Ghosts in the Library

Completing the state library survey motivated me to do some more weeding, and I have been pulling books with copyright dates from the 1980s. I have also wondered how I could possibly have 11,000 books. Now that I ghost-busted some "ghost books," the sections I have completed are about 15 years old.

After weeding, I took a look in the library reports section at the Dewey Decimal ranges in detail, and I noticed average dates of 1942, 1955, and other years from long before this library was automated. I know the books are not on the shelves, and they never came up with subject searches because the MARC records for them don't have tags, I'm sure. Why someone bothered to catalog books already ancient by the time automation was implemented is beyond me. I am spending a lot of time deleting these "ghost books" from the system. Parliamentary procedure material from 1942 and McCarthy investigation materials for the 1950s are no longer phantasms in Destiny. A lot more remains to be done.

Student ghost: As if book ghosts were not enough, I have a student who came to the library, who seems to have a bit of a processing/expressive lag, and I can never really figure out if he's part of the after school program, or if he is just around. He came in to get a graphic novel, checked it out, was with the after school program, I thought. After school program leaves, and I go to the shelves to search for a book, and I notice a backpack, and go to talk to an after school program employee, who comes and picks up the backpack. About 5 minutes later, I hear a voice from the computer area in the dark "That was my backpack." He was sitting so quietly that the sensors have let the lights turn off, and I didn't know he was there. I might have left in 10 minutes without knowing he was in the library.

Now I am going to do a walk-through of the textbook room and the entire library before I leave every day, because I just don't know what might happen, especially if the library were going to closed for a long break. Every year I think I have experienced everything possible, but there is always a new student situation.