The Roughest Week at the Desk I Can Remember, Sorry if I Ramble and get a Little Pissed Off, but ...

It was spring break. This meant the kids didn't come pouring in after school, but all day. Usually this means the evenings are more quiet, but ...

The head techie was on vacation and things broke down.

The copier's debit card slot got something stuck in it. It still took coins, but that meant telling the patrons that, over and over ...

Then the public computer network stopped sending print jobs to the server. This meant that patrons had to save their documents onto floppies or thumb drives and bring them to us at the desk, where we happily printed them, no charge, sorry for the inconvenience. It was an added hassle, but workable, but ...

I learned again how many people do not know the meaning of "save." I guess they were used to typing their resume or school report and then simply pressed Print. They lost stuff they had spent a couple hours writing. We explained the concept of saving, but ...

They didn't have any way to save. We handed out floppies left by previous patrons, showed them how, but ...

Many of the floppy drives no longer work, or they also have things stuck in them. We're phasing them out and encouraging thumb drives (Yeah, tell a kid with no money who just wants his English paper printed out that he needs to buy a thumb drive). We have a generic one at the desk we use to save patrons' work in a pinch, but ...

Some of our computers' USB ports are recessed, so wide thumb drives (like, sigh, the generic one we use) don't have room to plug in, and a few of our computers have no spare USB ports at all.

When it comes to this I would tell them "Save it on the hard drive before your session runs out, and email it to yourself," but ...

Many patrons have no email accounts.

This week we at the desk learned how many there were.

It's late. Enough. It was rough.

For those forging ahead with the latest 2.0 innovations, singing hosannahs over this or that new widget that will allow the patrons better access the great User-Heaven Librarysphere, please remember that there are millions of library patrons who don't even know how to save a document.

And I'm not even going to start about how we help the ones who don't know how to use a mouse.

Big snowstorm today, but we thought it not big enough to close early.

At 3:45 I was taking a 15-minute powernap in my office when Librarian J phoned me. "You ARE aware that we're closing in ten minutes because of the snow?"

Uh, no, I wasn't. Thanks.

I imagined myself waking up in 15 minutes, coming out to the ref desk and finding the lights out and everyone gone ...

An Admin Guy approaches, holding a copy of A companion to wolves, by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear.

Admin Guy: Someone complained about this book.
Me: Huh! I read her blog.
AG: (flipping through the pages too quickly to actually read them) I don't see anything wrong with it ... (Shrugs)

Never mind, I obviously decided to do it. Now the daily reference stuff will be Twittered on the side.

This gives me the main blog space to write what I want, if I can think of anything to write.

Though Twittering the ref desk is a novelty for now, I'm sure it will wear off, though it's easier than how I used to do it. I don't have to cut and paste from a notepad, and I've now lost (I believe) most of the linking capabilities, which is a load off my mind.

I stopped daily reports five years ago because of burnout. I don't intend for that to happen again. We'll see.

General Question

I'm thinking of continuing this using Twitter in some way.

Or is someone already doing it?

Thoughts?

An Actual HARD Reference Question

Name the battleships used for heavy bombardment in the Battle of Saipan. Not the first batch of ships. He wants the eight pre-Pearl Harbor monsters they brought in the next day, commanded by Admiral Oldendorf.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? No, it was a tough question, and I loved working on it.

But it took forever because of the other questions: printer advice, how to open a file on a dead floppy, tax forms, Pelzer books ...