User requests
When I ask Dorthe what she does in her job, she begins with following descrip-tion, which has to do with desk duty:
Dorthe: Well first of all, I have a number of shifts where I stand at the desk in my libraries and serve the users who come in if they need help.
A lot of them are quite self sufficient now because we have self-service machines where they can check out and return materials themselves, and they can find the books themselves, and if they can’t, they will come over and ask. Some of the senior citizens, especially, still like us to check out and return materials for them, and who also will gladly have our help.
Then there are various tasks with finding materials for schoolchildren who have assignments, or a parent who says, ‘Oh, I would really like to read a good book to my little daughter’. So you have a lot of different compe-tencies in play, to be able to find the right material for the right user. At the public service desk there is still quite a bit of computer help. We have computers that are available for use where unemployed people will come in. They need to log in to the job centre and sign up, or they need help
with some NemID1 with the bank, which they cannot figure out. Lots of different things. On no account are we to do [social worker] casework, but sometimes we will come close to that, in relation to helping someone who really does not have a good grip on that computer stuff. And what else?
Keep an eye on some kids who come and want to play PlayStation games in the afternoon (laughing), or just talking with them, because that is also something they need. … And then there are hold lists and miscellaneous e-mails; there will be e-mails about either books or articles we need to get, or things like that. There are a number of altogether different daily routines, which runs (incomprehensible) this library. (Dorthe, 2016, pts.
00:47:59-00:52:14)
Desk duty seems to involve a number of diversified tasks, which Dorthe here differentiates between in terms of both the people involved and what the request involves. Common to them all is that they revolve around a library user having entered the library and asked Dorthe to help with something. In both of the library branches where Dorthe usually works, the desk is placed near the door, which means she is able to see people entering and leaving the library. She seems to do the same thing every time someone enters the door:
“Dorthe politely greets everyone who enters by saying hello, and if they approach the desk, she automatically asks if there is anything she can help them with. Moreover, she also asks people who are just standing close by whether they need help with something, and she politely says goodbye again when they leave.” (field note 19A, January 25, 16)
Based on (video and participant) observations, I have collected and categorised the different types of queries Dorthe seems to encounter during desk shifts in table 13.
1 NemID is a public and common secure login service used to access banks and almost all public-sector systems online.
Category Type Example/field note reference
Finding materials
Specific searches for materials, often on specific subjects, using Dorthe’s skills in making specific search queries in the library cata-logue
User asking: Do you have any books on making furniture for doll-houses? (field note, 7A, January 27, 16)
Giving advice on materials based on her knowledge of authors and library materials (i.e. not her tech-nical search abilities)
User asking: Do you have any books by Bjarne Reuter that my grandchildren would en-joy reading? (field note, 13A, March 2, 16)
Looking for the shelf where books on a particular subject are located
User asking: Where are your novels for young adults? (Field note, 6B, January 27, 16)
Library systems
Helping borrowers check out or re-turn materials directly at the desk Helping borrowers find materials reserved for them (on a designated shelf near the desk)
Technical
Technical queries, which the bor-rower does not have (easy) access to themselves
Helping people become reg-istered as borrowers in the li-brary system
Teaching borrowers how to use self-service machines to check out or return materials
(field note, 12A, January 25, 16)
Help with printing and copying (field note, 6H, February 3, 16)
Category Type Example/field note reference
Other
Managing the usage of the library’s gaming console(s)
Each borrower has 30 minutes, and they are required to leave something (e.g. a jacket) as se-curity. (field note, 2A, Februry 2, 16)
Borderline casework
Helping user make prints from their private online banking system (field note, 19A, Febru-ary 3, 16)
Special inquiries
Finding a Lithuanian-language version of a form from the Danish Customs and Tax Ad-ministration (field note, 43A, March 15, 16)
Table 13. The different types of queries Dorthe seems to encounter during desk shifts, with some examples.
Table 13 aims to provide an overview of the types of requests Dorthe deals with during desk duty. Common to all these interactions is that they are user-initiat-ed. Across tasks ranging from handling materials to assisting with computers to recommending books, all originate with the user entering the library. At the same time, they can be said to be the result of the library offering these different ser-vices, as users would not be able to request them otherwise. The types of tasks Dorthe does during desk duty, in other words, seem to stem from a combina-tion of what the library offers and what the users seek. When it comes to user inquiries, Dorthe does not decide on her own what she will be doing, but rather responds to the needs of the users.
Fixed tasks and system-based tasks
Along with user inquiries, there seems to be a number of other fixed tasks that are part of desk duty – tasks that seem more system-based. One day, after having followed Dorthe during morning desk duty at one of the libraries, I make the fol-lowing note on the morning’s work, which consisted of printing various hold lists
and finding the materials so they could be shipped off to the relevant libraries.
The morning is spent with the lists, and Dorthe walks around and finds the materials from the lists. … Dorthe spent a lot of time looking for ma-terials that weren’t where they were supposed to be. Either because they had just arrived, because they had been put on display, or because they just weren’t where they were supposed to be. She had to give up on just one book, and the rest she found after quite a bit of searching around. (Field note 23A, January 25, 16)
A couple of months later I note:
There are a number of ‘tasks decided by the system’ – that is, tasks that sort of come to Dorthe by themselves, cf. the way the library system has been set up. E.g. when a user enters the library, or books are handed in that are on hold, or if shelf-check lists need to be made, BOBs, bibliotek.dk (netpunkt) [nationwide library catalogue and reservation systems], internal hold lists for other libraries, and so on. The bookshelves must appear tidy;
the newspapers must be fetched; the notes that the previous librarian has left on the counter (because they would like an extra set of eyes) need to be checked; the phone needs answering; e-mails to the common address need to be answered. (field note, 41B, March 3, 2016)
It seems that a lot of the system-based work has to do with the transport and logistics of library materials on their way to, or coming back from, a borrower.
It is vital to the library that the library catalogue is always correctly updated. This is the system that knows where an item is right now and what the status of the item is: is it in one of the branches of the library, at home with a borrower, or out at a kindergarten? Is it checked out, ready to be checked out, reserved by a local library user, or reserved by someone far away via the interlibrary loan system?
For Dorthe to be able to do her job, she always needs to be able to locate a given item; she needs to understand and comply with the system for moving materials around, such as between library branches; and she also needs to know the ex-ceptions to the rules that the system cannot figure out on its own. The tasks she handles as a librarian seem highly specialised and systematised in a number of ways. I note:
There is a myriad of different technical systems that Dorthe uses as part of her paid work. The door system, which keeps an eye on which materi-als have moved in and out of the door; database systems and reservation systems; e-mail systems; etc. There are tons of things to find your way
around in, and many different lists that needed to be pulled with holds and books with one or another particular thing about it. Dorthe also had a lot of knowledge about a number of exceptional cases, which the systems couldn’t just handle. Much was automated in a really intelligent way. If, for example, she scans a book that is reserved, then a small receipt is automat-ically printed; and if the item is going to another library, the A4 printer also automatically starts printing [a transfer note for it]. The system knew how to do this, and that was really clever. Dorthe’s paid work requires a high degree of professional knowledge and ability. There really are a lot of workarounds: e-mails are an integrated part of the reservation system, I think, and have a number of standard texts build in, but the text-mes-saging system does not, so there she has to go in and find a document somewhere in a large archive where it says what she is actually supposed to do when sending a text message.
The library is a mixture of a very well functioning digital system combined with the fact that workers still need to mind their steps and know what they are able to do and not do in the individual systems” (field note, 7A, January 25, 16)
On the one hand it is Dorthe’s job to understand and be able to use all these systems, and at the same time it seems she must be able to do workarounds for the holes in these systems.
Summary – where do Dorthe’s tasks come from?
Dorthe’s tasks during desk duty seem to come from four different sources:
- User inquiries
- The library’s service offerings
- The systems used to manage library materials, among other things - The exceptions needed to manage materials using workarounds from
the library systems.
These all seem to share the characteristic that none of them is decided upon by Dorthe. Users, service offerings, and systems are all things to which Dorthe responds, as a reaction to their requests. In other words, Dorthe seems to be in a reactive state while on desk duty.
This is not say, however, that Dorthe does not like working desk duty. She says she prioritises working these shifts, although she does have to carve out enough time to manage the projects and programmes she is also involved in. The amount
of desk duty Dorthe has each week is adjusted from time to time; this is done by talking with the director of the city libraries (Dorthe, 2016, pts. 00:59:26-00:59:54).