Tuesday 17 January 2012

Library Card Woes & Other Tales

Library cards are tedious things. They take ages to come. You can wait all year and then as the final exams are creeping you are presented with a plastic card with your photo and can thankfully discard the slip of paper with which you had to make do till then.


Unfortunately, I cannot crib to my heart's full this time as though I got my card late (I got it today as a fact) but my finals are still a month or two away. This is really fast if you see the processing standards of my university. At the proverbial speed of the government offices  (in India at least); they have taken a miraculous time to create this trifling thing. Besides that, it was a real wonder they spelled my name right. However, again I am compelled to mellow down my wrath as the lady who handed the card to me was much more cheerful than most of those library brats.


For example, the security man spends such a long time studying your photograph on the card that you wonder if you've suffered from a sudden alteration of facial bones. After the scrutiny is over you feel thankful you can enter the inner sanctum. 


Once inside, you'll find that to search your required book on the PC is a textbook course on patience. It can take ages. And finding the book on the myriad of shelves in ill-lit aisles is even more difficult where at times you are faced with no book at the end of your quest.


And if all goes well when the time to check out comes you might learn there is some problem with the books bar-code and thus, you must come back after an hour, re-locate the book; in short, go through the whole rig-marole again.


You'll be wondering now which is the most speedy process of all... it's returning the books. Seems like they rather have books returned to them than borrowed.

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