Librarian scribe

We at this library have nothing against the conveniences of modern technology. It is easy enough for us to provide printers for the public to use, and the public uses them a lot. Our cost is not in the equipment, in all those printers, which are a reasonable enough fraction of our budget. No, our real cost is in staffing enough people to handle all the constant system breakdowns of that cheap technology. Finding a good quality computer person, who understands the vast and complicated array of automation problems that an average large sized library is constantly under siege by, is a nearly impossible, very expensive task. Good tech people, simply put, are hard to find, and, if they're any good, one generally has to pay them far more than one has to pay an average librarian who, anyway, are scattered through our city like leaves in an Autumn wind.

And that is why at my library we are providing all the important cutting edge (minus five years) computer and printing services one has come to expect from libraries, but for back up we are digging deep into our ancient tools and providing old school solutions for the times when all our amazing technologies are suddenly not working, when they're mysteriously broken and offline.

Allow me then to introduce you to our librarian scribes. Our team of Librarian Scribes is available during all the hours we are open. Should our printers go down, as they do most days, simply hit the "Scribe" button on your computer and one of our librarian scribes, with their kit of quill pens and vellum, should be at your computer within five minutes. They will hand copy onto thick cotton paper stock whatever computer page you want printed, all at our standard cost of twenty cents a page. They can copy in three colors: onyx, viridian, and sepia. If your page includes illustrations, the cost for these illuminated manuscripts will be seventy cents per page. We can currently offer Courier, Times, and Verdana fonts, but cannot guarantee that each of these fonts will be available at all times, depending on the calligraphy skills of the Scribe on staff. Please contact our Scribe Department for which fonts are available at specific times.

This is the first big push out of our "Old library tools to fix new technology" program. We also hope to soon add the ability to look up information in books for those times when the Internet is not working. Look for further announcements in this space.