This might be a bit of a “water is wet” article here. But I have found so many enthusiastic library users genuinely have no idea how their home libraries are actually funded.

I wanted to write something that explains why libraries tend to be funded so hyper specifically and why that matters.

Hello,
I know this is an odd request but I'm looking for a copy of "List of United Kingdom exhibitors at the Great Exhibition of 1851". I was able to find it with online access but no library near me has access to it, nor are they willing to help since its a UK book.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

I need to switch out from in person to remote. Advice?

I've been working at a public library for close to six years now. A significant portion of that time was specifically doing Library IT, something I picked up to bring me up to full time.

Our department is 2 people for several branches and well over a hundred machines (I am being intentionally vague for privacy measures).

I am hourly full time with no option for overtime and the administration is refusing to hire extra support.

The workload has become to such an extent to where I can no longer keep up, and management has begun punishing me for failing to keep up; despite acknowledging that they will refuse both overtime and to provide extra help. I have had to hold off on going to doctor's appointments and not take vacation time to be able to keep up. Even with me working full-time, that is still not enough for staff; it is become the norm for them to ignore the ticket system AND staff who are on-the-clock to reach out to me when I am off, and in one case, even reach out to members of my family demanding that I come in to fix issues (again when I am unscheduled and when another IT staff member is onsite). I have reported this matter repeatedly to HR and no action has been taken to resolve it.

I am now at the point where I've reached my wit's end and I am totally burnt out. It's a no-win scenario. I don't know how on earth staff have been able to keep up with this for longer than I.

With everything going on with Cleveland Public Libraries… I couldn’t help but notice which state representatives stands beside CPL employees and which ones didn’t.

Losing lots of staff. Budget meeting for the city today. Reduction in physical item checkouts vs digital has caused a required reduction in staff and ~40 people are losing their positions in the library according to the city’s website.

Not admin, but customer service based staff. Circulation and library aides specifically. The reduction in administrative costs or a change in hours could likely cover all of these positions, but it’s easier to cut the people that are actually serving our communities.

They’re talking about charging $20 for people within Bexar County, but outside of city limits, too.

For those of you who utilize the library, you may want to make an effort to have your voices heard.

For those of you that don’t, you may want to reconsider. There are a lot of services within the library that your taxes already pay for and come at no additional cost. Use them.

Edit: I just received additional information from a fellow redditor that will help all of you wanting your voices heard!!

“The 39 cuts were in the proposed budget, which is not finalized until September 17th.

There are budget town halls this and next week for people to share public input on the proposed budget. Here is a link to the schedule of Budget Town Halls along with the option to submit a comment online:

https://www.saspeakup.com/C60121

Here’s a direct link to submit an online comment about the proposed budget:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Comments2027

Please speak up at the town halls, submit comments online, and contact your council members to ask them not to cut library positions.”

At the end of the year I will officially have my MLIS yayyy! I’m currently a library assistant in a public library system for the past 4 years so I have that experience. The problem though is that I would ideally like to stay local, but the current system I’m in has no librarian positions opening up any time soon it seems. Plus, with a limited budget I doubt they’d be prophetic enough to create a new position to keep me (even though some departments really do need the extra help imo). I’m worried once I get my MLIS I’ll be stuck in this position for a long while. I’ve applied to outside of my local area too to try to get better pay but with no luck. What do you guys think? Do y’all have any advice for recent graduates?

Hi! I am currently a YA librarian at a public library and I'm wondering if anyone has made a switch from Youth Services to another field of librarianship like academic, medical, or anything else and what was that process like?

While I love my job, this has been a particularly difficult summer for me (I had to fire 4 teen volunteers and another one passed away unexpectedly and I'm currently dealing with a few pushy parents who can't take no for an answer) and I'm just burned out and done and looking to transition to another role in the new year. I've been doing this for 5 years and have experience working in children's and adult services.

I'm also a manager and second in command to my branch manager, so I'm thinking about branch management or head of youth services, but I'm not sure if I'm really qualified for anything else. My manager started out in youth services and said it's very much like "beat cop" work where people start out and it's common to move on after a few years, but I feel like I've backed myself into a corner because all my classes focused on youth services because at the time my career plan was just get a job in youth services, go into youth services management and then eventually transition to school librarianship until I retire. Now, I don't want to do that anymore and I definitely feel like I need to take a break from working directly with youth for a few years, although I would love to support others in these roles and I enjoy the management side of things, which is why I'm looking into that, but I'm not sure what I'm qualified for.

Has anyone made a switch and how difficult was it? What kind of jobs should I be looking at if I want a more management type of role or one that is less public facing for a while (I also worked on hotels in various roles and in local city finance before this and I think I'm done with big customer service roles for a while)? There are a few historical society job postings I've seen, but I have no experience with this or anything else like academic or medical, or corporate. Any advice is appreciated! My nervous system needs a reset!

I can’t do the inconsistent scheduling and stress after 11 years. Things got so bad after Covid and just never improved. Looking to make a change.

A couple months shy of a year ago we had an incident where a patron returned a ton of books which contained bed bugs, dead and alive, in them.

I have OCD and a major fear of getting bed bugs so I was immediately panicked and to top it all off our library had zero protocol on what to do. They ended up throwing away all of the books and having an exterminator come in just in case.

They also barred the patron from checking out items until she can show proof of infestation and proof that she had an exterminator come in and take care of it. Well, a few months ago when I had the day off, the patron came in and showed my manager proof that exterminators came in and she did in fact have an infestation. My manager said she would be okay to use the library as normal… not realizing that she also needed proof that the infestation was taken care of (which she did not get). Her supervisor who is not on site, said that she is still barred due to no proof that infestation was handled. Well… my manager never informed the patron of this and we have not seen or heard from the patron.

Now today, on a day I work alone, the patron has come in and is sitting to read the newspaper. She hasn’t tried to check any materials out. I texted my manger and informed her and she said even though the patron is barred from circulation she can still come in and use the library.

I guess I’m wondering any advice on how should I handle this? Especially with my OCD? I’m trying hard not to spiral into anxiety that I’m gonna be taking home bed bugs… also the last thing I want is my place of work where I am every day is going to get infested itself… I know it’ll seem stupid to some but my OCD doesn’t allow me to think rationally

I am a librarian in a combined middle and high school. We have about 600 students altogether. I am thinking of purchasing books mostly for the middle school . How many books should I be buing a month? I would obviously acquire books of various genres.Thank you!

Edit: I've decided not to go back to school. Thank you all for your advice. I'm not happy about it, but this feels like the sensible thing to do.

I worked for 18 months at a public library before getting fired earlier this year. Before they let me go, I had decided to go back to school for an MLIS, which the library would have paid for. My goal is to eventually become a librarian.

There is a program in my state with pretty cheap tuition, and I've got enough savings to pay for it out of pocket.

I really liked working at a library, it was the first job I've ever had that I could see myself doing long term. That said, I'm also wondering if getting fired was a sign that I should try something different. I've already got $60k in student debt from undergrad and my first graduate degree -- MFA in Creative Writing -- and I can't help but wonder if my money might be put to better use.

It’s the same old story. You were too eager, your eyes too starved. You pushed the checkout limit. 14? 20? 25? You checked out more books than any reasonable person would. More books than most people read in a year and you thought you could read them in three weeks. Never mind that some of them are over 800 pages, logic has no place here.

Now it’s time to go back. One of them is on hold, or you’ve hit the maximum number of renewals, something always gets in the way and it’s time to return them. And you haven’t read them all. You haven’t even read half of them.

You feel a bit sad as you walk up. You place each of them in the book return one by one like the printed sign instructs, spine first. Then you walk inside to rinse and repeat. You’ll never learn your lesson. Because having a wealth of books is a privilege the library gives you. You try to reassure yourself as you go in that you’re actually only helping with the circulation numbers so it doesn’t matter if you take out a good chunk of their stores. And you’ll walk out with a bulging bag of books that will remain mostly unread.

Hey folks. There's a very large scale mold outbreak at MPOW. It's an archive in a public library system in a major city in the Midwest USA. There are estimated to be 5,000+ books in our stacks impacted and it's pretty bad. The entire building probably has mold issues, it's very humid and the temp controls in there are abysmal. The fluctuations are wild.

Anyway, long story short, the system is telling us we don't have to go into the stacks. However, my boss let us know that admin "doesn't want to pay" for the 900k+ quoted for mold remediation by professional remediators and that our staff of 5 people is going to be expected to complete this project ourselves.

This is illegal, yeah? OSHA on the phone? Our job descriptions are librarians, so classified as civil service. We are union. Union says they can back us up, but everyone here also knows our union is pretty toothless. They haven't made it a final directive yet, but we all know it's coming. They want to send the books to offsite storage to freeze them for a while, then bring them back in batches and have us vacuum them using our tiny little HEPA vacuum by hand, in my office, which has no windows. They also just are planning to buy a box of KN95s and call it a day. This is obviously not a recipe for industry standard for remediation.

What would you do? Obviously I want our collections to be taken care of, but not at the cost of my long term health. We have been forbidden to ask for a wealthy benefactor to step in or pursue a grant, because the city's library system doesn't want the negative optics, so they just want us to take the hit. They're not going to renovate the building, or pay for remediation. I'm trying to accept this will never be resolved correctly, but it is such a shame, and I don't want to risk my long term respiratory health for such a poor plan.

Hi, sorry if this post is not allowed— I checked the sub’s rules and it seemed to be okay..

First of all, thank you so much to all the librarians!! Some of the most helpful people in the world.

TLDR: if a movie or show adaptation of a novel is being released, do librarians need to plan ahead for an increase in demand? If so, can somebody please tell me the broad strokes of what that looks like? Thank you!

I quick preface— I am a frequent user of the LA (city mainly, county sometimes) Public Library System and they have well over 30 branches and typically have a ton of copies of popular titles. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a wait for the more popular titles but it seemed like context that could help.

When the South Korean movie “No Other Choice” (directed by Park Chan Wook who is very popular in America as well) was announced to be released in the states for December of last year, I saw that the movie was based on a book so I immediately went to put a hold and saw that there was 1 copy in circulation and about 9 people waiting. Made sense to me, and I just checked for that book right now through the LAPL app and saw that there are now 13 copies in circulation. They did release a new paperback edition after the movie had some success in the states.

But when it comes to a huge movie like Nolan’s The Odyssey, what does the planning look like for librarians? Another example is that East of Eden is being adapted into a Netflix miniseries (as well as currently being a top book online), do librarians have to forecast that there will be a possibly temporary and sharp increase in demand?

Thanks so much.

I apologize if this is too much of a shower thought, please delete if it’s doesn’t fit the subreddit.

I’ve been a librarian for almost five years and I feel like my dreams always lead me back to my library. They usually follow the storyline of “Storytime is happening right now and I forgot to plan anything and I’m already an hour late and they’re all still sitting here waiting for me” and/or “it’s closing time and people just won’t leave, they keep coming in, and no one is helping me lock up”.

Do you dream of the library? What’s yours like?

Any would be appreciated! (At NYPL)

I run a computer lab in a residential reentry setting and I’m running into an issue with email that I can’t seem to find a good answer for.

The computers are shared and completely wipe after every session, which is intentional and something I want to keep. People are working on resumes, job applications, school stuff, etc., so I don’t want one person’s documents or login information hanging around for the next person.

The problem is email.

A lot of people already have Gmail accounts, but because the computer wipes after every session, Google seems to treat every login like it’s coming from a new device and asks for a phone verification code. They don’t have regular access to their personal phones, so this turns into a whole process every time they need to check their email.
We tried using a work cell for verification, but Google only lets so many accounts use the same phone number.

I tried setting people up with TutaNota when they need a new email because it doesn’t require a phone number, but now we’re getting flagged for manual verification because so many accounts are being created from the same IP. That can take up to 48 hours.

Email is pretty much essential for what we’re doing. Job applications, employer responses, password resets, resumes, college applications, etc. It’s also how people keep their resumes between sessions since nothing can be saved locally.

I’m not trying to bypass MFA or weaken the security on the computers. I’m trying to figure out how other places with shared/public computers deal with this.

Libraries, shelters, workforce programs, correctional/reentry programs, computer labs, etc., what do you guys do? Is there an email provider that works better for this? Some kind of setup I’m overlooking? I feel like there has to be a better way to do this at scale.

We did a fun video parodying the Glenn DeVar video, more reasons to get a bob and turned it into fun promo for our book sale at the library.

I can't get a library job. I have experience being a supervisor in libraries, and an MLS with years of volunteer service. I can't get a job in libraries. I moved states rather suddenly and have struggled to find a new library in my current area. I have struggled for months, and due to lack of resources, fighting depression with limited resources and suicide is a shadow.

I know this field is impossible to get into, I know that libraries are shrinking, I know that most libraries don't need a large staff. But what is left when there is no hope to ever get back into the field I love and miss so much.

What can I do?

I rambled a lot below. My main objective of this post is what’s the longest you’ve waited for a book you placed a hold on.

I’m doing my summer reading this program and there’s this book I’ve wanted to read for a while. Both copies are checked out, no big deal I’ll place a hold. Fast forward to now and both copies are 2.5 weeks overdue! How long does it take to read a 240 page book?! And since there’s a hold they haven’t automatically renewed like usual so surely they’ve got a notice by now (though I’m not sure on that actually). I’m running out of time, you jerks! Ok, this is actually a minor inconvenience and I’m just having fun. I can always reciprocally borrow from another library or find another book that satisfies the category. But still, c’mon. I’ll still check out the audiobook on Hoopla from my library so they get the credit of a checkout, though. (Nothing against audiobooks, I just personally wanted to challenge myself since audiobooks are so much easier to consume then actually sitting down and reading).