The public library workplace is all too often a minefield of
office politics. So much depends on one’s
professional rank insofar as who gets listened to and whom can be safely
ignored or snubbed.
Any department or unit that is NOT headed by a librarian is
at a distinct disadvantage vis a vis other departments and units which are.
In a large system, cooperation between the branches is key, especially
for system-wide functions like Interlibrary loan.
Our main library building is undergoing extensive renovations
and as such had to make the painful decision to close our doors to the public. We only have a skeleton crew of the circulation
staff on site besides Support Services, which in our organizational structure
includes ILL. The OPAC had to be
adjusted to disallow holds to be routed to our main branch, but this impacted
ILL as well, as I was no longer able to place holds myself. We engineered a low-tech work around, wherein
I would simply email my ILL Liaisons at each branch with my daily pull requests
from their stacks and they would route the items to me via the interoffice mail
system (which is still operational) instead of through the traditional
circulation system.
This worked well at first, but there has been a regression
to the mean insofar as, once again, some branches are more responsive and
reliable than others. Also, apparently,
my email sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, is easy to ignore, etc. I’ve also been scolded for improper use of
the “Mark as urgent” function in email. Evidently because of my Asperger’s, I’m just
not competent or to be trusted with this function. ;-)
Just because I subjectively think something is urgent is not sufficient
cause for me to mark it as such. I’ve
tried to argue my case but been shouted down one too many times, even by one of
my local advocates. It’s just a fight
not worth having. You’ve got to pick
your battles and found this ground to be untenable.
Many of my ILL Branch liaisons are actual librarians, and in
the smaller branches, the actual branch manager. They easily outrank me, a mere Clerk. All of my efforts to get them to respond to
my ILL requests have to be done by begging, obsequious pleading, etc. It’s not as if I can throw my weight around
or apply the pressure of collegiality, as an equal.
I feel as though ILL as a whole unit gets less respect because the
highest ranking person in our unit is a Paraprofessional. I feel like if we had an actual librarian in
charge, our requests might be attended to more promptly by all branches. If we were headed by a librarian, we would be
better positioned to complain directly to the administration about recalcitrant
branches who were lax in their responsiveness to ILL requests, which reflects
negatively on the system as a whole. As
it stands, we just have to keep our heads down and fill our existing requests
to the best of our ability during this time of utter dependency on the
branches. Alas, the stacks in the main building
are temporarily closed and thus I’m not able to pull books held in my own
building until we-reopen at the end of the month.
Although I think things will improve once our stacks revert
from closed to open and we resume full circulation operations, I still think
the lack of a librarian in charge of ILL has an impact on the effectiveness of
ILL as a whole within the system.
Because we’re not headed up by a peer of equal standing, we can be
snubbed and ignored more easily by those units which are so headed. It’s not as if this is mean-spirited or
deliberate. It’s just benign neglect and
inattention, mostly, though in the end our ability to be a full ILL partner
with other libraries still suffers regardless.
