Wonders of the Library Card, Book Gizmos

Woodrow Wilson's Bookplate.

Library cards are very interesting objects. Where I work, many patrons, we call them patrons not customers in library land often come to my desk and ask for books then tell me they don't have a library card.

This is a rather odd experience for me. I've noticed quite a few people who use the library don't have a library card. Some patrons just come in and read the books in the library only. They'll come in the library and sit down for a couple hours in their favorite spot and read. This is especially true for the newspaper and magazine readers. They will get the daily paper and read their paper then leave.

It has gotten to the point where I can recognize a few of them. There is one gentleman who reads music books and kung fu magazines. Another person reads books on hip hop and cartooning and draws cartoons.

They apparently don't want library cards.

Other people will come in and ask for books for their school assignments then tell me they don't have a library card. I ask them how they are going to check out their books and they say it doesn't matter. But, they keep coming back to get more assignment books. This happens with all kinds of books.

We can't come out and say hey you are you taking the books out without a card. This seems to happen sometimes, a book will go missing for a couple weeks then you find it again. A person will complain, why can't we find this book you should mark it missing. Because of the disappearing and reappearing book phenomena we can't really do it until it has been gone for a couple months. Things reappear in the most unlikely fashion.

Patrons put books back in the wrong places. They think, they are helping us by putting away the material for us. Please leave the books in the book drop or give the books back to the librarian at the desk when you are done with them. Or, if they are especially enterprising, they will hide a book on sex, drugs, or some other subject so they can get it later when they come back. They don't want their mother, their wife, or their friends to know they are reading something so they don't take it out.

Often patrons will come in and ask us what have they read in the last month. We wipe our records after a book is returned. We don't store peoples reading habits. Library records can be subpoenaed by the police or even Homeland Security in the United States. They are a record of a persons character. Lawyers can and do use lists of what people have read as part of their testimony in court. They also comment on whether people have fines and have lost items. They also have lists of what people plan on reading, because of the holds list on peoples cards.

We also wipe record of computer use after a certain period to insure privacy as well. With the new computer logging systems, it requires that you use your card barcode number to logon to computers. While this has caused some drop in usage, it has deterred a lot of problems. There are a lot less fights and arguments around the public computers because a persons identity is known. Also people use a lot less pornography in public.

If a person collects enough fines on a library card, it can effect their credit rating. Some libraries report fines to a credit collection agency. Not returning books in some cases will effect a persons credit history.

Also report your library card stolen or missing immediately and don't lend your card to other people. A lot of little kids will lend their library cards to their friends and then find out their friends have checked out a lot of books and not returned them. This happens a lot. We have to pardon this a lot of the time. The children often don't know not to do this.

Library cards are one of the first cards which a child receives. Usually a child will come with their class and get a library card. The teachers call in first and sends the information in to be processed. Then the class comes to visit, is given a tour, then the library cards are distributed alphabetically to the students.

Sometimes, a person will come in and say they forgot their library card can't they just give their name or show some identification. Because library cards are private records which can be subpoenaed we can't do this. I know it sounds kind of strange and extreme, but we have to be very careful. Some people claim librarians worry more about privacy than most government and police agencies.

The library card can be used to place holds. We have a few people who fill their holds to capacity on movies, then use their childrens or mothers card to get more holds. Movies are becoming more popular than books in many cases to check out. There is one disabled gentleman who calls every day and places two to three holds over the phone using the barcode on his library card for movies. There is another lady who calls and places three or four holds every single day for old television shows like Gilligan's Island and The Honeymooners.

There doesn't seem to be much discernment in what people check out in movies. Most people in my experience seem to check out more two star reviewed movies than well rated movies. It is really incredible. Bride of Chucky, Halloween III, and National Lampoons Vacation are far more popular than Masterpiece Theatre. There seems to be more of a focus on mindless escape than thinking.

The library card is also a primary piece of identification. It is one of the pieces of identification which can be used to acquire a social security number, a drivers license, or a passport. If you read about how people create false identities, one of the steps which people often take is to get a library card.

It is standard to ask for a piece of mail and a piece of identification with a signature or picture to get a library card in most places that I have worked. Usually we only give a card to local residents, but if a person works in the area, we will also issue a card to a person as well.

These are thoughts on library cards.

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Here are some general thoughts. I decided to add some book gizmos to the items I am selling. I haven't sold anything yet, but hey it is still an experiment. I put the Kindle ebook reader and some playaways on my site. Playaways are a plug and play audiobook. You turn the audiobook on, put on the earphones and listen. They are very convenient for libraries.

Kindle is Amazon's new ebook reader. It uses something called electronic ink, a new form of screen display technology. http://www.e-ink.com/

Magnetic bookmarks have a few advantages over regular bookmarks. They don't slip from place, or fall out of books because they are held in place magnetically. They are also slightly heavier than regular bookmarks. I think they are a nice little invention.

The Recruiter, The Competitive Intelligence Professional And The Librarian

Aynsworth Rand Spofford, Librarian of Congress, 1864-1897

For a while during the internet boom, I worked as a sourcer locating people for an internal recruiting department. There are some librarian positions at the larger recruitment agencies and outplacement services. At the outplacement companies they help executive locate companies and find information on companies they are applying to.

Internet Sourcer is a kind of specialist position, it is finding people on the internet to interview as hires. It can also include other things like examining company web sites, tracking certain kinds of news, looking at layoffs, finding sales leads, and identifying similar companies to the company you are working at.

At the company, I took the beginning, AIRS training-- Advanced Internet Recruting Strategies. http://www.airsdirectory.com/, What this really means is that I was trained in how to find people on the web. Recruiters look at web sites, forums, people databases, blogs, alumni associations, social networking sites and anywhere that people may gather on the internet. They often take the time to learn the more advanced commands in internet search engines like link, url, file type so they can find specific documents leading to resumes or people. They also use specialty people search engines http://www.zoominfo.com/ , a biographical database, http://people.yahoo.com/ an excellent people finder.

I also used many more web tools as a recruiter than as a librarian. I had the Alexa toolbar which I checked to see who used a certain site. I used the http://www.completeplanet.com/ deep web search engine, I had several tools on my desktop like http://www.webferret.com/
and http://www.copernic.com/


In addition, they extract information from web sites, phone numbers, titles and addresses using software like Black Widow Site Sucker, or Webmole email extractor. There are various trainers who show people how to find people on the web. Probably the most famous of these is http://www.jobmachine.net/ , Shally Steckerl. There are others as well.

This makes many of them more proficient in searching the web than many librarians who are mainly focused on searching for documents and basic information. In fact in most public libraries, librarians are discouraged from letting people use email, forums, or blogs because they consider it disruptive. Things like myspace.com and facebook.com are frowned upon. But, this is where people are going to now. Social networking sites are becoming very popular. There is even one to share personal libraries, http://www.librarything.com/ .

Things like http://www.linkedin.com/ are an incredible opportunity for people who find people as their business on the web.

Librarians in the public setting and in many cases in the corporate setting have fallen very far behind the curve in using the internet to find information. They are now just getting into blogs and other social networking software. Recruiters have been there from the beginning because they are looking for people.

The other group which is using the web much more extensively than librarians in many cases are the competitive intelligence professionals. People like David Carpe use the internet as a source for finding information about competitors companies. http://www.researchzilla.com/ is one of David Carpe's websites. They also spend a lot of time finding people to interview so they can find out what is really happening inside a company. The web is a giant interconnected group of people that are writing about themselves, their interests, the places they are working at, the places they are working for, and just about anything else under the sun.

Librarians are not connected into the people part of the web. The web is not static, it is not the printed page. It changes dynamically. This is a nice little diagram of what social networking is:
http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html . People share websites in clusters. There is usually a central authoritative website which most people are linked to or discuss. The same goes for newsgroups. There are usually one or two people who have the most clout in a forum or newsgroup. Finding these people often identifies who you can ask where certain information is.

Librarians should take the time to learn more about how the internet works, especially the people focused part which is being ignored for the most part.

A lot of the strategies I have used to promote this site have come from my brief experience as a sourcer. I have searched newsgroups to find the proper group to post to, I have searched forums to identify where to drop links, I have looked at social networking sites to see where I can post comments or get widgets.

Anyways, this is part of my two cents for the day.

I have learned quite a bit trying to promote this web site. It has been a very interesting experience so far.
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Let me get back to what I am focusing on books. I am thinking about bookselves right now and the proper way to shelve books in a bookstore or library.

Ideally when books are placed on the shelf, all the spine labels should be visible as well as writing on the spine, they should be hal an inch in from the edge of the bookshelf. The books should not be packed too tightly together because it breaks the spine of the book and causes it to split in half.

There should be a bookend on each shelf with approximately 3-5 inches of space at the end of the shelves. Shelves should be dusted regularly.

No books should be laid on top of other books. This can be dangerous because this leads to a chance for the books to fall off the shelf and hit somebody. Larger books can be dangerous especially if they fall and hit someone in the head or foot.

Ideally bookshelves should not be too deep and should include a bracket in back to prevent the books from falling behind other books.

I've always found steel case bookshelves to be the best. Wood may look nice but it is not very practical in some cases.

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I am further into A Feast for Crows. I am on about page 60.