The hours are posted. They are also kept.
The library answers questions about the collection in person and by telephone. Tuesday through Friday, nine to six. Saturday, ten to four.
Before you call, or don't
The library answers questions about the collection in person and by telephone. Neither one is the correct way and neither one is the backup. A question asked at the desk and a question asked down the wire get the same answer, in the same amount of time.
C. Marchand, head librarian
Two ways to reach the desk
Neither one is faster. Both get the same answer.
Walk up to the desk
The bell is out for exactly this
Ring it once if no one is at the counter, and someone will be. There is no better way to ask a complicated question than to ask it standing in the room where the answer is kept.
Form 1Ring the exchange
Ask to be put through
Small-town exchanges kept a live operator on the line well after the cities switched over to automatic dialing. Ours still does, and she knows this line personally, the way she knows most lines in a town this size.
Form 2Two cards, one desk
Every loan runs on the same two pieces of paper.
The method is close to what libraries called the Browne system when it caught on in the eighteen-nineties: a card for the reader, a card for the book, matched and dated at the moment of the loan. One goes home in the front cover. The other waits in the charge tray until the book comes back.
The date wheel is turned by hand, once, at the start of the day. Whatever sits on the bed beneath it when the lever comes down takes that same date. It has never once needed to be told twice.
Before you go
Now you know
when and how.
The desk keeps its own hours. The stacks and the record room keep the rest of what the library holds, whenever you're ready to see it.
C. Marchand, head librarian