In defense of stupid users

[Tony Zbaraschuk]

Beth A Reiten inquired:
<snip much>
> <soapbox>
> I find it interesting (and sad) how many people have developed a distaste
> for libraries because of the attitude displayed in the meeting Todd Miller
> attended.  Just last week, I stumbled across a blog entry titled "Here's
> why I like Amazon... and why I hate libraries"
>(http://dakotapundit.blogs.com/dakota_pundit/2005/04/heres_why_i_lik.html).

I think I should note that the original post was in response to a
letter to Dear Abby from a librarian saying, more or less, "please
be courteous to others in the library", and that most of the comments
were from people who thought that DakotaPundit was the one with the
attitude problem.

That said, the "stupid users" mentality is a real problem.  But
it doesn't mean that there aren't any stupid unconsiderate users;
it just means that we have to figure out how to deal with them
without projecting our response to them onto everyone who comes
looking for information.

I struggle with this personally on a regular basis.  I think a large
part of it can be summed up as follows: we expect people to grow
in understanding, to hear things we explain to them, to learn from
their experiences.

And library patrons _do_.  It's really wonderful seeing someone you
helped through their first term paper come back a year later with
intelligent questions, or tell you in the graduation line that they
couldn't have done it without your help.  (Ah... the tears of joy,
the warm feeling in the heart, the floating six inches off the ground
for the rest of the day...)

But that's _individual_ library patrons.  Possibly my situation in
an academic library with its endless stream of new students exacerbates
matters, but library patrons _as a class_ don't, and can't, learn
that.  Just because the last forty-eight students doing papers on
anorexia got the full benefit of your learning and searching doesn't
mean that student #49 has ever heard of any of the sources you dug
up for #1-48.  You have to be as fresh and eager for the first person
as for the last... and it's not always easy to do in practice, even
if you're intellectually aware of the need.

>From our side of the desk, we experience as an endless steam of
people asking the same things over and over and over, never learning,
never advancing, never getting to new knowledge or more interesting
questions or anything different.  Is it any wonder we occasionally
burn out?

How do we handle that?


Tony Z

-- 
Tony Zbaraschuk
Special Collections Librarian,         E-mail: tzbarasc at lasierra.edu
  Archivist, & Library Webmaster       Et vocavit Deus, "Fiat lux!"
La Sierra University