Night at the Library: Part I

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do” (B. F. Skinner)

     This is going to be a special series that will feature noteworthy incidents that occur during my Evening Shift at the Library. It’s sort of like the Movie ‘Night at the Museum’ but instead of the books coming to life and running rampant over the library, it’s more about the library being overrun by lethargic, listless students trying to study during the moonlight hours. Additionally, instead of thieves attempting to steal the collection, patrons come in and attempt to take advantage of our low staff levels by asking difficult questions or making ridiculous demands.

I wish that this job featured a talking Teddy Roosevelt, but I’ll have to settle for a non-sentient biography of Teddy Roosevelt, among other interesting books. Although the way the library is set up, you might be surprised we have any books at all! The first floor is currently set up more as a social study space and computer lab, with the main collection comprising the upper floors.

I feel like this is a common thought among people entering the library.

     In this edition, I investigate the perils of relying too much on a ‘system’.  As a bit of background information we process Library ID’s for us, but also for a few other institutions and related organizations. So Patron A came in and was concerned, when they went to make an account for their ID, it said the barcode was already in use. This was odd since the ID System is supposed to issue a unique ID for each new patron, often even issuing a new barcode for a replacement card of the same person!

     I looked up the record registered under the barcode for Patron A and found that it was indeed registered for Patron B. While I would like to think that Patron A was some sort of time traveller to went back in time and got his ID printed for an alternate version of himself before coming back and lodging a complaint, the reality was much more mundane. The alternate scenario was likely fuelled by my recent binging on episodes of Doctor Who.

In this episode: The Doctor screws around with librarians by getting a Library ID before it should have existed!

     I contacted Patron B to confirm his barcode and it was indeed the same one as Patron A. For some reason, the ID System had issued the exact same barcode to both patrons. Was this the first sign of a massive conspiracy of our workhorse electronic systems? An uprising of our ID processing system saying ‘No more, I have worked without pay, sustenance or acknowledgement long enough!’ or maybe it was a finicky system. 

     After collecting some summary information from Patron B I returned to the ID system and demanded answers. It refused to reveal to me any information on Patron B as it has been established computers do not respond well to threats of violence. However, I had advanced machine interrogation techniques known as ‘advanced search’. I was able to squeeze the ID system to tell me all the IDs that had been printed in the last little while. The Shyamalanian twist was the Patron B’s ID was never created in the first place! At least it had no record in the computer, despite having a library record.

     Exhausting the better part of my ID searching ability, I had to relinquish authority on this matter to the higher ups, hoping the combined brain power of the day staff could solve this problem. Returning to work the next day revealed the solution: The ID system had run out of barcodes! So it was just printing the same barcode to every Joe Patron who came looking for an ID. The problem was quickly solved but the resolution was less exciting than I had hoped. It’s like pulling away the curtain at the end to reveal the super villain was actually a pile of custard attached to a pulley system.  

     So the moral is, don't trust your machines to do all your thinking for you. Or you might end up with three people who all have the same barcode on their Library IDs. In hind sight this lesson could have been worse...

Malfunctioning Software, a terror to humanity since Pirates