May 13th, 2008 Brian Herzog
Almost exactly a year ago, we started selling flash drives at our reference desk. We did this because 3.5″ floppy disks are becoming more and more unreliable and problematic, and CDs seem to be a mystery to most patrons.
We stopped selling floppy disks and CDs, and started selling 32mb drives for $5 each. When our source for them dried up, we had to scramble for something else. We thought a $5 flash drive, regardless of the size, was a pretty good deal – still cheap enough not to be prohibitive, and 32mb is still useful enough for people working on resumes and things like that.
But now we found an even better deal – 1gb drives for $8.
Our IT person sourced them through the local office of Corporate Express, and I think she was able to combine our non-profit status with some closeout deal on these to get that price. I think the $8 price tag is a little steep, especially for someone just wanting to save a couple documents, so I put more effort into selling the technology itself than selling drives.
As with everything, some patrons are slow to adapt, but some do recognize that these same drives sell for about $20 in stores, so they’re happy. What I’m happy about is that we’ve been getting fewer requests for the $1 floppy disk, but even better is that we get fewer “I had all my resumes on this disk and now it won’t open” type questions.
And since I like themed posts, I shall continue with the “drive” theme and say that I’m currently in Ohio, visiting my family for Mother’s Day and my brother’s birthday. I drove here, which means 20 hours (round trip) of audio books. Currently, I’m working my way through the Hitchhiker trilogy. I know this comparison has been made before, I think it’s amazing how closely Wikipedia resembles the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (double emphasis here because it’s the title of a book within a book by the same title): it has entries on almost everything, the entries are supplied by people out living in the world and writing what they know, it’s accessible from almost anywhere, and when the entries are inaccurate, they can be wildly inaccurate.
Tags: drive, drives, flash, jump, libraries, Library, memory, public, selling, stick, thumb, usb See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 5 Comments »
October 27th, 2007 Brian Herzog
As I was finishing up helping one patron, I noticed a co-worker just behind him, waiting with a second patron. When the first patron left, patron number two step forward and my co-worker said, “Brian, perhaps you can help this patron.”
This was odd, because when my co-workers refer patrons to the reference desk, they don’t usually wait with them in line and then introduce them to me. So of course, I immediately became suspicious. When I turned and greeted the patron, he said:
I’ve been losing my memory. Can you help me get it back?
Are you kidding me? I thought this must be some kind of joke, but when the patron didn’t crack a smile, I looked to my co-worker. She Just smirked and walked away, mouthing “good luck” over her shoulder. Thanks, Linda.
I turned back to the patron, still kind of stunned, and pressed on:
Me: Can you explain a bit more about what you’re looking for?
Patron: Well, I can’t remember things like I used to, and I was hoping you could help me with that.
Me: I don’t think we can help you recover specific memories, but…
Patron: No, that’s not what I mean. I just want to remember things better.
Me: You mean you’d like to improve your memory skills?
Patron: Yeah, something like that to start with.
Well, so at least now I had some hope of helping him. I searched our catalog for just “memory,” and after sifting through the results by skimming the titles, I noticed a few books at 153.1. I also noticed we has some audio books at this same Dewey number.
I walked with the patron over to the shelf, and we found about five books that had promising titles, like The memory key: unlock the secrets to remembering and Total memory workout: 8 easy steps to maximum memory fitness. He took them over to a table to see if they were what he was looking for.
After about a half hour, he came back up to the desk. He said that two of them were great, and gave me the rest to reshelve. I next walked him upstairs to the audio book section for him to browse, and went back downstairs.
This question ultimately ended up being pretty straight-forward, but the way he asked it really threw me.
libraries, library, memory, public libraries, public library, reference question, remembering
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Posted under Library, Reference Question | 2 Comments »
