library musings...

The other day, I was doing some online research, looking through photo collections for streetcar shots. I came across a shot of Feibelmann's Department Store at the corner of Canal and Carondelet Streets, but the catalog info for the photo had it incorrectly listed as being a photo of the Pickwick Club. The Pickwick Club is the building on the corner of Canal and St. Charles. It's well-known because that's where the reviewing stands were set up for decades so that Rex could toast the King of Carnival on Mardi Gras.

Well, I noticed the record in the LOUIS database had a contact email, so I dropped them a note, pointing out the error. I copy/pasted the photo's record into the message. I got a reply yesterday from them, asking for my address/phone #, so I replied back. Then today I got a call from one of their archivists.

The archivist basically told me that she couldn't help me because she didn't have the accession number of the photo I wrote about, and proceeded to summarily dismiss the pasted record attached to the email as "5 pages of http stuff." She said that I would have to call back with the number she's looking for.

I found this a curious attitude for her to take, particularly since the accession number she was looking for was about the fifteenth line of the photo's online record. Maybe if the receptionist that fielded the email in the first place forwarded my reply to her, which was a reply to my original message, that's where the five pages of email came from, but a quick read would have brought the archivist to the information in question.

Now, I'm usually patient with people who don't do email regularly. I hit them often, particularly when talking to older folks about the streetcar nonprofit. I'm wondering if this is common for librarians, though. The librarians I know and talk to are those of you I know from online communities and blogging. Are you guys small islands of tech-savvy in a sea of luddites?