the adventures at the University Library continues
Some of you may recall previous adventures had at the Cambridge University Library (UL). Today I enjoyed the great weather here on the island and walked to the UL for another visit. The reason: the book I loaned was over due. By a month. You may ask how a punctual guy like me misses a deadline. Firstly, I’m not that punctual; secondly, I didn’t get any late notices. So, not knowing exactly for how long I could have the book loaned for, I just ignored it.
Background: yesterday I went to my college after some weeks that I have not been there. I checked my pigeonhole and saw three (!) late notice letters from the UL. Yes, these were pieces of paper in envelopes sent via regular mail to my college. Who sends late library notices via snail mail anymore? You now know the answer.
Anyway, I enter the library and go to the counter and say “I think this book is a little overdue” (as a tribute to one of the best comedies ever made, UHF, in the scene “Conan the Librarian.”) I knew fully well that there is no reasoning with them, since they got better things to do than be understanding to poor students, so I knew I’ll need to pay the fine, I was just going to have some fun. Conan takes the book and says “yes, 2 pounds.” As I shuffle for the money I say, “you know, you sent the notices to my college, I don’t live there… do you send email notices? “, “well, if you give us your real address then…” (email inquiry ignored) Library:1; Saar:0. Me: “You see, I didn’t know the book was over due…” Conan: “It’s stamped right here on the slip inside the book.” Library++. I went for the kill, “tell me, do you do the e-mail thing?” Stare. Pause. “We don’t send emails.” Although I lost by score, I once again felt an inner victory knowing that I proved to Conan that they are a bit backwards, technology wise at least. I quickly went out back to the sun and the 21st century.
These were 2 GBP well spent, though. Now I know where to go to get material for this weblog during lull times.
May 5th, 2006 at 5:49 am
Although the English experiences are to be expected I must admit that I still find it odd. In the US I have found that librarians were consistently the most technologically forward people I knew. Maybe I just hung out in the wrong libraries but they had computers, Internet access, on-line search help, computer coordinating lending between branches, etc. etc. etc. years before most people even owned a home PC. Oh well, England is a different place.
May 6th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Love it. Love the picture. Keep those library adventures coming in.
May 14th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
In case you wonder why we don’t have email reminders in the library:
We used to. Until a few years ago, we had a quite wonderful electronic library catalogue system developed by a University employee. It could do anything you want, including sending you reminder emails at specifyable days before your loan expired. And if something was missing, you sent an email to the local developer and your wishlist was added soon. Then, all of a sudden, the University bureaucracy decided that perfectly functional, well-understood and highly optimized self-written software was an anachronism, unsuitable for a 21st century educational institution. Everything had to be off-the-shelf software.
So the University threw out their wonderful own developments and replaced not only the library catalogue, but also the central accounting system, the system for working out budgets for grant proposals, the student database, and others with “commercial off-the-shelf” solutions. In all cases, the results have been embarrasing desasters, to put it mildly. In the case of the new 10-million-pound accounting system (originaly called CAPSA, now after a lot of bad press renamed into UFS) designed and configured for the University by Oracle, the University almost came to a grinding halt for weeks because of its bugs. Experienced employees came literally in tears out of training seminars where they started to realize what a hell of defunct Java applets their working day would be from now on. Many of the problems still have not been fixed and workflows have become far more complex and inflexible. If you don’t like the new Voyager cataloging system, you haven’t even scratched the surface yet of how much the quality of our services has suffered in the last five years after fine local software products were replaced with ware from the other side of the pond.