oddball operational questions TSANDERS@AUDUCVAX.BITNET 07 Mar 1991 14:57 UTC
We have been undergoing some changes locally and I had a few questions for other locations if you are willing to be less serious for awhile. Our director is pushing hard for us to get all possible newspapers direct delivered ASAP now that we have a drive-up bookdrop. (This idea used to surface periodically but we couldn't cope with people driving by at 6 am and tossing the newspaper "on the lawn".) I am having a hard time complying because we had already renewed most of our local papers and these will not permit us to change until the next time we renew. However, a number of papers (actually not many offer local delivery) have refused to deliver because we are "on the wrong street" or no longer offer local delivery at all. The director has since come up with the idea that we could g et one of the local drug stores to accept deliveries for us and I could pick thpapers up on the way to work. (How I am supposed to convince them to do this is another story.) What I would like to know is, how many other libraries have "home delivery" and how has it worked out? Do you do this for just the local papers, for anyone who delivers in town, or??? How have other locations dealt with special services which were offered in the old days but which current staff cannot/does not want to handle? We have been growing and adding subscriptions yet we are expected to keep up a number of services such a photocopying tables of contents. These services are not known/made available to everyone but just to a few old-timers with good connections. While this is good from a service standpoint (we could never handle the demand if all faculty and graduate students were treated equally) it does not seem terribly fair nor does it seem the best use of staff/student time when we are criticized for being behind in so many crucial areas, such as creating an online Series Authority File. The capper came the other day, when I was pulled away from important personnel work by the director to meet (once again) a retired professor who bugs us periodically (how much could I claim on my income tax if I donate my journal backfiles to our sister university in Guatemala?, etc.) who some years ago had had an arrangement with the then serials librarian to save stamps for his collection. The director assured him we would resume this practice. After the director left, I told the prof that he would have to come back and talk to the head check-in clerk when she returned from sick leave and see if she felt they could do it. I was steaming but but cool. We are so pressed with so many things, how can we be treated as if we had nothing better to do than save stamps for people? Do others have this situation in their libraries? How do they handle it? Thomas Sanders (tsanders@auducvax)