Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Library Going From Bad to Worse

The library system in Calgary has recently made a change to their computer system. Here in Country Hills, this means that they are wrecking an already brutal system. I have been using the internet for the last ten years, and the 386 we had way back then could at least keep up with the speed I typed.

Before the change over here, it was obvious that the server they were using didn't have enough processing power to handle the number of dumb terminals that are accessible to the public. Now they have added a one hour per day time limit. None of the librarians are computer literate. I don't mean virtually none of the librarians are computer literate, I mean not one of the librarians knows how to work the computers. Which is probably why the world doesn't need librarians. I mean even in our little satellite library, there are self checkouts. All the information I could possibly want is available online, except for books not out of copyright.

Even that doesn't seem enough for there to be a need for real librarians versus kids off the street. I mean what is the difference between Blockbuster Video and a Library. Handling cash at every transaction? Maybe if they hired kids off the street to run the library, they could afford computers that worked and the people working in the library would actually know how to run them.

-Gary Milner

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