Zombies Attack Collection Development and Interlibrary Loan!
The Georgia State University Library has experienced a zombie attack that has wiped out almost the entire University Library staff. Over the course of this National Library Week, the few survivors will give their accounts of the disasters befalling the University Library due to the absence of these vital library workers.
Mandy’s Account:
It appears that the Collection Development and Interlibrary Loan departments have fallen victim to the zombie attack as well, and the library has come to a complete standstill without these important behind-the-scenes workers. The new books and journals and DVDs that have arrived are just sitting in their FedEx boxes forlornly because the Collection Development staff is not here to get them ready to catalog. We can’t even access the online journals because our Head of Collection Development isn’t here to pay the bills for those subscriptions – that’s right, those online journals just don’t appear out of thin air – somebody has to coordinate our subscribing to and paying for them! And our book stacks are in shambles! The zombies had aimlessly pulled books and journals and DVDs and VHS tapes off the shelves and taken bites before throwing them on the floor in disgust – and now our Stacks Maintenance crew isn’t here to reshelve those just nibbled on and thus salvageable, nor to ask that we order new ones to replace those gnawed beyond use. Not that we could order new stuff anyway: our Collection Development ordering staff are nowhere to be found. And we could analyze our circulation statistics to see if those devoured things are even worth replacing, but the Collection Development staff members who run those analyses have succumbed to the zombies as well…
You might be thinking, “Well, for those books eaten beyond readability we could request that other libraries send those to us, right?” But, no! Our entire Interlibrary Loan workers who process those requests are gone – GONE! You know what else that means? That means that we can’t get those journal articles you want from other libraries delivered electronically so fast and efficiently either – there’s no one to submit that request for you – it doesn’t happen by magic, you know! And just think of those poor students and professors at other libraries that depend on our Interlibrary Loan staff to send them journal articles and books so they can do their research – they are lost without our Interlibrary Loan workers – LOST, I tell you! And so are we, friends. So are we…
Oh, the horror, the horror!*
*This account and those to follow are fictional. You can rest assured that the Georgia State University Library employees have not been eaten by zombies and are still hard at work providing the critical library services necessary for you to succeed at Georgia State University – happy National Library Week! 🙂