J UKR

Here is the oversized-holds cart at Yorkville – necessary because the wall shelves are too short, but having the side effect of exposing interesting books to whomever passes by. I always take a look.

One day I saw a children’s book and could not quite understand the cover. I looked at the barcode: J UKR. A Ukrainian children’s book. (Cyrillic cursive is pretty hard to read even for someone like me who can painstakingly sound out roman type. It’s a piece of cake for native readers, obviously.)

Anyway. First of all, I didn’t know the library had Ukrainian children’s books. (French, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese – sure.) So they exist. But not at Yorkville. Somebody put a hold on it. And that somebody is going to be a very interesting patron.

Who is she? What’s her background? Against all odds, is she teaching her kids Ukrainian? (The ancestral language must be preserved at any cost!) Isn’t she interesting, I repeat?

But because of RFID self-checkout, Yorkville staff will never meet her, never get to know her, have no inkling of what could be a new set of customers with unique needs.

This Ukrainian-speaking mom – I am aware of the assumptions I’m using here, thanks – becomes a cog in a machine: Search for book via computer, place hold via computer, enter branch and bypass every human being to check out book by computer.

This Ukrainian-speaking child is not a computer, nor is the mother. Because of a decision to turn every item in the Toronto Public Library into a miniature radio transmitter (even Ukrainian children’s books) and download labour to library users, staff will never get to know either of them.

TPL vice-chair (and – though no longer on the official registry – registered lobbyist) Mike Foderick: “The Toronto Public Library is in the stone age, in my opinion, when it comes to RFID.”

Kooky, krazy things that happen when sticking millions of RFID tags on every imaginable variety of library item

TPL RFID oddities ☞

Did Spokesgay write this?

Here, then, are glories to come at the new Brentwood branch.

Directly across from the registration desk is the express self-check-out area, designed for ultimate flexibility and to keep you from having to wait in line for the simple transactions surrounding book check-outs. While located so that staff can help if necessary, it is the ultimate in customer convenience. It is so easy, in fact, that you can teach your children to be independent library users!

Indeed. You can teach them that the public sector in the 21st century is built on child labour. Adults will be there if and only “if necessary.” (Sort of like dads.)

Mind that alarm sounding on the way in, kiddo. Do you need the booster?

Surprise: An RFID-related topic I don’t intend to bitch about

RFID self-checkout is still an enormously expensive way to complicate every transaction a library item undergoes. (And now the cover story that RFID – a word that still is not four syllables long – was put in place to extend service hours without additional staff has been blown out of the water. It’s a pretext to fire staff.) I still set off alarms walking into branches. I still have trouble with any unusual request (e.g., return but put me back on the holds list). I still have problems. So do you! And our problems will never end.

But.

The esteemed colleague who manages this project – in all fairness, about as well as it could be managed – has basically solved the problem of RFID (again: “arfid” or “riffid”) gumming up your CD drive or DVD player. The old tags were self-adhesive paper abominations more befitting the Soviet Union. Half of them you had to handwrite a barcode number on (around a curve). Half of them are stuck on imperfectly in the first place. The other half unbalance your drive, causing whirring or simply an unreadable disc. When they really heat up, they come unglued and can get stuck in your player (apocryphally). I’ve peeled several of them off just to get the damned disc to play. (Sometimes I put them back on, other times not, but in the latter cases I left a note.)

I was warned these things were coming, but I still didn’t know what the hell was going on when I saw them. Behold the StingRay by Smartrac. (PDF datasheet.)

It covers the entire surface of the disc. It’s transparent save for a silvery bit of branding (in Futura caps) and “Toronto Public Library” in black Helvetica, which I suppose could be worse. I don’t know how a civilian could peel it off. I don’t have a clue how you’d retag an item in-branch. You probably can’t.

Now look closely. The silvery lines around the periphery are the RFID circuit. It’s got one kilobit of memory (!) and Smartrac claims it can be read at a distance of 30 cm.

A weird, vaguely futuristic appurtenance. And the only thing remotely cool about this entire RFID boondoggle.

Spoke too soon about St. Lawrence

I wrote a quick post, with affection I hoped was obvious, about how St. Lawrence branch was getting a quick paint job and a few repairs.

Wrong. They buggered the old girl.

I walked in and was shocked by two things: Full-on “express” checkout and the fact that the Bookmobile DVD I was carrying didn’t set off the alarm. I’m surprised they put in self-checkout, I told the librarian, because you sure don’t have the volume for it. She instantly gestured that I should be talking to the nearby much older librarian. I said the same thing. Eventually all 99 branches are going to have it, she said. 98, I said. 99, she said, reaching for the list of branches so I could – I gather – sit there with a pen and tally them all up. If you’re thinking about Urban Affairs, they closed that one, I told her.

The returns slot has a shitty piece of paper over it reading RETURNS in Arial that I’m sure will be there forever.

A librarian berated a lady in a scooter loudly in a Chinese accent – while walking smartly away from her – that that’s where returns go.

Magazines are hidden in a corner. Every shelf looks like every other shelf. Let’s not even talk about the shitty labelling of everything.

I decided to get the fuck out of there. I went through the inside door and looked for the automatic-door button. Gee, is it where I think it is? I went back: Yes, it’s still at shin level next to the giant barriers now erected at the door. Nobody who needs the automatic door will be able to position a scooter or wheelchair by the button, lean over to press it at a weird angle, back up, circle all around, and line up perfectly straight to wheel through the now gated and alarmed exit toward a door that will by then be closing right on their faces. (What if you’re in a walker?)

I tried talking about this to the old lady. “Have you considered repositioning—”

“The rug? No! The door? I don’t understand your question.”

“Because you aren’t letting me finish.”

I was then asked to write it down on a comment form or something to save her the trouble – as she admitted – of having to call Facilities. Are you not the branch head? I asked her.

During this whole visit, that librarian did no visible work and often simply leaned on her elbows talking to other patrons. This is the mentality “self”-checkout produces: Don’t disrupt my boredom by talking to me.

St. Lawrence: Number 2 with a bullet of worst RFID renovations after Yorkville.