More Interlibrary Loan stories

[depechemodefan]

ILL

I wish people would check out catalog to see if we own an item. The item you own in not at your branch, but is at another? Then don't fill out an interlibrary loan form. I found at least 5 items like that.

For ex, one person requested "The Ultimate Hits" by Randy Travis. We actually own it. It's actually called I told you so: the ultimate hits of Randy Travis. If the idiot actually bothered to just type in "Randy Travis" in our catalog, they would have found it. Or just "Randy Travis ultimate hits," They would have found it.

Then there are the people who don't know the titles of things. For ex, "The Long, Long Traylor" with Lucille Ball.

This person was a repeat offender of asking for stuff that not exists, for ex., she wanted, of the 20 items she requested, to be on audio cd. At least 5 items are not on audio anywhere. One item is only on audiocassette. I had half the mind to submit it for audiocassette, but no doubt she would blow a fuse.
One item this women requested was "Anyway the Wind Blows." She did give the author at least but I couldn't find it. Luckily I went Amazon.com and typed what she gave me and got the right title, Any Way the Wind Blows. Ugh, get the title right. A space might not mean much to you but it does to a computer.
She also made one request for "Real Wifeys" and a seperate request for "Real Wifeys: On the Grind." The program was just telling me there was the second one. So I check for the first one on Amazon.com, and notice that "Real Wifeys" is a new series, but there is only one item, "Real Wifeys: On the Grind," in that series. I got to cancel one of her requests for being a duplicate

[emax4]

I remember when I was doing POS tech support, I used the assumptive questions. Most of the stuff that was occurring had already happened at least once, except with maybe new hires. For example, if a scanner wasn't working I might have asked, "So what happened when you plugged and then unplugged the cable?", or if the monitor was blank I would have asked, "and what happened after you pressed the power button?". I was asking in a way that was pushing the reps to think and solve for themselves.

The managers at Guitar Center taught us the "assumptive close" and that's where i got it from. If a customer was interested in a piece after some Q&A we would ask, "so what card do you want to put this on today?" Are you allowed to inquire customers in that manner?

[depechemodefan]

Are you allowed to inquire customers in that manner?

People submit the form electronically, so I don't actually talk with the people. If I can figure it out (long long traylor with Lucille Ball = long long trailer), great, or I have to cancel the request, and the patron gets an email, saying "request has been canceled, can not match with citation," or wording similar like that, I forget. Actually, you hit "cancel" and a menu comes up with options of why you cancelled. So I can choose for 5 of them "available at the (name of our library)."

[depechemodefan]

Please learn the name of the books.

schutzund =/ schutzhund. Yes, it's German, I'll give you that, but you looked up Schutzhund: Theory and Training Methods somewhere. The computer doesn't know what you meant when you left out a letter, so I had to look it up.

Smart Trainers Brilliant Dogs by lewis janet =/great dogs brilliant trainers by Janet R. Lewis. At least you got the author right, so it was easier to look up, but see how you made it difficult?

meckans gold=/ Mackenna's Gold. At least you bothered to tell me it was Omar Sherif in the movie, so I had to go to imdb to figure out what you wanted.

Howard Weaver =/ Harold Weaver. Also, just telling me the title is Black fire makes it difficult. I had to go to amazon.com to figure out it's Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights by Harold Weaver.

you want Drop dead diva season 2. Hey, no one owns this because: This title will be released on May 3, 2011. I send this to other libraries, they are not goign to sit on it until May 3. In fact, they will fill out their customers's requests before you. Tough titty.

Same thing for The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. This title will be released on April 8, 2011. Stop jumping the gun.

We own these:

Kathy Reichs' books, we even have them on the shelf! Also, Eat pray love, on dvd, even though there are 80 holds on the 45 copies that are all checked out. yes, a long wait, isn't it?

Oh, you are requesting Jane Boleyn, by Julia Fox? We own that, how hard is it to look it up on our catalog?

[Librarybabe]

My favorite from the early '90's

Databases on cd-rom were new, and very popular. You could print a copy of the abstract of the article you wanted and it included the journal title, author, issue date, page numbers and ISSN. A god-send, really.
One day, an ILL request for an article was placed by a student for his Political Science class project:

"I was a spy for the CIA"...the student neglected to notice the name of the journal it was in....FOOD AND WINE Magazine! I had to call him and inform him that CIA can also mean "Culinary Institute of America". He was quite disappointed.