community.
There are also people who resent that they need any sort of assistance at all, those that believe quite falsely that the public library is sucking them dry through severe taxation (seriously, dude, we cost you one extra-fancy coffee drink per month, typically) and holding back their rugged Objectivist selves from becoming the next rich capitalist ubermensch. I'm not going to say we take delight when those people come in and need to use our job assistance services or our computing resources so they can update their resumes and set up job agents, because it's cruel enough trying to find work that days, it's also unhelpful to getting the job done. But we might push their success story to the top of the list of people to talk about how awesome the library is at helping people find jobs. (After getting permissions to use name and likeness. Otherwise, a suitably anonymized version will do.)
And then there are the people who know everything about what they're trying to do, and you can't help them, or worse, all you have to do is exactly what they tell you to do and everything will be fine. Never mind that there's a good chance what they are thinking has a wrong procedure step, is asking you to do something completely different than the way you actually do those things, or is otherwise going to fail because there's something wrong with how they want to accomplish the task. Often times, observing what someone is trying to do will make the flow in the plan stand out. But when you try to point that out, it gets dismissed as unimportant. Or the menu you are suggesting for them that contains the option they want is clearly wrong because the label on the menu doesn't explicitly say that it's that option. An exercise in patience is not the only thing that is needed for success in these situations.
Example from this week - a user calls the library with a title that will definitely have to be inter-library loaned, as it's one of the standard genealogical texts and my library system does not maintain any sort of genealogy collection (that would be the city system next door that contains the local history archive). We have a process for interlibrary loans - it's confusing to people who haven't done it enough, but we're helpful folk who we get you through it okay. The person calling had a title, which makes it easier, but was insistent that one of us needed to call over to a specific library in St. Louis that advertised they circulated their genealogical material to other libraries, so long as a librarian makes the request. Because that work is usually a reference work, and libraries don't circulate reference works. So all we have to do is call this library and have them send it over.
Except no, there's a process, we can find it in our ILL, and there's always the possibility another library will also send us their copy, and it will be both closer and cheaper for us to talk to them than it would be to talk to this specific library. Which I explained. The response was "I'll bet you a quarter that you're going to tell me you can't get it on Inter-Library Loan." Even though the library the person was talking about is visible to us in our ILL system, so it's likely that we'll get to them if there aren't any better options anyway. This person is very convinced their way is the only right way, though, and can't envision any other way.
Library school does a lot of things, but it can come up short on people interactions that aren't ideal. There's a little bit of talking about when people aren't giving you enough information, but there's not quite as much about when people are convinced they have all of it and you are just there to justify their worldview.
Most of the people who come into the library are seeking knowledge, information, or at the very least, a place to go where they can watch porn without being judged for it at home. (Because once there are kids in your household, United States Standard Moral Guardians will insist that all environments be sanitized for them, let they come across anything those Moral Guardians deem inappropriate. It is a good idea to not leave things about where someone who isn't yet capable of understanding can find them casually, but parents are also humans and do not give up the right to be humans when they become parents, even if it seems like it.) They can be anything from solicitous of assistance to entirely standoffish about your presence near them, but if something comes up, they're likely to listen to what you have to say and come away with new knowledge on how to do that thing again if it should come up. Even the ones who are terrified of the technological nightmare of modern living learn that the library is place where they can go to get help in navigating the new space. Many people appreciate the resources and knowledge that the library provides, sometimes through direct experience, and sometimes by understanding in the abstract what kind of safety net is spread underneath everyone when there is a robustly funded public library in their community.
There are also people who resent that they need any sort of assistance at all, those that believe quite falsely that the public library is sucking them dry through severe taxation (seriously, dude, we cost you one extra-fancy coffee drink per month, typically) and holding back their rugged Objectivist selves from becoming the next rich capitalist ubermensch. I'm not going to say we take delight when those people come in and need to use our job assistance services or our computing resources so they can update their resumes and set up job agents, because it's cruel enough trying to find work that days, it's also unhelpful to getting the job done. But we might push their success story to the top of the list of people to talk about how awesome the library is at helping people find jobs. (After getting permissions to use name and likeness. Otherwise, a suitably anonymized version will do.)
And then there are the people who know everything about what they're trying to do, and you can't help them, or worse, all you have to do is exactly what they tell you to do and everything will be fine. Never mind that there's a good chance what they are thinking has a wrong procedure step, is asking you to do something completely different than the way you actually do those things, or is otherwise going to fail because there's something wrong with how they want to accomplish the task. Often times, observing what someone is trying to do will make the flow in the plan stand out. But when you try to point that out, it gets dismissed as unimportant. Or the menu you are suggesting for them that contains the option they want is clearly wrong because the label on the menu doesn't explicitly say that it's that option. An exercise in patience is not the only thing that is needed for success in these situations.
Example from this week - a user calls the library with a title that will definitely have to be inter-library loaned, as it's one of the standard genealogical texts and my library system does not maintain any sort of genealogy collection (that would be the city system next door that contains the local history archive). We have a process for interlibrary loans - it's confusing to people who haven't done it enough, but we're helpful folk who we get you through it okay. The person calling had a title, which makes it easier, but was insistent that one of us needed to call over to a specific library in St. Louis that advertised they circulated their genealogical material to other libraries, so long as a librarian makes the request. Because that work is usually a reference work, and libraries don't circulate reference works. So all we have to do is call this library and have them send it over.
Except no, there's a process, we can find it in our ILL, and there's always the possibility another library will also send us their copy, and it will be both closer and cheaper for us to talk to them than it would be to talk to this specific library. Which I explained. The response was "I'll bet you a quarter that you're going to tell me you can't get it on Inter-Library Loan." Even though the library the person was talking about is visible to us in our ILL system, so it's likely that we'll get to them if there aren't any better options anyway. This person is very convinced their way is the only right way, though, and can't envision any other way.
Library school does a lot of things, but it can come up short on people interactions that aren't ideal. There's a little bit of talking about when people aren't giving you enough information, but there's not quite as much about when people are convinced they have all of it and you are just there to justify their worldview.
