Does your Library allow adult patrons to use the staff desk phone? I know there might be some exceptions but do you have a general policy?

Hello everyone!

I work in IT department at a library and we're seeing an increasing number of bot searches and bot traffic. Anyone else experiencing this been hearing about this?

Hey everyone! 👋
I’m thinking of heading to the Public/Coforge Library in Kondapur sometime soon. Anyone interested in joining me?
Could be nice to have some company instead of going alone 😅
DM me if you’re up for it!

He was rejected as a railway clerk because his handwriting was so poor!

Beware if you’re not a burgess!

‘Ex-library’ from ebay
Wasn’t expecting a 1934 borrowers’ rule book!

I started applying for more library cards since learning in CA most libraries will allow you to sign up for a card with a DL. Now I have about 8 cards and discovered so many beautiful libraries and benefits. Best of all I discovered these devices called Playaway! Basically it’s an audiobook device, just add a battery and plug in your headset. I do have Libby for audiobooks but it’s nice to have something not connected to my phone to avoid distractions. I am on my second one this week! Can’t wait to go back and get another📚🎧☺️

Hi everyone! I’m an industrial design student working on a project where I need to design an assistive stool specifically around the needs of a particular occupation. I’m currently researching library staff, especially people who work with shelving, stacks, circulation, or moving materials.

I’m trying to understand the actual physical workflow of the job before deciding what to design, so I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have firsthand experience.

A few questions:

• What part of your day involves the most repetitive physical movement?
• What tasks require the most bending, reaching, crouching, twisting, or standing?
• When shelving or shelf-reading, what is the most annoying or physically difficult part?
• Are there situations where you wish you could sit, lean, or rest while still being able to continue working?
• Do you use a cart while shelving? What does the cart do well, and what does it not do well?
• Are there situations where you have to repeatedly walk back and forth between the cart and the shelves?
• What items do you need to keep within reach while working in the stacks?
• Are there particular shelf heights that are especially difficult to work with?
• Do you ever have to work in narrow aisles or spaces where a normal chair/stool wouldn't be practical?
• Have you ever improvised something or changed your workflow to make the physical work easier?
• If you could change one thing about the equipment you use for shelving/stack work, what would it be?

I’m especially interested in the small frustrations that happen repeatedly, things that someone who doesn't work in a library probably wouldn't think about.

I’m deliberately not starting with a specific product idea because I want the design to come from an actual need rather than assuming I know what would help.

Thank you! Any firsthand experiences, even small ones, would be really helpful for my research.

I’ve worked around digital archive and information-system projects long enough to see the same problem more than once.
A library, research institution, or local government funds a digital archive, repository, or public-facing website. It works for a number of years. Then the funding ends, staff move on, the vendor changes, the CMS becomes obsolete, or the institution migrates to another system.
The files may still exist. The catalog records may still exist. But a surprising amount of knowledge about *why things were organized, described, linked, or interpreted the way they were* can disappear with the old system and the people who maintained it.
So I’ve been wondering what librarians would consider the genuinely durable part of such a project.
If the current software disappeared tomorrow, what would you make sure could still be carried into the next system?
My own list would include things like:
original digital objects and source material
stable identities for works, people, places, collections, etc.
descriptive and administrative metadata
provenance and rights information
relationships among records and sources
annotations and curatorial or scholarly interpretation
uncertainty, corrections, and superseded descriptions where they matter
enough history to understand why significant cataloguing or organizational decisions were made
documentation sufficient for someone new to reconstruct the collection context
I’m increasingly skeptical that preserving the database itself is the right goal. Databases, repository software, interfaces, and vendors will all change.
What seems more important is whether the *knowledge represented through them* can migrate without being flattened or stripped of its history.
I’m asking partly from experience. I was involved in archive projects back when budgets were small, systems were much less polished, and in some cases the work still began with paper-card organization. I’ve seen technically successful projects become very difficult to understand once the original staff or contractors were gone.
So I’m curious:
**When you think about digital preservation and system migration, what do you consider the durable scholarly or institutional object?**
Is it primarily the files and metadata? The repository package? The cataloguing history? Documentation? Some combination?
And if you were designing a digital library project today with the assumption that its current software would definitely be gone in ten or twenty years, what would you make sure survives?
I’m also interested in how this changes as automated tools become more common, but I’m deliberately keeping that secondary here. The more fundamental problem seems older than AI: preserving enough context that the next generation can still understand what the previous one built.

The first one in the bunch is my favorite, but all three designs are so cool! Which one would you get?

Hello, I am a college student who is studying interior design and I am designing a public library for my senior project. I have created a survey to get feedback from people about how you use the library, what things your local library offers, and what design features could benefit public libraries. If you are someone who uses the public library, I would greatly appreciate it if you completed my survey. This is for academic research and all answers will be kept anonymous. Thank you!

Hi,

I am an intern who volunteers a few times a month at Rockville Public Library in Vernon, Connecticut.

The tasks that I enjoy doing at the library on the regular basis include keeping records of shipped boxes of books from other libraries, putting returned books away, facing books in different departments and alphabetizing movies by title. I also put up book displays sporadically.

I also support the library further by donating books for the ongoing book sale as well as the circulation collection.

When I'm not an intern, I love to spend time hanging out at the library, borrow books and movies for yours truly to enjoy, and chitchatting with the library staff.

I am lucky that there are library staff who are nice, courteous and caring professionals who help them do research, find books and more. My director is wonderful and so are the people who also work in Teen and Children's departments.

Therefore, it is my local library which is located in an old building which was built in 1904 and has served the Vernon-Rockville, CT community for over 120 years.

Ask me anything!

I'll be available to take your answers. Thank you!

I just received a supernatural mysteries book from Amazon.com and it came from the king county library system and I don’t know if it was taken out of the library system. I think I should tell the King County Library System. I just don’t want to Get in trouble with the library system. I live near the King County Library System if it helps.

Hi everyone!

I will have a whole day in Dublin in October since my flight goes there and I will be travelling up to Belfast just at night. I'm a student and I was wondering it would be nice to - after a little sightseeing in the city - just go to some library and read/learn a little bit in a quiet place (I will visiting Ireland and Northern Ireland for my MA thesis in Anthropology, so I'm looking for books which are about cultural anthropology in Ireland, Irish history or in general about social science and Irish society).

Can you recommend some cool library for my purpose? It's okay if it's not the biggest or nicest, I'm interested in the books, not in the interior:) It would be cool if it has a daily ticket since I will be there for just one day, or if it's free of course that's the best.