Off the counter

Walking the floor in Salisbury Library was an education for someone like me who began library life as a Library Assistant (scale 1) working ‘on the counter’.  Now the counter is all but gone, replaced by a cluster of self-issue machines, with staff serving as hosts and guides to give assistance to users as needed.

It’s a scary moment when you’re given a temporary staff badge and left in the front hall of the library with the broad duties of helping customers (when they need it) and getting returned stock back into circulation.  I’ve fronted up to Parliamentary Select Committees and Local Authority Councils and major Conference audiences and even the scrutiny of the CILIP Trustees and the CILIP AGM - but none of that is any use at all when you’re deciding whether the young mum with two kids would welcome a helping hand or would see you as an interfering old busy body (or worse…); or when you’re wondering which returned books should go on the face-forward display designed to promote ‘impulse’ borrowing.

But the time passed in a flash and was full of delight - or (as they might say over at T5) ‘amazing moments of highlights’.  Like: helping an elderly lady put her books into the self-issue machine (although she was - as she told me very politely - ‘quite all right thank you’ when it came to operating the technology); writing a ‘recommended read’ card (which is harder than you might think) to promote Stuart Maconie’s Pies and Prejudice (‘Everything you Southerners need to know about the North’ - no I didn’t really write that…); carefully positioning a recently returned book on the ‘impulse borrowing’ display - and seeing it go out on loan again just three minutes later; talking to a young member of staff who had recently moved from a job with a mega bookselling chain because “I love books and people but I didn’t like retail”; and enjoying the vibe (sorry about that) in ‘the lounge’ where a gaggle of teenagers were hanging out while the lad looking after the music collection indulged his (admirable) taste for Sam Cooke’s greatest hits.