Behind the times…
Well I have obviously been quite remiss in my blogging lately. There’s just been such a whirlwind of activity, none of which has left me any time for reflecting!
I changed campuses for Spring and am now at a campus I refer to as “The Farm”. The farm is replete with all the signs of springs—baby things being born or hatched, the poop baby things leave behind (such as from all those gosling upon my new car), scantily clad students making out (don’t they know it’s still 49 degrees out?)—and I am enjoying a great many. My colleagues here at the farm maintain this is because I have the “good view”—meaning the side of the office with a window.
Despite the pastoral vista there are some downsides to working at the farm. There aren’t enough librarians working here! Sometimes I have to work these shifts that are less-than-ideal…srsly. I’ve spent a small bit of time trying to figure out whether I am a) spoiled by my other campus b) just whiny and should investigate how much worse it could be c) in a good position to recommend changes or d) better off ignoring it until I return to “my” campus in the Fall.
In addition to being stymied by scheduling, I am also stymied by our multi-use desk setup at this campus. At my other campuses we have clearly defined reference and circulation desks that are nowhere near one another—and this is a good thing. I feel that at any campus with a sizable student body having multi-use desks just creates an environment in which you can do nothing but offer terrible customer services. I spent a good part of my desk time sending people to the station right next to me. A student summed it up best the other day when he looked at me and said, “Really? You really just made me stand in line to go stand in line again?” Have you seen any footage of Parking Wars, where people spend hours in multiple lines, attempting to retrieve their vehicles? It’s like that only with manky headphones and battered chemistry course reserves.
The other issue with mixed use desks is that I catch people attempting to do my job a lot. I feel fairly intimidated by the circ workers here—largely because we don’t know one another. At another campus if I found someone unintentionally roaming into the reference aspect of question answering I would just give them a friendly reminder that they can pawn those folks off on me. They would likely grin and respond that more work for me is less work for them. Here I suspect such an approach would be taken poorly, which I take to mean I need to give further thought to this issue. My ultimate concern, of course, is that students often ask questions that mask a further information need. At any rate, I did speak with a colleague here about my perceptions of the issue and I feel as though in general librarians at this campus are more comfortable with more loosely-defined question answering roles. That’s fine, I’m not here to rock their boat, just to help paddle it along so we’re not going in circles.
