Meg, my supervisor at KCLS, likes to get out of the Service Center and into the branches every so often, to check the pulse of the system and see how the system is working, both for patrons and for library staff. So this Tuesday, instead of trekking out to Issaquah as usual, I hopped the bus to the Shoreline library.
Out at Shoreline, I got to experience the problems caused by a hardware-induced network outage; not only was Dynix inaccessible for most of the morning, the network/Internet connection was down until the early afternoon. Lack of access to the Internet was a nuisance less for staff than for patrons, who were pleasantly and surprisingly understanding about glitches in the system.
Staff didn't need the Internet, but we did need Dynix in order to process the mountains of books that had been delivered that morning. KCLS has a mechanism by which a patron can request that books be delivered from wherever they are in the system to a specified pickup location; patrons can also return books to any branch. There was a whole wall of boxes full of books that had to be checked in and placed on the holds shelf, not counting the books that came through the drop-boxes during the day.
So I learned how to check books in, and then I went out to the circulation desk and learned to check books out. Checking stuff in was fun, but it was even more fun to be out in the library and deal with patrons, especially since I got to check in books during the gaps between serving patrons. I'd only seen the administrative side of Dynix before, so it was neat to see the end-user
side. I also just really enjoyed the work, and I'm glad to have experienced this part of a library's functioning.
I used to identify everyone who works in a library kind of vaguely as a librarian, and it's only in the past couple of years that I started to perceive the difference between librarians and library technicians. The difference is kind of like the difference between doctors and nurses; librarians have ML(I)S degrees, and technicians are support staff. They're intelligent and skilled, but they don't have that degree.
I hesitate to say that there's a class distinction between librarians and technicians, because I don't want to imply a hierarchy. (Even if one does exist, I haven't observed enough of the library world to support that argument, and I don't want to insult technicians.) There is certainly a separation in that they inhabit slightly different worlds, reference desk vs. circulation desk. My stint in the world of circulation has taught me that as much fun as it is, I'd rather live in the world of reference.
Post a comment