Tuesday, April 6, was National Library Workers Day. The staff of the Garden City Public Library is sharing their stories about what working at the Library means to them. This is Computer Support Librarian Joe Agolia‘s story.
“Although like most librarians in my age group, I was attracted to the work by a love of books, I have spent most of my 40+ years in libraries working with computers. Applying technology to library tasks has been endlessly diverting, but my best memories are those in which I made someone else’s day better.
“I think my favorite may still be the man who was looking for research on waking a patient from a coma, specifically his wife. In those days – the late ‘80s, I think – the best tool we had was DIALOG, a text-based, command-driven database that we accessed with a dial-up modem. I handed him a ream of citations on a dot-matrix print-out, we interloaned some articles, and I wished him luck.
“Several months later, the man returned to the Library with his wife, frail but smiling and ambulatory, by his side. Of course, there is no way to know if the journal research made the difference, and today we can get at the information much more easily. Nevertheless, that is what library technology means to me – not the wow factor, but finding new ways to help people. When we harness technology for the patron who wants to find a job, stream a song, or download an eBook, the real cool factor is the look of joy or relief on a patron’s face when we can supply the solution to a problem.”