PSA: Librarians are here to help you.

[dira]

I am not any of the librarians weighing in on this thread (OR AM I) but this anon discussion of library etiquette delights me.

For the record, as several of the librarians in the thread state: if you see a librarian in a public area in a library (at a desk, or walking around in the library wearing a badge or nametag), it is okay to ask them for help. Even if they seem busy! Even if they do not make eye contact with you or see you standing there! If a librarian is in a public area of their library, helping library users is part of the job description. (The same is true for library interns, circulation aides, and pretty much anyone who works in a library. I have indeed worked in libraries where the security guards and custodians would help people find what they were looking for or assist them in operating the printers.)

Helping people who are physically located in a library is the number one part of my, and any librarian's, job that cannot be lost to Google. So. We are pretty motivated to keep doing it!

Just, you know, don't be that asshole who stands silently BEHIND A LIBRARIAN and then is pissed off when they don't immediately perceive that you need help.

Comments

[missmollyetc]

I hate it when people stay three feet back from the register/help desk and just stare at you. It's ridiculous.

[fox]

But not if what they are busy with is helping someone else, right? (I see where the trouble is coming from in this thread - your last point is 100% valid of course, but outside that situation it's hard to take people down for doing what they think is polite, and which would be the right thing to do in e.g. a retail situation, a bank, a hospital nurse's station in a non-emergency, etc. etc.)

I don't know what "AIRT" stands for.

[dira]

AIRT = Anon I Replied To, since, with everybody being anonymous, one needs all kinds of extra terms to establish antecedents in a conversation. *g*

And, sure, if I'm busy helping someone else, that's when it's time to form a line. And sometimes I'm helping someone in a way that's not immediately visible to someone who sees me--looking something up while I have a patron on hold, or walking over to where a patron is to tell them what I found for them--but in any of those cases I am perfectly capable of stacking a short question into what I'm doing or telling the person I can't help right now that I can't help them right now but I'll be right with them.

I mean, there's definitely an argument to be made that librarians need to up their situational awareness and scan for people standing quietly to one side waiting to be noticed, but... it's really okay to ask. And it's really okay to ask in a tone of voice above a whisper!

[dira]

Yyyyeah, that is not a productive behavior.

[fox]

Hee, tone above a whisper, that's another thing that - I mean, we're all taught from earliest childhood that you have to be quiet in the library, and also that it's not nice to interrupt, and also that you should never say "Dira and me went to the library"; and what happens is, people learn the lessons so well that they won't speak loudly enough that the librarian can hear them, or they won't speak at all and will meekly (or apparently not-so-meekly) wait for someone to notice them, or they will say "Do you want to come to the library with Dira and I?"

Overgeneralization, man. That's what's wrong with kids these days.