A Reason to Hate the Public Library System
The first time it happened, I was intending to borrow a book that I needed for class. By the time I trekked across town to a library branch that had a copy, the book was gone.
This time was even more frustrating. Last night, I requested online a hold on the item -- the movie Contact, a favorite of mine, which I've had a desire to see again since Tuesday's shuttle launch. I specifically requested that the item be held at the Chatham Square library branch because the catalog showed the branch had a copy of the movie and also because it's open late on Thursdays.
I checked the system throughout the day today and saw that Contact was still available at Chatham Square. So when I went to the library after work, I checked the shelves. No copy. OK, I thought, maybe they've already pulled it and are holding it for me. I asked the front desk and apparently the item wasn't available yet; it was in transit from the Mid-Manhattan library branch and would arrive in a few days.
What baffles me is why the copy of the video that the branch already had wasn't held for me. If someone requests a hold on an item to be picked up at a certain branch, the system should first check that branch to see if it has the item, thus saving time and labor. (After I realized what had happened, I remembered that I'd seen "transit hold" noted next to one of the copies of the video at Mid-Manhattan Library, when the copy at Chatham Square was still listed as being available.) Yes, the Mid-Manhattan library is one of the major branches, but it does not have significantly more copies of the video than other branches.
Incidents like this really burn me up, especially when it takes place in a public institution that I'm helping to fund.
On a completely unrelated note, I've been checking my visitor statistics and apparently some people, whom I believe were looking for porn, found my site. According to the searches report, one person who'd visited my site had searched for "thin girls with big breasts" on a search engine and another had searched for "actresses with small breasts." Don't know why my blog would show up in those search results but yikes.
posted by mlliu at 10:51 PM
2 Comments:
that's funny. i would've guessed they were searching for "cute petite asian". but these poor folks when they reach this site! i say you add a link, perhaps called "Nudie pics", maybe under "Other Media" on the right side. :)
tomo
If you place a hold, the call goes out to anyone who owns a copy. So it looks like the people at Mid-Manhattan found their copy for you first. I know because this happened to me once. If there's a copy available at a branch you visit, you should call them and have them set it aside for you.
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