After a long, grumpy, whiny period of underemployment, I was offered a position as a technology librarian at a busy public library south of Boston. I was, and still am, thrilled. The library is beautiful, it is part of an active library system with lots of opportunities to develop professionally, and I get a nice balance of public service/reference work and self directed technology 
troubleshooting. When I toured the library it looked so beautiful, filled with light and stained glass and current bestsellers, that I never expected that I might encounter the technology I did.
I have not seen a floppy disk since the mid-nineties, but they are the preferred way to save documents at my library. Some of the computers I ran into are running Windows NT or Windows 2000… some are running both! I had learned some basic troubleshooting and networking from my position as a graduate assistant at a large university, but I hadn’t realized how cloistered, how spoiled I had been, maintaining technology that was only three or four years young. For the most part, everything had worked smoothly, and if it didn’t work smoothly, I could pass that problem on to someone who knew much more than me. On one of my first days I asked the former technology librarian who I could bring problems I could not solve to.
“You’re it, kid” she replied, dryly.
So here I embark on a situation where the technology is unfamiliar, and unpredictable, the printers print what sounds to me like insults – “unsupported personality!” they practically shout at our circulation staff – and it’s just me, (and the answers I find on the internet), fighting the good fight.
Though public library technology was a rude awakening for me, a spoiled mac-using perpetual student, the atmosphere can’t be beat. The staff of my library are nothing but happy and thankful for what little help I can provide for them, be it clearing a terribly jammed paper from their printer or figuring out how to delete a text box in publisher. The patrons are a bit more expectant – they want to come to the library and have technology that works and is up to date. When this happens I want to yell “well - did you vote to support library funding!? hmm!?” but instead I try to remain Zen, and patron-focused, and do the best with what I have. After all, I am a public librarian now – my only job is to serve my community, and there is not much that is more fulfilling than that.
Filed under: A Day in the Life, By: Miss Information, barriers to access, digital divide, libraries, tools of the trade | 4 Comments
YES, I work in a library with floppy disks too! Every time a patron asks me how to save a document, I’m continually amazed at the answer coming out of my mouth.
I requested a floppy drive for my newest pc. I had Win2000 until this past April. Our library only started upgrading to XP this year. And we still have Office 2002. You should see my pc now, 14 USB slots and most are used. Webcam, external DVD burner (plus internal), 500GB portable drive, scanner. Actually, most of that is my personal property, but it looks impressive on my desk.
We still have floppies here, despite having computers that should be up to USB stick standards. Mostly because people still have computers that have floppy drives as their primary means of storage.
Floppies, huh? This is eye-opening.