In my presentation I observed what happens when something 'goes wrong' and the reference desk finds themselves needing to take care of the situation. In my presentation I paid particular focus on the steps that are needed to deal with angry or upset patrons and how well the reference desk I observed followed those steps.

1. C
WHEN THINGS DON’T GO AS
PLANNED
A Brief Glimpse Into a Library Mishap : A Reference Desk Observation
Beth Campbell
Reference Desk Observation Presentation

2. A Disaster in the Making
“Technology offers us a unique opportunity, though rarely welcome, to practice patience.”
― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living
On my second day of observation I was feeling fairly confident. I had been given the tour, met the staff, and already had filled up a
page or two with notes. Things were looking up and didn’t expect anything to be different on this day.
The day before, all library branches in the county system had been closed due to a scheduled upgrade of the library system’s OPAC
system. This was the first upgrade they had been given in many years and all of the library staff was excited, hopeful, and rightfully…
a little worried.
Would the patrons be able to make the leap from one system to another seamlessly?
Would all the training they had gone through the get ready for the system pay off?
The question that they hadn’t answered was what would happen if nothing worked at all. It turns out, a severe electrical storm hit just
hours after the work had been done. The systems had just been given the green light, when lightning took out the servers the new
system was housed on and half of the library’s public computers.
This… was a problem.

3. Steps to Deal with Angry or Upset Users
• Empathic Listening
- Acknowledge the User’s Feelings and link them with the specific facts of the situation.
• Take Action to Address the Problem
- Identify alternative solutions or bring in a supervisor.
• Have a Willingness to rethink Policy or Procedure.
• Make sure Written Policies are available to both Patrons and Staff
• Explore Opportunities to Discuss Conflict Situations
- Find ways to avoid such situations in the Future and discuss mechanisms to respond.

4. The Reference Desk Steps In: Damage Control
Service Orientation (Empathic Listening)
- With the computers rendered temporarily useless, library staff spent quite a bit of time on the floor. As
the circulation desk became especially busy with checking in and checking out books by hand (they
wrote down each individual barcode and library card number), much of the activity gravitated towards
there. As I had and would observe through my entire observation period, the staff of the reference desk
rarely stayed still.
Patience and Persistence (Take Action to Address the Problem)
- One of the main questions during the outage was what would happen to their library records if they
couldn’t check in their overdue books. I heard this over and over both in phone conversations and in
person. Staff at both reference and circulation answered both reassuringly and professionally that
they would suspend all fines due that day. This is standard procedure for this type of situation.
Knowledge and Confidence (Make Sure Written Policies are Available, Prepare for Conflict Situations)
- Although this was an extremely rare occurrence, it appeared that the library staff (and the reference
staff in particular) knew completely how to handle this type of situation. Even if they didn’t, they certainly
acted the part. This did well for morale and kept many annoyed patrons at ease. It could have been
very stressful for both patrons and staff, but the procedures they took managed to hold things together
for as long as the outage would be for.
Observing How the Reference Desk Reacted to the Situation

5. Conclusion
In the end, the situation wasn’t quite as bad as it was feared. After about two hours, the servers came back online and the public
computers that had also been offline slowly came back to life. Life at the library went back to normal, and I didn’t hear about the
situation again for the rest of my observation: it was just another day at the library.
Having a plan for dealing with situations was key to keeping things calm and running smoothly at this library. All of the library staff kept
a calm and cool head, and took care of the situation as if it wasn’t a situation at all.
I observed this same attitude later in the observation when a patron who had a known history of being difficult to handle was asked
to leave. When she continued to caused problems, the Reference Manager stepped in. Very quietly she was taken off to the side by
the Reference Manager and given a chance to tell her side of the story. I listened as the situation was somewhat defused and the
patron left the library on her own accord. A week later when I returned, she also did and gave a formal apology to the library staff for
her behavior.
The sad truth is, problems will and do occur if you like them or not! It’s how they are handled that make the difference in turning a
potentially bad situation into a real disaster.