Reference Blog #4

I covered the reference desk again on November 10th with Erik Johansen, a longtime reference librarian. The greatest thing about working with Erik (that he's presumably learned over the years) is that he is superb at multitasking. He can help a patron in person while helping someone on the phone and scheduling something on the computer. In short, Erik is more than the ideal reference partner if you're at a two person desk: he's the ideal reference librarian I'm trying to become. And I'm not even saying that because Erik might read this. It's simply true.

With that in mind, I only watched this desk for an hour on this day, but it was a very busy one. As soon as I came out a patron approached me and asked me for help locating a Francisco Goya sketchbook. He didn't know any titles, so I conducted a search of the area where it might be (knowing it wasn't very big and we both happened to be standing near the art section) and decided to visually scan the shelves for a sketchbook he might be interested in. I shouldn't have been surprised that I wasn't able to find anything, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to look while we were there.

I asked him to come back with me to the desk so we could sit down at a computer and do some research to figure out a better idea of what he was looking for. He was able to identity the color of the book's cover, but no title or author. After doing some extensive searching in our system, SearchOhio and OhioLink (SearchOhio being the busiest library exchange system in the U.S.) and not locating the item, I googled the terms we had discussed and was able to find the item's title on amazon.com by having the patron locate the cover picture.

After doing all this I was able to locate the the title through SearchOhio and told the patron I would be happy to put it on hold for him. He provided me with his card and I looked it up. This particular patron had over $100 in fines, meaning he couldn't check out or reserve anything until he had paid it down to $5. I informed him of this and he shrugged and said, "Yeah, I know about that. Whatever." I explained the policy to him after which he left (without paying any of his fines).

This would not be abnormal except for the fact that I later found out this is a regular patron who has been made very aware of his fines. This has not been the first time I've experienced this, so I think it's worth writing about in this blog. Just because I am new (and relatively so) does not mean I will change policy or break rules. That patron spent nearly 30 minutes with me knowing that he couldn't get that item with any other librarian. Knowing that he spent my time having me look for an item in hopes that I would be ill-trained or be willing to make an exception is frustrating. How does someone gain respect in the public eye without physically being the person they see at the desk every day?

I've come across this same issue as I have been trained and now regularly cover several other departments in my library. As much as I want to love the patrons we serve (and usually, I really do), occasions like this make me frustrated. I don't want these interactions to influence how I treat other patrons, so this experience was a great way to measure if I was doing that or not. I paid close attention to my mood with the following patrons. It's important for me to remember that whoever comes in line next with perhaps an equally challenging search is probably nothing like the patron who knowingly wasted my time.

I guess in the meantime, until I'm more familiar in the public eye here, I'll hang tough and keep learning, one day at a time. After all, at least 95% of the patrons I serve are reason alone to develop an interest in reference librarianship.

(And just in case you do read this, thank you Erik!)