Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Library Computers Upgrade Overnight


The BHPL library automation system, TLC, will undergo an upgrade overnight. What this means to our patrons is that the online catalog will look a little different. For the library staff, the Circulation system will change quite a bit. The staff has been learning the new system by viewing online training videos and visiting libraries that upgraded already, but bear with us if we hesitate while checking out materials or searching the catalog.
If you have ever upgraded your own computer software, you will know that there is a bit of a "learning curve" as the current euphemism goes. Learning curves, as you also may know, involve fantasies about throwing computers out the window and possibly speaking to it in harsh tones. TLC, like all software companies, promises that the upgrade will be an improvement and everything will be swell. We hope so. As always, please ask for help in person or by phone if you need to.

For this blog post, I was going to riff about what if humans went to sleep at night and woke up completely upgraded but somehow the instruction manual was lost and none of our friends knew how to deal with us anymore? Assuming the upgrade had a few glitches, would we answer, "I'm sorry, that does not compute" in a tinny voice to even the simplest request? Would we take all comments literally? Would we forget how to do the simplest routines but know how to split a neutron? We wish TLC could upgrade us overnight to automatically understand the new, bigger, better, more user-friendly TLC 4.0. That not being the case, we have photocopied "cheat sheets" taped next to each computer. Good luck to us all.

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