When books came in from other, nearby library systems we put a special slip in them that we've stamped with the current date, and put the books in a red box. Those books go off then to an agency that sorts them by library system and sends them to their home library system where, since as much as a couple weeks will have passed since their return, they are finally checked in according to the date on the stamped slip inside each book. These backdated check-ins prevented people from being unfairly fined.
But then all the library systems around here stopped charging people late fines.
And then, after a pretty long time, everyone realized there was no need to backdate these items or date stamp slips for every book returned this way. So with some fanfare and general delight the policy officially changed:
We no longer stamp slips for library returns to other systems.
A week later I was walking through the back area of the library. A colleague had a large pile of books belonging to a different system and was diligently stamping slip after slip to put in each book. Thunk, thunk, thunk.
"Oh." I said helpfully. "You know that we no longer have to stamp any of those slips?"
"Oh, I know." She said blithely. "But I'm just a creature of habit. So I'm going to just keep on stamping them.
And then she continued stamping.
thump
thump
thump
thump
thump
thump
thump
I have to 'fess up, I might be the traditionalist who can't/won't stop an unneeded step in a process. But what's with the "thump thump"? Back in my day we hand-wrote the date on the slip.
ReplyDeleteNope, date stamp.
DeleteOK, I think I have it now. In SV we at the desk wrote the date on a slip; then the books were processed in the workroom downstairs. And I think that a few, very few, times I was dispatched to do some date stamping. Geez that was a log time ago!
ReplyDelete