Posts on internet codependence

Yesterday I wrote about how lack of Internet affects library functions. Today we continued that experiment, until we finally regained connectivity at 7:15 PM, 48.5 hours after we lost it. Conclusion: it's bad.

I think my department was one of the least impaired. Yeah, we didn't know whether books were checked in or out, or where they were supposed to be shelved. But we muddled through with the help of each other, Children's Books in Print, and other libraries who actually had access to the catalog. I couldn't work on our Web 2.0 staff development program, so I weeded the juvenile paperbacks and prepared our bookmark contest entries for display. Tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.

On the other hand, circulation, shelving, and interlibrary loan will have two days' backlog to deal with: thousands of items to check in, route, sort, and shelve, all in one fell swoop. There's no way around it. I don't envy them.

People often ask librarians how technology, especially the Internet, has changed libraries. Often it seems to be with the expectation that we'll say, "Terribly! No one reads books anymore! They play Yahoo checkers all day and write their papers from Wikipedia!" I should specify that people who ask this questions are people who don't spend a lot of time in libraries themselves—or they'd see that libraries (my library, anyway) are still happening places.

Today, though, we got a taste of what libraries would be without the Internet. My library and several other area libraries lost all connectivity-related functions yesterday evening and hadn't regained it by the time I left work today. What this meant, in practical terms:

- No library catalog, so no way to locate an item except by knowing where it ought to be and hoping it was checked in.
- Items could be checked out manually (by writing down patron and item IDs) but could not be checked back in...
- ...which meant books could not be shelved, either.
- No Internet for staff or patrons.
- No computer access for patrons, period, because we use a network-based reservation system.

In other words, we were almost, but not totally, crippled.

Fortunately, I didn't need computers to do my storytime! And most of the questions I got at the desk were answerable from memory or with the help of reference books and my colleagues. I also spent several hours helping a coworker with a major shift of our nonfiction books (moving them to give all shelves more or less equal breathing space), which is hard, dirty, but rewarding work. Plus it's fun to be active instead of sitting at a computer all day, which... is most days, for me.

I hope the Internet's "fixed" by the time I come to work tomorrow, though! It's tough—tougher than I really like to admit—to have the world no longer at your fingertips.