Library Revolution

It usually means that your toddler has been feeding him PlayDoh. (Again.)

He doesn’t have a rare and incurable intestinal disorder. He hasn’t been abducted by aliens and replaced with an extraterrestrial canine. Don’t call your local news station, the federal government, or try to sell the poop on eBay as a unique natural phenomenon. The explanation is so much simpler than that.

I find that this is usually the case when dealing with our libraries, as well. Good old Occam… the simplest explanation is usually right, and the simplest solution will generally do the trick. This rings especially true when working with the ILS. Whenever I’m troubleshooting with library staff members, I start with the simplest solutions - and most of the time, that’s as far as we need to go.

For example:

• When your search doesn’t work, the first thing to do is to check the search you put in. I can’t be the only person out there who has made a mistake!
• None of the overdues generated today!! Is it one month after a holiday or other library closing?
• Patrons find it difficult to select the correct item in the OPAC because the edition statement doesn’t display on the browse screen? OK, so let’s turn that on.
• We had an item that’s supposed to check out for two weeks go out for three days! Maybe, just maybe, is one of the codes in the record incorrect?
• Our patron go a bill for 9 million dollars for a paperback novel!! Hmmmm…. Maybe someone scanned a barcode into the item’s price field?

My point is that I encounter people every day who want to all out the dogs over some “emergency” or other phenomena related to their ILS, when all it really takes to explain the situation or correct the issue is a bit of common sense and some perspective.

Don’t worry, for the other, more serious problems that can’t be dealt with so easily I’m more than willing to raise some hell. But that’s not every problem. Nor should it be. Sometimes you really do need to check the simple things before escalating an issue to full blown emergency status.

You’ll usually find that the dog’s poop stops being blue when your toddler runs out of blue PlayDoh. Next week it will be orange.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 10:42 am and is filed under Etc., Library Administration, Library Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.