Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion)

[Geezer Weasalopes]

In regard to library degrees...

If I'd been more fully aware of many US libraries having something that is variously referred to as Clerk/Librarian, Library Associate, etc, where you need to have a Bachelor's but not an MLS, and do a combination of Clerical and Reference Assistance...I wouldn't have gone for the MLS. Mind, my life would have taken a radically different direction 40 years ago, and everything since then would be vastly different, incomprehensibly so...

Anyway, the main difference between that position and a full-fledged Librarian is that there is a ceiling on promotion far lower in the hierarchy, and you'll never be responsible for setting policy or be in charge of a department; the patron at the reference desk won't have a clue, once you have enough experience under your belt.

The presumption in the US is that anyone with an MLS-equivalent degree has the educational background to run a library department or a small library, they just could use some real world seasoning first.
The reality is that an MLS is your walking papers, and no one wants to hire someone who doesn't have at least three years experience in the field if they can possibly avoid it, since it takes that long for those who can't cut it to get flushed out of the system, and pretty much no one is really prepared to work a reference desk, etc., without considerable mentoring.
So those new to the field either end up at someplace like The Chicago Public Library (CPL), where they have such a need for staff that they'll hire pretty much anyone willing to work there, or some podunk library in the middle of nowhere because no one else applied.
I was willing to relocate, so got hired at CPL and started work a month after graduating; my sister lived in our parent's basement for nine months until she found a position as the sole Children's Librarian for a county-wide library system in the hinterlands of Southern Oregon. (She took all the Children's Librarianship courses offered in the MLS program.)
Yeah.
My sister and I both have an MLS; the only thing I ever did first was get that degree...

I suspect that the Japanese recognize that with the proper educational background you don't need a Master's degree for a lot of positions in libraries if you are willing to accept that you'll never be in charge.

[Rahul Balaggan]

I moved this library post to its own topic.

I was at a loss for what to call it, so I went with something arbitrary.

By all means change the title, or let me know and I will change it.

Thank you

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@rahul-balaggan
Library trivia seems fine to me.
There have been a number of posts (not all mine) focusing more on Libraries In Our World than on the Bookwormverse, having a separate thread doesn't seem amiss.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@georgemto said in Bookworm Part 4 Vol. 2 Discussion!:

@weasalopes said in Bookworm Part 4 Vol. 2 Discussion!:

plus permission to have Food & Drink there

I disagree here. I think that many libraries disallow food in most areas, and I feel Rozemyne would quite respect that. Also portable food and drink is quite hard in the Bookverse so returning to the dorms is indeed a good thing.

Dunno if this will link back to the post or not...

ymmv.
When I was working at The Chicago Public Library (1988-1994), we'd given up.
In the face of lack of backup from the City Government, we weren't doing anything in regard to enforcing patron behavior that would put us in physical danger; given a librarian being stabbed while working the Business/Science/Technology reference desk at the Central Library, tons of witnesses, and no one from the City showed up at the court case so it was thrown out, staff took the proper stance that it wasn't worth risking our lives to make an issue of sound volume, let alone anything like food or drink, official policy be damned.

Since then, from what I've heard from friends working in academic libraries, things have gone down hill there as well.

You'll still find libraries in the US that keep things quite (so people can focus on what they are researching) and have enforced no food/no drink policies, but there are also a lot where they've given up on that (and not always due to not being able to enforce those rules, but because it produced a negative image or could be perceived as being discriminatory of various societal sub-groups, or whatever).

In-Bookverse, with only one librarian who has *no assistants, and is of lower status than a great many of the students, I really do wonder just what the pragmatic policy is in regard to food & drink in the library.

At CPL, if we had fewer than three staff members available, a branch/subject division didn't open. Whoever was in charge of the branch would call around and see if there was staff available at any of the nearby branches who could help out, but there were instances where they couldn't scrape up three staff members...
Given this was during a period where it seemed like every issue of American Libraries carried another article concerning another library shooting somewhere in the US, no one wanted to be the lone staff member...

[GeorgeMTO]

My experience is mostly just with visiting Australian libraries, never worked in one, but yeah different places approach the issue differently.

@weasalopes said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

In-Bookverse, with only one librarian who has *no assistants, and is of lower status than a great many of the students, I really do wonder just what the pragmatic policy is in regard to food & drink in the library.

When they registered, they signed a magic contract saying they'd obey the rules which include no food and drink. So the pragmatic rule is don't do it or you die. Probably keeps them in line.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@georgemto said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

My experience is mostly just with visiting Australian libraries, never worked in one, but yeah different places approach the issue differently.

@weasalopes said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

In-Bookverse, with only one librarian who has *no assistants, and is of lower status than a great many of the students, I really do wonder just what the pragmatic policy is in regard to food & drink in the library.

When they registered, they signed a magic contract saying they'd obey the rules which include no food and drink. So the pragmatic rule is don't do it or you die. Probably keeps them in line.

Right
Forgot about that; magic contracts are very useful that way, but it reminds one not to enter into one frivolously...
Underlines the differences between Noble and Commoner society, in that magic contracts are considered something one uses rarely in Commoner society due to the expense (as well as the possible unintended collateral damage if not phrased correctly and the relevant other persons informed of their existence...)

frowns to self
Clearly, someone made sure when they came up with the magic contract to be signed prior to being allowed to use the Academy Library that it didn't have any clauses concerning bad things happening if you failed to return borrowed items, at least in theory due to the possibility of it being due to circumstances outside the borrowers control.
Having lost borrowed items myself, I must admit that does happen...we never did figure out what happened to that picture book, it was in my room when I went to bed! (We later remodeled the entire floor, tearing everything down to the wall studs...it's possible it showed up then, and my parents didn't mention it to me...)
Anyway, not having such a clause was wise, but allowed higher status Nobles to get away with absconding with books and just paying a fine...which had something to do with not allowing certain materials to circulate.

Heh.
Just wandered back to being Bookverse specific, after all!

[PinkShinyRose]

American libraries sound awfully violent. I somewhat doubt Kazuki-sensei would have that in mind though, unless Japanese libraries suffer similar problems. Somehow I suspect that Japanese culture may be less tolerant of violence than Western culture, and American culture in particular.

Apart from the convenience that are magical contracts, another difference could play a role. I think much of the public library collections in our world, especially the freely accessible parts of collections, would contain books printed in large volumes for relatively limited monetary value. They would be relatively easy to replace either by ordering another copy from the printer (possibly a newer edition, but that may be a boon), or from second hand copies in general circulation. This would of course be different for restricted access parts of the collection, but I think the regulations in the reading rooms for those are generally far stricter and I would expect much better enforced.

Bookverse library collections are much more like the more restricted parts of our worlds collections. Books are often unique and if they are not, only a few hand-written copies exist. Both their rarity as well as the much higher costs of producing a copy makes their conservation far more vital. Of course people wouldn't allow you to put coffee next to a book with a monetary value that could buy you several buildings, let alone a unique piece that could very well have been one of Einsteins original manuscripts that never went into print.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@justaidan MLS: Masters in Library Science; somewhat apropos considering the novel we're reading, no? In the US, you can't get hired as a librarian without this degree.

[Justaidan]

@weasalopes said in Bookworm Part 4 Vol. 3 Discussion!:

@justaidan MLS: Masters in Library Science; somewhat apropos considering the novel we're reading, no? In the US, you can't get hired as a librarian without this degree.

Had to look that up. Think there is literally one course in the entirety of Ireland that even offers something similar under a Master of Library and Information Studies as an undergraduate course. Two more offered as postgraduate stuff but you'd need an undergraduate in something else already.

Most of the library jobs seem to require additional experience/other degrees or not require it at all (Well the few jobs that are even up)

Edit: Had another look: Nope most jobs will accept similar degrees rather than a specific Library one. Good thing these days since you don't want people trying to pigeonhole themselves into something.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@justaidan
The history of the development of the library profession in the USA is odd, to say the least.
A large number of the positions which require an MLS/MLIS degree could arguably be done better at lower educational expense if the library field used focused certification akin to what's used within the Computer Science field.
It's a sad commentary that the vast majority of entry level positions require 2 or more years of post-graduation work experience within the field...

[Justaidan]

@weasalopes Looking here in Ireland the majority of the admittedly extremely limited librarian jobs would require something in addition to a librarian degree. Stuff like a Music degree, science etc.

Since the courses here include "Information studies" the places are probably aware that most people will move into governmental etc work.

Most people don't actually end up in the exact thing they trained for or don't stay there long term.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@justaidan
If looking for work in a college or university setting in the US, they pretty much all want a separate subject masters in addition to the MLIS.
The Public Library sector doesn't.

The shift from calling it an MLS to an MLIS was already starting while I was in grad school (1987/1988), and the current degree program is just a tad different than it was back then; from an educational perspective, the Internet as we know it is after my time, the only thing dealt with in my coursework related to accessing remote information via computers was in the cataloging course, where it was focused on how to access and utilize the major shared cataloguing utility within the US (OCLC; the folks behind WorldCat). In facility online public access catalogs were a new thing; physical card catalogs still dominated library floor space. Accessing a library catalog from your home PC? Well, first off, what home PC?

Anyway, the MLIS is supposed to familiarize you with pretty much every aspect of library work...to a degree.
General reference work, cataloging, library administration were require back in my time, and then electives were available in specialized aspects of cataloging or reference or library administration; children's librarianship and school librarianship had specialize courses you needed to take as electives, which I didn't take, but I did take coursework on maps, government documents, and serials cataloging and management; those three areas are considered weird even within the field.

The idea was that someone with an MLS might have a chance of surviving if they got hired as the sole librarian in charge of a rural library. For that...on the whole, it worked.

In the last several decades there's been more and more focus on remote access to information as a result of the Internet, which is where the Information Science aspect shows up; online reference services, digitization projects to convert print resources into electronic form and make that available, and so forth.
I can now access digital facsimiles of materials held in Europe from here in the US Pacific Northwest in real time, where when I was in school...finding the funds to travel to Europe to do research and properly arranging in advance to access the materials, provided I could even verify they existed and who held them? It is to laugh, hysterically.

It is such a different world.

[Justaidan]

@weasalopes said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

@justaidan
If looking for work in a college or university setting in the US, they pretty much all want a separate subject masters in addition to the MLIS.
The Public Library sector doesn't.

The shift from calling it an MLS to an MLIS was already starting while I was in grad school (1987/1988), and the current degree program is just a tad different than it was back then; from an educational perspective, the Internet as we know it is after my time, the only thing dealt with in my coursework related to accessing remote information via computers was in the cataloging course, where it was focused on how to access and utilize the major shared cataloguing utility within the US (OCLC; the folks behind WorldCat). In facility online public access catalogs were a new thing; physical card catalogs still dominated library floor space. Accessing a library catalog from your home PC? Well, first off, what home PC?

There was similar done in other degrees as well. People don't stay in one job anymore, it's something like 18 separate jobs before reaching age 30, so degrees also include a lot of soft skills and emphasis the transferable ones.

Sometimes it was fun to ask the students "Now I want you to imagine writing up this report but you are not allowed use the internet."

Anyway, the MLIS is supposed to familiarize you with pretty much every aspect of library work...to a degree.
General reference work, cataloging, library administration were require back in my time, and then electives were available in specialized aspects of cataloging or reference or library administration; children's librarianship and school librarianship had specialize courses you needed to take as electives, which I didn't take, but I did take coursework on maps, government documents, and serials cataloging and management; those three areas are considered weird even within the field.

The idea was that someone with an MLS might have a chance of surviving if they got hired as the sole librarian in charge of a rural library. For that...on the whole, it worked.

Oddly we had the discussion in work today (I work for a medical device multinational) and we are trying to make a library of everyones' rather diverse backgrounds simply because we may need to pursue new innovations or respond to competitor's actions. The same idea applied to research groups I was in, rather than looking for someone with the exact skill set you look for skill sets you don't have with the intention to simply train the person up in the ones they don't have since there are a ton of experts already in the team for it.

There is (obviously) a heavy focus on soft or team working skills lots of critical thinking and diverse backgrounds.

It is really hard to find people who are experts in different areas though and HR can't even interview them without help since they'd have no idea if they were making up their experience by talking fancy XD

In the last several decades there's been more and more focus on remote access to information as a result of the Internet, which is where the Information Science aspect shows up; online reference services, digitization projects to convert print resources into electronic form and make that available, and so forth.
I can now access digital facsimiles of materials held in Europe from here in the US Pacific Northwest in real time, where when I was in school...finding the funds to travel to Europe to do research and properly arranging in advance to access the materials, provided I could even verify they existed and who held them? It is to laugh, hysterically.

It is such a different world.

It's really a massive improvement.

I've worked in a ton of different areas from biosensors, electrocatalysts, drug delivery, tissue regeneration and medical devices and I've said this regularly to people: "You've no idea how much things are going to change or how quickly." "No, it's even faster than that."

When asked any future people imagine is kind of like now but a bit different, then I ask when do you think sci-fi-thing-X will first happen? Then I have to explain it already happened over a decade ago or longer.

If we were to graph technological progress over the last 12,000 years (since the first city was established give or take) it's basically a flat line that then goes straight up.

Hell, I can log in to technician's vision to troubleshoot stuff at work from home (pandemic sped up acquisition of stuff like this) and that is not all that fancy. (And doodle in 3D on their vision :P)

Though back on the library side I am really happy to see the EU push for all publicly funded research being publicly available but I could really use an AI helper to work through all the available data :_)

---

Tying back into the Bookworm discussion I've always been making the argument that Books and Libraries are being used to represent the transfer of knowledge that then stimulate society and progress like what we are seeing now in our own society. I had a bunch of big posts somewhere highlighting this that I can try and dig up or give a brief summary.

Even the very first paragraph at the start of the series makes it clear that the word "book" to Rozemyne actually means "Crystalisation of mankind's knowledge and wisdom" (This was also the source of her first big argument with Ferdinand as he described books as "art".)

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@justaidan
I'd make the argument that the movable type printing press had a greater impact upon technological advance, cultural change, preservation & dissemination of knowledge, etc., than anything prior.

In the recent era...a lot traces back to the Moon Race; so much is traceable to the technological developments involved with that effort, it's unreal. Couple that with DARPANet, which evolved into the modern Internet...the last gasps of the Cold War's technological competition have proven profoundly influential.

Although one can point back as far as the 1880 Federal Census for some of the foundational technological developments of modern computing; the Hollerith punch card & IBM were direct results of how long it took to process the information, in that Herman Hollerith was involved with that process and came up with the punch card tabulating machine in 1884; I used a version of those cards during the period I was a Computer Science major in 1980-1982 for writing programs in COBOL and FORTRAN.

Some of my earliest memories are of watching Gemini launches on TV in day care...I just checked the dates in Wikipedia, I would have been four when the earliest manned mission was launched.

I reiterate. It is such a different world now!

[Justaidan]

@weasalopes said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

@justaidan
I'd make the argument that the movable type printing press had a greater impact upon technological advance, cultural change, preservation & dissemination of knowledge, etc., than anything prior.

You'd be right to do so as well. Even the entire premise of the Bookworm series is watching this change happen in an alien society :D

In the recent era...a lot traces back to the Moon Race; so much is traceable to the technological developments involved with that effort, it's unreal. Couple that with DARPANet, which evolved into the modern Internet...the last gasps of the Cold War's technological competition have proven profoundly influential.

Although one can point back as far as the 1880 Federal Census for some of the foundational technological developments of modern computing; the Hollerith punch card & IBM were direct results of how long it took to process the information, in that Herman Hollerith was involved with that process and came up with the punch card tabulating machine in 1884; I used a version of those cards during the period I was a Computer Science major in 1980-1982 for writing programs in COBOL and FORTRAN.

Some of my earliest memories are of watching Gemini launches on TV in day care...I just checked the dates in Wikipedia, I would have been four when the earliest manned mission was launched.

As a slight aside there isn't really many countries in the world that have changed as much as Ireland has in the last 30-40 years (I don't know every countries progress but in Ireland culturally and socially it's been a massive upheaval). There are too many things to go into here.

I reiterate. It is such a different world now!

Better ctrl-c that phrase for every couple of years from now on....

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@salientmind said in Bookworm Part 4 Vol. 6 Discussion!:

@weasalopes it's pretty cool,but it's still pretty expensive to implement. I think it started spreading in earnest after 2010. Here is one example

Some RFID systems allow you to scan all the books on the shelf with a wave of a wand. You can also check out a whole stack of books by placing them on a sensor. Not sure the convenience is worth the money for midsized institutions. But it would be a cool basis for magic tools.

My first job out of high school (I took a gap year) was as the full-time Children's Page at the [redacted] Central Library.
One of my responsibilities was shelf reading; making sure the books were in the proper order on the shelves was a constant effort outside of the time spent shelving the stuff just back from circulation. There was dedicated time set aside for it, and a chart that tracked my progress so we knew where to start up next time.

Over the years I've come to accept the judgement of my then supervisors; I was one of the best pages around.
It was a busy department, but compared to the shelves I've accessed in other libraries?
I done good.

Books being out of order on the shelves is a major hassle in libraries of any size.
This RFID stuff, properly implemented, would not only confirm what's on shelf (inventory status verification) but alert you to stuff that's out of place.
All while you walk down the rows of shelving at a steady pace.

This. Is. Wonderful!

The initial implementation...
I'd want grant funding and specialized staff hired just to do all the retrospective processing of existing materials.
If one can swing that... the current situation in regard to patrons actually entering libraries and being in the stacks is to the benefit of such projects; pretty much all collections are operating as if they were closed stacks now, so no additional disruption to services should occur while this is being done.
You could really buckle down and work on this if you had the funds available.

[SomeOldGuy]

@weasalopes Thin, serialized RFID stick-on tags are cheap. RFID scanning devices are cheap (you can buy them as add-ons to your Raspberry Pi computers).

The hardware isn't the big issue... Pulling every book, adding the tag to it (you may have seen similar tags used in bookstores), registering the book/tag combo in the computer system, and putting it back in the right place... You've already imagined the costs.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@someoldguy
Integration with your existing Library Management System (LMS) is going to be a core concern.
Hardware-wise, security gate compatibility and the aesthetics and idiot-proof operation of self-checkout and item return stations will also be up there.

While you can set up a Raspberry Pi reader unit on the cheap, it needs to be able to exchange information with your LMS, and that standardly requires a program that can handshake seamlessly with proprietary software, which is often the sticking point when it comes to homebrewed equipment; is such software available for the OS utilized by the DIY device, and who is providing it and maintaining compatibility with upgrades to the proprietary software?

There's also that tech support for such devices is all in-house, and if you experience staff turnover such that you no longer have anyone on staff who understands said tech... No, really, that is still a valid concern in the Library Community, being good as an end user of the tech doesn't mean any understanding of the tech at a decent support level.

There's all sorts of things you need to consider in regard to long-term viability of any solution, and given the instability of library funding, in-house tech support is pretty durn unstable; the folks who really understand the stuff get snarfed up by the venders for significant pay increases, unless there are reasons they aren't willing to relocate.
Add the reality of positions going unfilled due to hiring freezes and such, even positions that the Library recognizes as being crucial; whoever funds the library may be an ass, trust me on that.

[piisfun]

@salientmind said in Bookworm Part 4 Vol. 6 Discussion!:

Some RFID systems allow you to scan all the books on the shelf with a wave of a wand. You can also check out a whole stack of books by placing them on a sensor. Not sure the convenience is worth the money for midsized institutions. But it would be a cool basis for magic tools.

Having a background in commercial inventory control, this would actually work a lot better for a library than in a store, simply because you only need to buy it once, an in small batches as you gain new books.

A store typically needs to turn over the entire inventory fairly quickly, so it isn't cost effective at all there.

---

@someoldguy said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

@weasalopes Thin, serialized RFID stick-on tags are cheap. RFID scanning devices are cheap (you can buy them as add-ons to your Raspberry Pi computers).

The hardware isn't the big issue... Pulling every book, adding the tag to it (you may have seen similar tags used in bookstores), registering the book/tag combo in the computer system, and putting it back in the right place... You've already imagined the costs.

Nah, that's actually the cheap part. You simply post a job at the local temp agency, they bring in a large group at minimum wage, and install all the tags.
You then hire a more trustworthy and better paid group from you local inventory service and have them scan everything in for you.

Registering the book would be as simple as a database that correlates every RFID tag serial number with an ISBN.

All you need from your own staff is a few IT personnel to set up the software for the inventory service and a large number of pages to re-shelve everything.

Not kidding, The inventory service that I worked for was called in to do something similar for a warehouse.

[Geezer Weasalopes]

@piisfun said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

@salientmind said in Bookworm Part 4 Vol. 6 Discussion!:

Some RFID systems allow you to scan all the books on the shelf with a wave of a wand. You can also check out a whole stack of books by placing them on a sensor. Not sure the convenience is worth the money for midsized institutions. But it would be a cool basis for magic tools.

Having a background in commercial inventory control, this would actually work a lot better for a library than in a store, simply because you only need to buy it once, an in small batches as you gain new books.

A store typically needs to turn over the entire inventory fairly quickly, so it isn't cost effective at all there.

---

@someoldguy said in Library Trivia (from Bookworm Discussion):

@weasalopes Thin, serialized RFID stick-on tags are cheap. RFID scanning devices are cheap (you can buy them as add-ons to your Raspberry Pi computers).

The hardware isn't the big issue... Pulling every book, adding the tag to it (you may have seen similar tags used in bookstores), registering the book/tag combo in the computer system, and putting it back in the right place... You've already imagined the costs.

Nah, that's actually the cheap part. You simply post a job at the local temp agency, they bring in a large group at minimum wage, and install all the tags.
You then hire a more trustworthy and better paid group from you local inventory service and have them scan everything in for you.

That could actually work.

Registering the book would be as simple as a database that correlates every RFID tag serial number with an ISBN.

Won't work; has to correlate to the individual record for that specific book that's already in your LMS system, so you need to tie it to the bar coded circ label placed on the cover by the library.
So you slap the RFID tag in the book, scan it and pull up its record, use a different type scanner with the circ bar code, the bar code attaches to the RFID as the LMS ID.

ISBN is too general for this purpose, since it doesn't distinguish between individual copies of the same ISBN'd work.

That said, the basic concept is the same.

All you need from your own staff is a few IT personnel to set up the software for the inventory service and a large number of pages to re-shelve everything.

Heh.
Well, actually, since you aren't saying they have to develop the software, maybe not heh.

Presuming the library is using an LMS that works with RFID and still supports optical scanning of bar code circ labels, set up a couple of workstations with the hardware interfaces to do both and you are in business.

Do it with laptops and you could even use them on carts going down the stacks processing the books on the shelves; the only real problem there is making sure you don't accidently skip a volume during processing.
So if you have the downtime in regard to retrieving items for the public, yeah, the first lot of temps just takes the books off the shelves one by one, slaps the RFID in it, and put it on a book cart or suchlike.
The second lot of folks do the 'tie the RFID to the bar code' jazz, setting aside anything that responds weirdly for the librarians to deal with.
And then... your library shelvers curse your name while they sort the books on the book trucks and go start shelving them. (Especially if you are using Dewey with long strings after the decimal point.)
After that is done, someone does the walk through to verify by RFID interaction with the LMS that everything is in proper order.

Not kidding, The inventory service that I worked for was called in to do something similar for a warehouse.

When the central collections of the Chicago Public Library were moved from their scattered locations into the new Harold Washington Library Center circa 1990, that's pretty much what was done; specialist firms were hired to move the materials in the Special Collections division, but other than that, it was lowest bidder local moving firms.

Getting everything back on the shelves properly was a nightmare, as they were the lowest bidder firms and the folks they hired did shit like toppling book trucks as they wheeled them along. Apparently one of the teams who did that were caught in the act by a library department head.. and the books were in proper order on the cart before she let them move one step further. But many weren't caught in the act.

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Libraries are somewhat different (as you mentioned at the beginning), in that the inventory control software works on the premise that you keep sending the same inventory out and back.
But for a project such as this, that doesn't impact the physical conversion process of items on shelves.