Dear Other Libraries:

A little advice, from our library to yours.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries: Get comfortable with making phone calls once in a while. Whether to patrons, or to other libraries, sometimes you just can't get everything you want from cryptic emails. Can you guess how much we love hearing about a problem three weeks after it occurred, then being told "well, I DID email you"! We search our email and find nothing. We search the junk/spam folder: nothing. We call you, and come to find out that you emailed someone who left our library two years ago. Not completely your fault, since for some reason that person is still listed in our staff directory... However, if you had called, we could have resolved two problems: that of your original complaint, and our outdated website. When we contact someone through email and don't get a response in two days, we assume something else is up: perhaps they are out sick? Maybe we typed the email address wrong? Maybe they hate us and are purposely ignoring us? In any case, we take the extra step to make the phone call and get the solution we need. We promise, it is completely painless.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries: We're all professionals here. Perhaps I don't know you and you don't know me, but let's not assume the least of each other. Please don't make unsolicited "courtesy calls" to our library to explain to us "how things work" in library world. We already know. We went to library school, too. Maybe we sound younger than you, or you know the person who had this position 15 years ago, but those aren't reasons to assume that we just arrived, fresh from the farm. The next time you think another library needs advice from you, also think about how much you know about their background and working environment. Then, if you still feel the need to call them and tell them how to know if a book is checked out or not, call and tell them about this blog instead. You'll both thank us later.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries:

Many librarians work during “the holidays.” Yes, Christmas and NYD are federal holidays and most people will not be working those days, but every other day surrounding those holidays are not automatic days off for many professionals. If your library is going to be closed for two weeks, don’t make an article request from another library two days before you go on holiday. Especially don’t then complain that you never received the article when you return and the article has expired from the lending library’s server. We were here, doing our jobs. You were in Paris. Give us a break. If your patron really needed the article that badly, they wouldn’t have asked for it from a library that was going to be closed for two weeks. Wait until you get back, THEN make the request.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other libraries: Please get some young people on your staff. For the love of technology and having the know-how to turn off pop-up blockers, you need at least one person on your staff who was born after 1970. You shouldn't need to contact your IT department every time you need to open a PDF. You are supposed to be the gatekeepers to the information world; this includes being able to understand your own computer and email system. If it is too much for you to learn these complicated technologies, there are plenty of young, hardworking librarians in line to take your spot. Maybe it's time to take a step back.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries: Student employees are priceless and you're lucky to have them. Sure, you have to train them and they aren't always reliable, but think about hat your library would be like without them? Do you think your institution would be taking on another full-time employee to make up for the extra workload? Think again. We don't have student employees in our library, and believe me, it can be Hell. So the next time someone comes into your library and can't find the book they are looking for because it has been shelved in the wrong place, think twice before you throw your student employee under the bus by saying, "Oh, sorry, must have been one of the work-study kids shelving that day." Besides being unnecessary and ungrateful, it just makes you sound like a jerk.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries: Not every library has a staff member who can translate from Chinese to English. Some libraries are lucky to have staff with any additional language knowledge to English. Yes, you found that book in our collection, but it wasn't gifted here by me, and I have no idea what those characters mean. It really doesn't help to provide us with the English-ized version of the Chinese characters, either. The best thing we can do to find what you're looking for, is play the matching game. Crude as it may sound, it's the closest we're ever going to get to "knowing" Chinese.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries:

Thank you goes a long way. We love Thank you notes, and save most of them. Unfortunately, we only receive notes from about 10% of the libraries we loan to. Do you know what it feels like to loan eight volumes of The Oxford English Dictionary across the country, only to receive them back in a disheveled box filled loosely with packing peanuts and not a thank you note in sight? Well let me tell you, it pretty much just makes you hate humanity. It is appropriately redeeming for humanity, when the next box you open has a perfectly packaged book return from Japan, which appears to be packaged in the exact manner in which you shipped it out, with extra care, and a hand-written thank you note expressing their deepest gratitude for loaning this extremely helpful material. Think about Japan the next time you return something to another library.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries: Get some generic email addresses and allow all your staff to have access. Here are some examples: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] It does not help anyone if your website and/or policies directory just says "For all your reference needs, contact Marybeth Johnson at [email protected]," and then Marybeth is out for 3 weeks with bird flu. Do people get bird flu anymore? Well, it could be anything: perhaps Marybeth doesn't even work there anymore and nobody has updated the website yet. The point is, that there should be several people who can access different points of contact in all departments of your library. To be clear, this goes for phone numbers and voice mailboxes, too.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries: We don't care who your patron is. Telling us that your patron is a faculty member does not make us work harder or faster. We don't handle it with special care or tie a pretty pink bow around it. We don't regard our role in helping your faculty member fulfill her research as a gift bestowed upon us from above. Everything will get to you in the same professional manner that we always fill requests: with quiet resentment. You're welcome.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries:

While we're at it, nearly as horrible as packing peanuts, are padded envelopes filled with that gray recycled matter. Thanks for doing your part for the environment, but these envelopes were not meant to be reused. Once an envelope has been opened and resealed so many times, that it is more packing tape than envelope, then it is really time to move on. The bubble-wrap envelopes are at least more safe, because when we inevitably need to rip it apart like ravenous mountain lions, they don't explode into a Pompeii sized cloud of filthy gray composite. Next time you are doing your supply ordering, leave these packing disaster items off the list.

[dearotherlibraries]

Dear Other Libraries:

Packing peanuts are the worst. They are especially the worst for packing books. Use them at home when you are shipping that ugly "antique" vase to Aunt Sally this holiday season, but leave them out when you are packing books to be shipped to another library. If you think this is an acceptable procedure, you have clearly never opened a box of books that has been loosely filled with packing peanuts; the books are all disheveled with packing peanuts between the pages and stuck to the cover (not to mention, all over the person digging them out of the box). Just don't use them. Trust us.