When you work with technology you never really know what to expect. But since the electronic check-out program was introduced to the fleet about three years back the librarians have come to expect a small amount of consistency n at least that element of things. The computer might be a mess when we get there but at least we know what system we’ll be running…
We think…
I’m trying to be prepared, so that I can avoid the seemingly traditional arrive-at-the-ship-start-the-inventory-overhaul that happens to me every contract. So even though this cruise isn’t over, I wrote ahead to my next ship and requested that they send me an extract of their inventory so that I could tweak it before hand and then just upload it when I arrived. And lo, the best laid plans of men and mice…
Hey, we don’t actually have SL, but here’s the log file we use that has all the inventory
Log…file. Excel log file. The Library hasn’t run on an excel log file since 2010; before we fought to get scanners and begged to finally go electronic…before Toffy finally found a program that worked from ship to ship and well…simplified everything. And for whatever reason, my next ship is running on a log file.
Okay, so I think to myself that maybe this isn’t as bad as I remember (as I break out in a cold sweat), so I open the file and the old system stares up at me, with all its glitches and inconsistencies, and things that need to be typed in by hand, with its manual manifest scrub every week…and I think…yes, yes this is just as bad as I remember.
Thankfully the librarian who is over there at the moment managed to download and install the file, but she needs the logsheet updated to actually launch the database…and that ship is now in the same red position we were a few days back.
Right…
So, how fast can I fix a database? One, two, three…go!