A situation the other day reminded me of the this Theodore Roethke poem:
DOLOR
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
Im not always crazy about the amount of red tape, forms and beurocratic procedures associated with doing my job, but when the end result is placing a book in someones hands faster, sometimes you do need to rely on little slips of paper and golf pencils, sad as they may be. I was filling out a rush cataloging request for an undergrad who needed a just received programming book soon, the book he needed was in the library but it hadnt been assigned a call number yet. As I was finishing up with this transaction, a prof came up and said that he was in the same boat, and I said ok we can check on your book looked it up, and sure enough it was another situation where the rush catalog request form was needed.
So I offered to fill out the dolorous slip of paper that would ensure that the book would be in his hands in a few days.
Prof: Where is the book?
Me: It is probably back in technical services waiting to be cataloged.
Prof: Can I just look at it?
Me: If you want to be able to look at the book in the next couple days, we can fill out the form, and it will be held for you when it is available for checkout
Prof: You mean you cant go back and bring the book out?
Me: No, I dont know where it is, the only thing we can do to make sure you are able to check out the book soon is fill out the form, do you want to do that?
Prof: You have no idea where it is?
Me: No, but if we take a minute to fill out the form, a cataloger will look for it and process it faster just for you.
Prof: No, Ill check back later.
Really we spent more time debating the process than it would have taken to fill out my poor lonely rush catalog request form. And I did feel a little bit like a cog in the grey institutional machine when all my answers to his questions were variations on “should we fill out the form?” but sometimes that’s all you can do.
2:12 pm on May 12th, 2004 1
Great post (and poem…)… What a dilemma… The patron’s obviously frustrated with the situation and doesn’t comprehend why you don’t have the book, but the remedy to him seems equally bureaucratic/stifling… sigh… i always liked rush requests…
7:39 pm on May 12th, 2004 2
Thanks!
I was so torn while it was happening, because I kept asking myself “Is there any answer to this question other than the form?” since he seemed so reluctant to take advantage of it…but there was nothing else I could have done, alas.
12:08 pm on May 13th, 2004 3
Perhaps it’s the language. I liked the “just for you”, but forms to fill out … [shudder] Not to mention the term “technical services” (talk about terra incognita for the average civilian). And the general uncertainty: “it’s probably” and “no, I don’t know where it is”. If you, a librarian, don’t know, a civilian would think, why would some technician (or whoever would work in a place called “technical services”) know? To civilians, a librarian is a librarian is a librarian.
How about: “It’s in the cataloguers’ office — that’s not my bailiwick, but let me jot down a quick note to them to move that book to the top of the pile and get it out to the circulation desk for you tomorrow, maybe next day at worst if it’s a toughie” might have worked. Always assuming your online catalogue (yes, I know, Melvil spells that without the -ue) actually tells you if the book’s been received in the first place.
Tanuki
7:06 pm on May 13th, 2004 4
I didn’t transcribe the whole conversation directly but at one point I elaborated on why I would have no way of knowing where the book was — explaining that I wasn’t sure where the book was because the catalogers had it (not my department) — and I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for it because it could be on some shelves, it could be in someone’s office or it might be on a book cart somewhere. The form that I had in front of him was a tiny slip of paper, the only information I needed to get from him was from his library card, and I actually offered to fill out the form for him
I guess I can see how it would be frustrating for someone to not be getting a definite answer about something, but I try never to make any predictions about someone having a book or an answer to their question in a specific length of time unless it is directly under my control. If I know that I’m going to be following up on a question, I’ll say something like “I’ll e-mail you an answer to that tomorrow.” In this case, I didn’t want to give him a date estimate on when he’d be getting his book because I didn’t want to make a promise I couldn’t keep.
Ok, that was a really long winded response! I probably could have handled the whole thing better but the right thing to say to him just wasn’t coming into my head at the time
8:11 pm on May 17th, 2004 5
Our system allows for shadowing records in the OPAC so we tech serv gnomes can work on newly received titles. We still get some rush requests (either directly from patrons or via the bibliographer), but if we run into trouble with an order or a title, there’s not a demand queue building up.
12:37 am on May 18th, 2004 6
Ah, there isn’t really a backlog in cataloging where I work, didn’t mean to give that impression:)
I only have to put in a rush request maybe once every 4 months, but this day was an exception with 2 in 5 minutes!