Our library has a revamped website. The home-page jumping you: an overpowering, visually disjointed, way too large moving band of 5 never-changing items - much like and of the same purpose as the electronic board at the Front St. mall-entrance. Or to be found on Yahoo's or Youtube's home-page: except there you usually can Close Ad X - while here you can't.
And there you are: ready to join a book-club with books predigested just for you. Ready to make BiblioCommons(!) friends: indicate likes and dislikes, post critiques of the latest Nora Roberts. Trend away: yes, your opinion is important to us - we take you very seriously! Somewhere between Twitter and Facebook. A little Telus like it is.
Yet there are some less sexy - while actually important - basics left unattended to.
Shelving in Adult-Fiction - including lit, crime, mystery, spies - can be inconsistent when a decision wasn't made clearly which category an author's oeuvre fits: according to whoever responsible for the catalogue in the dark ages. So an author may be shelved in 2 separate sections. Did you know that! Spies - for instance - don't belong anywhere: even though they often are very literate, definitely mysterious, deal in fiction and approved crime. Decisions, decisions, decisions!
This elementary problem has been known to those in charge since before the furniture was rearranged some years ago. Then it was: let's get the remodeling over with first - we'll look at this after. Well - this is after. And with all the additional services offered - the time for revisiting basic cataloguing/shelving now is appropriate.
Although renewing/returning/fining is covered on the new website - time allotted to borrowers and why are not.
Scenario:
You borrow a book and have 2 weeks to finish reading it - no matter how thick it is, how much time you have to read it, regardless of you being a slow reader. Because if someone else put a reserve on this: you can't renew it and will be fined for every day you're over the red line! Finished or not! Because whoever next in line is more important than you are.
Let's say you obey! this rule - which goes totally against any per/conceivable purpose of reading - Hello, Library! - the next person may have similar reading-habits: this being War & Peace - and the scenario repeats. And possibly repeats. Or not - depending on whether you simply have to finish reading it - willing to pay accumulating fines. Which - incidentally - is one way of making money. WhateverCommons not so much.
Both issues are bottom-line in a library. Should be!
By the way - do not click on Email Us in the bottom-right corner of the home-page: your computer may crash!
Guy Laramee
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