While at the iSchool, I have come to recognize the value of customer service. In libraries, it isn't necessarily about giving the customer or patron what he wants; it's about giving him what he needs and helping him to feel that the interaction has accomplished something of value. It's also about working behind the scenes to make sure that the system works smoothly. That concept has served me well, whether I'm emailing a patron in response to a complaint or fixing the problem as a sysadmin. In any interaction, it is always my mission to provide the best service I can with the skills at my disposal.
The fall that I enrolled in the iSchool, I also started a braille transcription class at the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library. The purpose of the class was to train braillists who would then go home and turn print books into braille. My first motivation was that braille is a unique and therefore both interesting and potentially very desirable skill. The other was that I welcomed the opportunity to volunteer my time and contribute skilled labor to my community.
Brailling is a necessary service because publishers do not put their own books into braille; instead, that task falls to state libraries for the blind and to their volunteer braillists. Braille transcription is another way in which I provide access to information. Because of the small number of transcribers, only a handful of books can ever be transcribed, compared to the millions in print.
The transcription class began on the last Saturday in September of 2002 and finished early the next June. I received my first assignment in July, and as of April 2004 I have finished seven chapter-length assignments in three books.
During fall 2002 and winter 2003, I was one of the members of a small team of iSchool students who organized a raffle to raise money for a barcode reader for the library at First Place School. The raffle was a bigger challenge than we had anticipated, especially because we had to observe all sorts of rules about gambling, but we were successful in raising the needed money.
The raffle was a learning experience because when I volunteered, I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't realize that I was volunteering not just to help with a fundraiser but to brainstorm and organize one. I learned to ask before saying "yes," and I learned how much behind-the-scenes planning and organizing goes into even a "small" fundraiser.
Since I began working at KCLS, I have been responsible for writing back to patrons who emailed us with questions or concerns about the catalog. For the past several months, that duty has been even more difficult because I have to explain to patrons that we understand their problems but that they will not be solved for nearly six months, because KCLS is moving to a new ILS and is in break-fix mode on the current system. It is much easier to solve people's problems, or at least to claim that we are working on solving them, than to say that we cannot or will not solve them. I make my emails as professional and personal as possible and try to put a positive twist on everything.
My job is also to support the needs of KCLS staff, which includes maintaining the system as well as pulling data from it when requested. One of my technology projects was a set of scripts that generate shelf-lists based on certain criteria; staff can run these on their own instead of asking me every time they need a list of their holdings. This is just one of the ways in which I serve staff in order to serve patrons as well.