A couple of months ago, I checked out three science videos from the county library so I could show them to our students as part of an astronomy unit. Then, I took them back to the library.
However, the library has been remodeling and part of their new "up-grade" was an automated check-in system. You place your items on a belt and it scans them as they travel through the opening in the wall.
Except that one of the videos didn't make the machine beep. I grabbed it back and tried it on a different barcode on the box, and then on the DVD itself. Nope. I looked around for a human. Nope. So, I thought, I'll just let it run through here and they'll figure it out.
Nope. A couple of weeks later I received an e-mail telling me that the video was overdue. So, realizing that the DVD had just been replaced on the shelf without ever checking in, I went to the library. There I told a person behind a desk about my problem, I wrote down my name and the name of the video and she said she'd investigate. I figured it was all solved.
Nope. Today I received a collections letter from the library system to pay them $50 and a $10 fee because of my lost or overdue item. So this time, I went down to the library, looked on the shelf, where--yes, the DVD was parked--and went and got a human. After I told her the whole story, she came with me and looked at the DVD, picked it up and took it back to her desk where she took my name off the Bad List.
She promised me that they had corrected their earlier problems with the new self-return scanners and that they'd had some trouble with them at first. Good. Next time I don't hear the "beep" I won't leave until someone helps me right then.
Technology good: sometimes. Real librarians: best most of the time.
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2 comments:
The people who run libraries would love to replace all the librarians with machines, since you don't have to pay the machines. Sadly they've found out that you still need people there too. Our library has self-checkout now, which is nice, but sometimes you still need to have someone there to help you out. Thankfully they usually have a person at the desk too.
I like self-checkout quite a bit. They've had that for some time. I've had better luck with that machine. Self-check is the BEST at the market. No waiting around.
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