#libraryblogging

[wizardysseus]

a library patron asked if we had a service that was both highly specific (no one had ever asked before) and free on the internet (publicly available information with a publicly available government search index) and i heard "[auditory processing delay]....said you had it." so i was like, i'm sorry, i don't know who told you that, but unfortunately no, here's what we can do instead. and she said "i'll ask again" and pulled up chatgpt on her phone. girl i was right there.

[alwaysalreadyangry]

my workplace has the 4 day work week and they manage this by making people work long hours that burn them out so they quit lol

(i’m part time and as part of reasonable adjustments i was like okay i can’t actually work 8.45am to 8pm days. please give me normal hours. and to their credit, they did! however! why are they giving people those hours lol)

[verbose-vespertine]

Patron was looking for LSAT resources today, and the books I helped her find had stickers on them warning that they did not come with the online resources. She asked what that sticker meant, and I explained that originally those test prep books would come with a one-time use code for additional online resources, but that we can’t really include that code with the library copy, since it can only be used once (if we even had the code to begin with when we acquired the book). I was offering her some tips for where she might look to find those resources (doing an online search for [textbook name] + online resources or looking for LSAT prep subreddits), as usually students help each other out in terms of not having to pay for those things, and someone will likely have shared a copy somewhere, when my coworker was coming in for the shift change. Coworker, overhearing our conversation said, “or you could just ask chatGPT.”

Patron and I just stared at her. Patron said she wasn’t really comfortable asking chatGPT for help with her LSAT test prep, and I could have leapt over the desk and hugged her. Coworker was like, “it’s not cheating, I promise!” Patron said that wasn’t her concern, so I reiterated other locations she could look online to most likely find where someone had shared the exact online resources from the book, without resorting to asking a glorified chatbot.

If I ever end up in court and find out that my lawyer studied for their LSATs using chatGPT, I am immediately demanding to represent myself, and I need my fellow library staff to understand why suggesting chatGPT and continuing to push for it was a problem. This patron actively wanted to keep using her own brain and critical thinking abilities, and her ability to search out sources and determine their trustworthiness - skills that are vital for a legal professional to have???? They should not be outsourcing those skills to AI??? She just wanted a nudge to help her know where to look, so she started with what is supposed to be a trusted source of where to look for information, the library, and you told her to ask fucking chatGPT I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind

[wizardissues]

just very confidently gave a patron potentially wrong information. i welcome death

[the-ghost-of-jason-todd]

i feel like an npc at my job and i love it

catch me walking around in a library in a small historical house, straightening books on the shelves and occasionally calling out a hello to people who ring the bells on the door coming inside

[wizardysseus]

at the local middle school for an event, wore my camp half-blood t-shirt in case any of my library kids needed to recognize me. and one of them did find me but a different sixth grader saw and said "camp half-blood? ✌️ SLAYYYYYYY"

[alwaysalreadyangry]

imagine the busiest public library in an inner city borough regularly has only three staff members working. for like two hours (or more! last week it was four hours one day) at a time. these staff members take breaks and have to go off the library floor to do urgent admin tasks sometimes. this regularly means that there are two people on the floor. maybe only one of them is at a desk. one of them might be having to read to a school group, or going to the back room to get a box of paper or some books that have been delivered from another library. so you’re the only person there right now for the public to speak to. you haven’t got any security guard cover because it’s not 3pm yet. there’s a long queue of people. the phone is ringing. you need to place a stationery order on an arcane work system because the receipt paper for the printers has vanished and if you don’t order it you won’t get a replacement. this system has no proper written instructions, so you have the video tutorial that your employer shared five years ago — it is of course slightly outdated — open on your screen, muted, because you work at a library, and you have to keep scrubbing through the subtitles to try and work out what you’re supposed to write in one particular box. the council that operates the libraries often forgets that library staff exist and they not everyone works in an office. there are teenagers yelling and laughing around you loudly so you can’t hear what the library patron you’re speaking to at the desk is saying. the teens are eating food at the computers, even though there are signs up telling them not to and you’ve repeatedly asked them not to eat in here because the library has a rodent infestation due to library patrons eating and scattering crumbs and debris everywhere. it’s two hours until close. you’ve been emailing the external provider of a key library IT system for days because the library printer keeps printing in colour instead of black and white, which is a good way to haemorrhage money. the technical support person promised the issue would be fixed by two days ago and then stopped replying to your messages. the IT manager in the libraries is on leave for another week and so is the only other person in the library who know how to use any of these systems. when you email the council’s IT they take days to send basic cryptic replies. someone else told you about something that’s broken and you can’t remember what it is now.

it’s been a day. i still can’t believe how low the staffing is

[wizardysseus]

a library patron just asked me why we shelve movies standing upright instead of stacked so she can read the titles without turning her head