======= Date Modified 03 05 2010 22:05:41 =======
I totally empathise that a librarian's job must get boring (especially in August when everyone's left the big bad city) and that small comfort can be derived from making researchers suffer with idiosyncratic rules but....

well, I cracked today. I was working past the tiredness barrier, finding it really hard to stop myself from yawning every two seconds, you know the type. I carried back a gigantic pile of books back to the librarians' desk to go through the signing in ritual and had a run in with three very aggressive, accusing librarians. Seriously, it felt a little like being agressed by a gang of west side story thugs.... Anyway, after a while, I just couldn't take it and left, taking my card before they'd signed in all of my books. I then had to sheepishly ask a friend of mine to go in for me to finish the job so I could leave the building....:$

Ah man, it was a childish reaction, but I really feel bullied sometimes as a researcher by librarians. I seriously wish machines could replace them, at least you know what you're getting and don't have to accommodate their moods to your research....

Rant over. Apologies. Long day. :-(

Any similar experiences?I hope mine isn't Paris-centric!

A lot of the university libraries here in the UK (well a lot I've seen, included all the unis I've studied at) are automatic - you can take books out at a machine, and return them at a machine. No need for aggressive library assistants that way (and I say library assistants delibrately - a librarian is a professional career).

I miss UK libraries for that alone.

Also, apologies for using a general term when I meant library assistants.

We have automatic machines newly installed at my uni library, and also at the one several miles away where I'm a life member. They are used for issuing books, and for returning them, so there is no need to go through librarians at all.

On the downside they are not always so easy to use if you are physically disabled, as I am, so I would probably end up asking a librarian for help anyway! But generally I get my husband to borrow the books for me, so have a workaround :)

Clairette, I got a very stern telling off from a friend of a friend who was a librarian when I once referred to the library assistants as librarians! :$ I've never forgotten it to this day...

But I sympathise. They always seem to have a superiority complex, no matter which library I have been to, uni or public ones. I think it's still that old view of the librarian, a humourless middle aged lady looking over the top of her spectacles telling people to shush!

I didn't mean to suggest that no libraries had automatic machines, just wishing that France's main university (the BNF), where I work, would, so I wouldn't have to go through the ritual :-(

DanB I'll try my best to remember from now on.

'Glad' in a way, that it's not just a French thing. They have to work extremely hard to get those posts here (something like 5 years I hear) but once they do, instead of being helpful, informed, or at least neutral, it always seems that any work they do is a huge favour to you....

Ok, I really will stop ranting now, it's getting silly!

They rank second in self-importance only to receptionists at doctors surgeries. (ALthough not at the one I use, they're actually really nice, I think I stepped into the wrong place last time I went!)