Today's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

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#3299293 21-Oct-2024 07:59

neb:

Someone supporting the Auckland libraries position to put books on hold shelves based on randomly-assigned numbers rather than sorted by surname so you can find them. Admittedly the papers have an obligation to publish both sides of things, and the reaction to this piece of idiocy has otherwise been uniformly negative so this may be the one exception.

I've been picking up books almost weekly and the change to the hold shelves hasn't inconvenienced me.

At first I thought it would be a pain but it's actually ok.

(I also used to work in a library so I know some of the pain points.)

My referral links: BigPipe | Mercury

Behodar

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#3299296 21-Oct-2024 08:06

I'm not a regular library user, but isn't the hold shelf for books that patrons have reserved? Why are random people ferreting through reserved books in the first place? I would have thought the shelves should be in the back office where people can't mess with them.

Bung

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#3299299 21-Oct-2024 08:22

Behodar:
I'm not a regular library user, but isn't the hold shelf for books that patrons have reserved? Why are random people ferreting through reserved books in the first place? I would have thought the shelves should be in the back office where people can't mess with them.

Then you'd have to ask a non existent staff member to get it for you. If the number system makes it less possible for people to snoop on your book choice that would be an improvement. Most library computer systems should stop a reserved book being issued to another user.

cddt

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#3299302 21-Oct-2024 08:39

Behodar:

I'm not a regular library user, but isn't the hold shelf for books that patrons have reserved? Why are random people ferreting through reserved books in the first place? I would have thought the shelves should be in the back office where people can't mess with them.

Cost cutting means it's self-service now.

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SomeoneSomewhere

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#3299312 21-Oct-2024 09:51

In Wellington it's been self service for a few decades. There's a shelf around the back away from the normal collection area, with a slip in each book. I haven't used it for years but they used to be ordered by surname. The librarians might see someone acting fishy but it's not guaranteed.

I can see why you'd want to semi-anonymise it given increased pushes for book-banning and nosy bastards.

Option B would be to paper-wrap each book and only mark the recipient name on the outside, but that's time consuming and wasteful.

cddt

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#3299333 21-Oct-2024 11:03

SomeoneSomewhere: In Wellington it's been self service for a few decades. There's a shelf around the back away from the normal collection area, with a slip in each book. I haven't used it for years but they used to be ordered by surname. The librarians might see someone acting fishy but it's not guaranteed.

Self-service with a slip in each book was what it was previously in Auckland, until this change a couple of months ago.

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neb

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#3299471 21-Oct-2024 14:16

Bung: If the number system makes it less possible for people to snoop on your book choice that would be an improvement.

Right, because all the Mossad agents hanging around the lending shelves checking whether Auntie May has the Yates Gardening Guide on hold have been a huge problem so far.

For people outside Orkland, this farcical excuse is the official line from the libraries spokesperson. One of the letters to the editor challenged them to provide even a single instance of this being a problem. I expect their response will be either to invent a different excuse or just silence.

Edited to add: And for the poster who said "it works OK for me", I assume you reserve maybe one book at a time and go on with the email ready on your cellphone ready to pick out said book. It doesn't work for people who reserve multiple books (which are now sprayed across the set of hold shelves), people picking up books for neighbours, anyone who's forgotten or doesn't have a cellphone or doesn't get mail on it, someone dropping by on the way home from work to check whether their book's in, ...

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3299484 21-Oct-2024 14:39

It's not the Mossad folks. It's the MAGA-esque anti-woke folks who want to out anyone getting a book on sexuality.

neb

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#3299489 21-Oct-2024 14:47

SomeoneSomewhere: It's not the Mossad folks. It's the MAGA-esque anti-woke folks who want to out anyone getting a book on sexuality.

And this is something that's actually happened in a NZ library, or just a threat someone made up?

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3299504 21-Oct-2024 15:19

Does it matter? We react to bomb threats rather than wait until it's a bomb blast. There have been death threats made against libraries & events held at libraries.

The mere existence of such threats, or simply the possibility of being outed (family finds book with name on it, info leaks back to parents, disowned & kicked out) is enough to have a chilling effect on its own, causing people not to reserve books that they would prefer not to have linked to them.

It doesn't need to happen here: things that happen overseas will probably happen here eventually (see: Christchurch) and sticking our head in the sand asserting that it hasn't happened yet so never will is not smart.

I'm still not convinced that this is some huge impassable barrier to reserving books, although there may well be ways to improve it, such as allowing you to scan the library card on the checkout machine to get a list of books ready to collect, and perhaps grouping all books on the shelf for one person under one number.

deepred

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#3299509 21-Oct-2024 15:31

On a related note...

"I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." — J. Edgar Hoover

"Create a society that values material things above all else. Strip it of industry. Raise taxes for the poor and reduce them for the rich and for corporations. Prop up failed financial institutions with public money. Ask for more tax, while vastly reducing public services. Put adverts everywhere, regardless of people's ability to afford the things they advertise. Allow the cost of food and housing to eclipse people's ability to pay for them. Light blue touch paper." — Andrew Maxwell

neb

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#3299511 21-Oct-2024 15:34

We react to credible, real threats, not imaginary bogeymen. OK, we react to imaginary bogeymen far too often, but we shouldn't. And in particular we need to consider whether the adverse effects and downsides are justified, otherwise we may as well all just lock ourselves inside our houses 24/7 for "safety". In this case given the almost universal opposition to it, and the fact that book holds have been done this way for... decades? without anything bad happening, it's a bogeyman threat that is inconveniencing a large number of people for no benefit or gain.

Edited to add: And I don't even want to open the can of worms that is our panicked overreaction to bomb threats, where any crank that wants to cause chaos can do so with a phone or email without having to even consider creating an actual bomb or, indeed, doing anything at all except pulling the right lever and sitting back to watch.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3299515 21-Oct-2024 15:49

neb:

We react to credible, real threats, not imaginary bogeymen. OK, we react to imaginary bogeymen far too often, but we shouldn't. And in particular we need to consider whether the adverse effects and downsides are justified, otherwise we may as well all just lock ourselves inside our houses 24/7 for "safety". In this case given the almost universal opposition to it, and the fact that book holds have been done this way for... decades? without anything bad happening, it's a bogeyman threat that is inconveniencing a large number of people for no benefit or gain.

Edited to add: And I don't even want to open the can of worms that is our panicked overreaction to bomb threats, where any crank that wants to cause chaos can do so with a phone or email without having to even consider creating an actual bomb or, indeed, doing anything at all except pulling the right lever and sitting back to watch.

The article above notes that there's a documented, significant, rapid rise in hate, threats, and violence against both LGBT and libraries and especially the intersection. 'Worked for decades' (and often didn't) also describes for example lax cybersecurity, untested backups, untested backup sites, poor redundancy and design in critical facilities, and all kinds of safety violations. Any serious incident report invariably has a dozen red flags leading up to it that were ignored.

As thresholds for acceptable risk decrease (they are, it's inevitable, it's practically defined in legislation), we need to increasingly act on near-misses and theoretical risks, rather than wait for someone to die.

It's unclear whether any kind of formal cost-benefit or risk analysis was done for this change, but it seems likely that it's relatively low cost, and it's not clear how much of the criticism will still be valid once everyone is used to the new system.

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#3299516 21-Oct-2024 15:50

deepred:

On a related note...

Something broke there.

caffynz

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#3299530 21-Oct-2024 16:42

neb:

Edited to add: And for the poster who said "it works OK for me", I assume you reserve maybe one book at a time and go on with the email ready on your cellphone ready to pick out said book. It doesn't work for people who reserve multiple books (which are now sprayed across the set of hold shelves), people picking up books for neighbours, anyone who's forgotten or doesn't have a cellphone or doesn't get mail on it, someone dropping by on the way home from work to check whether their book's in, ...

I didn't think you could check out books for other people as the hold is under their name.

I didn't have my phone once, so just asked at the desk, they looked it up and told me which shelf. Easy.

I actually like the new system - more private, and less paper waste :)

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