Full moon but wintry economics

[altivo]

Makes it feel like Wednesday already. This morning before dawn the moon shone into my window through the trees and it was like a painted picture in a children's book maybe. Slate blue sky and big yellow moon setting behind the winter branches, it was almost surreal in the sharp edges and simple forms of the image

Comments

[avon_deer]

sucking all the loose money into their own privileged pockets. And, in spite of all of that, people in this area continue to resist any shakeup in the familiar status quo of politics. Any suggestion that a reform is in order produces shrieks of "socialism, socialism"

Makes you want to bash your head against a brick wall doesn't it? :/ This kind of attitude is common in the UK as well. It's akin to running after the man who just just robbed you, shouting that he missed a few pennies in the bottom of your pocket.

[altivo]

Yes, or even denying that the robbery has happened just because the robber was wearing an expensive suit of clothes.

[schnee]

The very same users who come into the library to read a newspaper because they don't want to spend the money for it themselves, who use our internet connections and books that were purchased with community funding are "utterly opposed" to socialism. Yet what is a public library other than a socialist institution? Pooled resources are used to build and maintain a common facility for the benefit and use of everyone in the community. Don't try to point that out to them, though, unless you want a huge display of histrionics to ensue.

Ah, you're not using the same logic as those people, though. To them, "socialism" means "I fund things that help others"; if it's "others fund things that help me", then that's good and patriotic and as American as apple pie. :)

[altivo]

Unfortunately, I think you are mostly correct in this.

[dakhun]

We are also borrowing more, as people come to us requesting books that they probably would have just purchased for themselves two years ago.

That's an interesting observation! I think an increased amount of frugality is the reality these days, so people may well be using free resources like public libraries more as a result. And that change might even be permanent to a large extent.

Just the same, don't mistake local or temporary cold weather patterns for global cooling or the next ice age.

[altivo]

Well, you know I'm not falling into that particular trap on climate change. While I do think there's something serious going on, I agree that pointing at some local anomaly in either direction is irrelevant.

I have a lot more objective data about library activity, though, as you might expect.

[animist]

There are people who parrot whatever Glenn Beck says, but others of us favor the middle path of federalism versus privatization or socialism. Schools and libraries have historically been under local control with state guidance. They are part of our intellectual infrastructure, just as roads are part of our physical infrastructure. Any true conservative (note the small "c") ought to support schools and libraries, regardless of party - or what any talking head my say.

[altivo]

Unfortunately what we usually see is "qualified" support. Libraries are OK as long as they don't have Darwin on the shelf or too many books that are critical of conservative attitudes and politics. Likewise schools are OK as long as they don't teach evolution, sex education, or critical thinking.

[mondhasen]

So many thoughts, so little space.

I can't convince 'them' at work to use the new stickers on the hard cover books: these are only applied to the paperbacks. It's up to Circ to change the books' status, odd as that might seem.

The card pocket (yes, we still use cards) is stamped with the date the book is first catalogued, and we give fiction one year, non-fiction six months, from that date. When we notice the date is past, during checkin, we then change the status from 'new' to 'adult,' 'adult non-fiction,' 'adult paperback,' an so on, and the type from some nebulous-to-non-catalogers number to another nebulous-to-non-catalogers number (a 248 to a 94, for Fiction, or to a 100 for Mystery, for example...).

We are in that 'small library that wants to provide services like the big boys' category. I'll rant about that on my own pages sometime rather than tie up yours, though ;o)

[altivo]

Circ staff used to be responsible for changing books from "new" to ordinary status here. So many were missed or incorrectly done that I took it over

[mondhasen]

I'll have been here 11 years this month, and for almost ten of them I never bothered changing any codes except the ones identifying location, and the item type to determine whether or not the book could take holds (1=adult, 8=new/no holds). Nobody told us to change the item codes! until last summer. I hate to think how many books are 'wrong' in the system.

We find books in the stacks all the time that are supposed to be in the New Books or on display. Of course it's my co-workers who screwed up because I would never do that...

The cards we use have due-date stamps only. We still have books with the olde-tyme stamp-and-file info cards in them, but those cards are no longer used except to confuse patrons (and co-workers).

[altivo]

You're on Millennium there, right? I know much of RI is. Anyway, the ICODE1 field is largely of use in statistical reports and not much else. It has no effect on circulation policies or anything else. Most places have failed to use it consistently as far as I can see, but fixing it isn't necessarily difficult either. So I wouldn't worry about it. ;p We have a huge list of silly codes that are assigned in ICODE1 that was created by people who had no idea what they were doing. We continue to put them in there, but nobody uses them for anything productive.