altivo

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Cough and a sniffle is about all that's left, thank goodness. As fast as it came, it is departing. Three days.

Spent much of the day at work finding my desk again under the new books and printed cards that had arrived Saturday and Monday. Most of that is cleared away now.

Put Tess' new halter on her this morning. It looks good and has an unexpected benefit. She sometimes pulls away from the halter on the first try, and I had figured it was because once in a while it pulls a short hair or two as it slips over her face. The new one is padded with a slippery nylon lining and it slid on before she even thought about pulling back. If she gets over that little fault, so much the better.

Only six weeks to NaNoWriMo. I need to be "training" for that, but I'm still playing catch up with the fiber stuff for the show next month. Today, though, I'm going to bed early. I think I may get to sleep all night, unlike the last three nights have been.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Home in the oak grove

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

avon-deer.livejournal.com

Wakefield library could do with some new books. It's hopelessly underused and understocked. The rural town in which I used to live with a quarted of Wakefield's population was better stocked.

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

It's a pretty reliable fact that libraries with high use counts tend to grow and improve, while libraries that are not used will stagnate. This is difficult to turn around. The end consequence is seen when the underused library is simply closed down in order to save funds. That's why we always conduct an active campaign to get people to use the library, and, unfortunately in my opinion, why we provide junk video and other "popular" material that is of little long term value. It breaks my heart though to see a family come in and take away nothing but a dozen videos with them. Not a single book or magazine. This is getting to be a commonplace occurrence.

None of the video is of any educational value, either. Just popular films and babysitting cartoons. Keep the kids occupied and out of trouble, who cares about making them smarter?

From:

mondhasen.livejournal.com

We allow 6 movies per family, 3 of which can be dvd's. Our dvd's do not take holds. However, patrons are allowed to place up to 25 system-wide holds each, all of which can be dvd's. Without violating that patron/library confidentiality thing I can still say that there are some incredibly plugged in families out there.

Also, our dvd's are not all in very good shape. It takes maybe 5 uses by the public for them to start returning with post-it notes complaining about the scratches and skipping. I had one come back with grape jam on it :o( Our machine to repair these does a mediocre job at best, only removing the lightest scratches.

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

We allow three videos per card, but kids can only take out children's videos. So a family of four can take out twelve at once. Fines on adult films are 50 cents a day, and the loan is only 7 days, so we have constant battles over the amounts due when they forget to return them.

Same problem you have with interlibrary holds. Each patron can place ten holds at other libraries, and check all of those out as they come in. So one person can have a dozen or more DVDs at once, and some do that regularly. Some have so many out at once that there's no way they're watching them all. They have to be copying them and saving the copies.

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

Kid's DVDs get scratched up in a hurry. Even the adult ones (CDs as well) come back with handprints and fingerprints in unknown substances that look like peanut butter or hand lotion or even lipstick. It's utterly disgusting.

Check in folks don't turn the disk over to look. So the next user brings it back and complains that it won't play. (They don't turn it over and look either, or you'd think they'd wipe it off.)