On 10/23/06, Mark Lause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
All this customer BS is pure corporate BS. Almost each and every time some
monstrously large institution announces that the new politics are to make it
"more welcoming and less intimidating," you have to figure that they're
reemphasizing talk and planning to ignore your needs.
As part of our "new" student-as-customer library service, the institution
just cut staffing a bit more than 20%. After years of having to work the
bugs out of the IDs, it finally got them working...so they threw them out
and assigned everybody spiffy new IDs, which you aren't given but have to
contact the library to get. And, not having enough people to staff the
place, they have a spiffy new phone tree.
FWIW, our situation is different. More and more books flow into the
library, because an old lady died -- and even though no-one had heard
of her -- gave big bucks to it. Of course, we don't have enough space
in the library, so the older books went into storage. A new library --
one that's "customer-friendly" and Barnes & Nobles-esque -- is
promised but they haven't broken the ground yet. It looks like they'll
actually build it, which is better than the two previous "new
libraries" that were supposed to be built. The good news is that the
old library was customer-friendly in another way: the guy who gave the
money insisted on being involved in the architecture (as usual) so
there was a big atrium that wasted a lot space that could have been
used for books. The skylights leak water, while the fountain (in a
library!) put more water vapor into the air, none of which was good
for the books... It looks like the new library will be an improvement
over that, and also over the threat implied by the words of one of the
Trustees: "why do we need a library when we've got the Internet?"
--
Jim Devine / " Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths...I
mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on
something like that?" – Barbara Bush
(urban myth? no. See http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/barbara.asp)
