Dealing with the Clueless

Dealing with the Clueless might just become an on-going feature of this blog.  Who knows?  At any rate, here's the latest story from the reference desk:

Sitting at the SCC reference desk, librarians get a panoramic view of the lobby as well as the circulation desk and many other interesting library sites.  (Okay, maybe not all that interesting!)  At any rate, we can see the elevators which are integral to this story.

So I'm sitting at the ref desk about 6:45 p.m. on a quiet night when there's not much noise and everything seems to be humming along rather well.

Approaching the elevators are two women who are talking up a storm--quietly, however.  They get into the elevator.  The doors close.  A few seconds later, the elevator dings, the doors open, and the women get out of the elevator, still talking.  They look around, turn, and re-enter the elevator.  A few seconds later, the elevator dings, the doors open, and the women step out again.  They look around and return to the elevator.  The process occurs one more time.

This time they walk over to the reference desk.

"The elevator's broken," one of them announces.

Live from the Reference Desk

It's 11:30 a.m. and the CRC library is in full swing.  I just helped a student print her transcript from the e-services computer and am watching another student do so.  Two students in front of me are looking up reserve textbook call numbers in the e-catalog computers.  A young man in a pristine North Face jacket just punched a key on a computer--trying to use it?  But walked away when the sign-on screen came up.  Evidently he isn't a student here but was trying to mooch on the account of someone who left without logging out.  I've helped 8 students look up the call numbers for textbooks so far.  No interesting research questions today, alas.

Just a typical day at the reference desk.  Sigh.

What's the point?

I've been working in libraries my entire life--starting as a page in the 1950s at the Lincoln (NE) Public Library System.  In 1969 I read Theodore Roethke's poem "Dolor."  The poem changed my life. 

Instead of enrolling in library school, I enrolled in the University of Nebraska's education program and then the theater program.  Like Roethke, in school and public libraries I'd "seen dust from the walls of institutions,/Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,/Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium."  I didn't want my exciting future life to become covered in dust.

But libraries are the opiate of readers.  I couldn't stay away.