librarypunk - 038 - Scary Stories to Chill Your Tomes: Vol I

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Welcome to the first in our series on non-librarian library jobs, how we all interact, and hopefully find some critical perspectives on library organizations along the way. And we're starting with our cohost Sadie!

If I just enter with this. Say if you're trying to make us be invested. Like old school, like hymns and then this like nostalgic shit. Like I don't like any of the new crap unless it's Wham, but I'm still playing Wham again because I'm an asshole. But like the old school stuff, I love it. It's library poem. I'm Justin.

I'm a Scallcom librarian. My pronouns are he-him. I'm Sadie. I work IT in a public library. My pronouns are they then. And I'm Jay. I'm an academic metadata librarian. and my pronouns are he.

So we're starting a new series idea, which is talking to people about their roles in libraries that are not librarians. And I put out a poll and I've got some people lined up. So the next couple of episodes should be that. But we're going to start off by doing Sadie's story. Yay! But first, breaking Dildo News.

So I have a tweet here from someone called Crypto BitLord 7. Of course. Yeah. So the tweet says, this morning at 5.40 a.m., my desktop metamask. I don't know what that is. Was hacked and drained of all funds and NFTs.

The only thing I did differently was charge a brand new dildo on my computer and installed the app. Still trying to wrap my head around this, but I think I was just hacked by a fucking dildo. It was Crypto BitLord 7. Be the future you want to see the world. Yeah. Yeah. I am both, I am both like just utterly delighted by the, yeah, utterly delighted by the,

the comeuppance of this, but also utterly aghast at the, you thought installing an app for a dildo on your computer was a good idea. Okay. Okay. Well, I thought the app would be on his phone and he was just charging it through his computer because, like, I have, like, ones that you put an app on your phone and control. but it's USB charged. And I was, it reminded me Ted Nelson, the chat I talked about in my Digital Garden episode.

He came up with this term, oh God, did they already take it off of Wikipedia? That would make me sad. Anyway, he came up with this term about, I think it was called like Dildonics or something, and it was him talking, like, trying to come up with terminology to talk about, like, the intersection of, like, sexuality and technology, especially with, like, internet connected and electronic sex toys. I was like, what a good guy. I'll have to find it, because now I'm upset. The internet of very personal things. Yeah.

Well, this was something Sadie and I talked about a long time ago, because there was that story. of the Wi-Fi-enabled dildo that what, like, I think, because this was linked to by Kathy O'Neill, who wrote a book about, like, surveillance and technology. And I brought this up and said it was like, I think we almost bought one of those. But it was like a story about how it was like hackable or something. But this is why I haven't bought, I was looking at buying network-connected storage. And this is why I don't do that because I looked up like one of them. And they're like, yeah, it just had.

backdoor software in it and they were just constantly in my shit on my computer. You can pretty much assume that any IOT anything has a backdoor in it. Har-har. Apparently including the dildos.

Anyway, I found it. There's a Wikipedia page called Teladildonics. Also known as Cyberdilodonics is the name coined for virtual sex encounters using technology to mimic and extend human sexual interaction. I'm going there right now. Yeah, Ted Nelson came up with the term Dildonics.

This seems to be, so I'm guessing I'm wondering if this includes like fuck machines and stuff. Probably. Cool. But yeah, I want to know what brand that Dildo was. I want if it's one of the like we vibe ones or whatever, like I want them to put that on their website. We destroy crypto bros in more ways than much. Yeah. Like if you're going to fuck someone and you know they're into crypto.

like sneak and plug your dildo into their computer and it'll wiping out do some like sex espionage. I like the follow-up tweet. That's like it wasn't for me. So get over the dumb jokes. And I'm like, oh, so you just plug anybody's dildo into your computer. Good to know. And what's wrong with having a dildo?

Most people have them, I imagine. Let's see. Yeah, but why did they install the app on their desktop? I was thinking they put it on their phone and we're just charging it on their computer. Yeah. If it's not there, it's like, why would you put? Exactly. If it's not for you, then why are you downloading the app?

Well, you can control them. If, like, if someone else is using the dildo, you can control it on your app. They're really good for long-distance relationships because of that. Yeah. Is you going to have, like, two people connected the same one, and that person, another one from a distance can still control the one that someone else is using. So I imagine that's what was happening. Yeah.

Well, I imagine they're mostly used for. for just can girls mostly to just be like $5 and it goes off. That is like the majority of the customers. Oh yeah, probably. You know, you can wrap it up with long-term relationships, but I think it's mostly just like, bing. I really like the comment. You can like sync them with music and everything.

I really like the comment. That's like Web 3 is going really, really well, you guys. Keep it up. Yeah, no, if the Web 3 is just like sex toys hacking crypto bros, I'm here for it. Anyway, we should probably get to the episode, I guess. It's just kind of a series of questions about for Sadie, for how they got into libraries.

Some of this stuff, even I don't know, even though we've been friends for a long time. So you're getting the deep Sadie lore this episode. So, yeah. And I just got my booster shot, so I'm both elated and already tired from it. So you get like a special unmedicated Sadie, because I forgot to take my second dose of Mets today, too.

So it's going to be unhinged. Maybe. We'll see. But how did you get into libraries? Did you seek out libraries or kind of fall into it? Because I know you started, you were a page at once. Yeah. I did work in high school in the library, like the shelving of books and stuff.

And then a couple of years after high school, I was working in restaurants and miserable and one of my friends was a local schools librarian, and she was like, why don't you work in a library? And I was like, oh, shit, fuck, how did I never think about this before? So I got a page position at the local library system part-time. Worked three jobs for a while, so be nice to your part-timers. And yeah, that's kind of how I got here. I did not.

I intended for it to be a job for a long time. I didn't quite see myself in this role when I started for sure. Well, what did you see yourself doing? Like, what were your original goals and libraries? I didn't. I didn't have a degree. Technically, I still don't. I was mostly just looking for a job that wouldn't deadend at $10 an hour

in a shitty assistant management position. And a library looked like that would be a better long-term idea. So that's what I stuck with. And I liked the work too. So, you know. But yeah, I worked in public services for, I think, five years, eventually becoming full-time doing paging and like public service, like front desk stuff. And basically my branch manager at the time was really into seeing how many people she could rope into going into library school. and mentioned it to me and I was like, bro, I don't even have, I don't even have like the bachelor's degree to even apply to master's, you know, to get a master's degree. So, you know, that's literally years and years off for me, if at all possible. And it got me thinking. And I went and looked at the pay scale for the library because I was like, well, what positions don't require a master's degree, but do pay enough that I could,

you know, conceivably have a decent job without having to go to six years of school and go into massive debt for it. And the pretty much highest paid people beyond managers were IT people. And I was like, sweet. And my local community college had associates of sciences. I forget an associate's degree that was IT. And I was like, oh, sweet, I can do that while I'm doing this and hopefully get a decent paying job without having to do six years of school for it. And stay in libraries. So, like, I'm not, I tell people this like all of the time, like I straight up, it was straight up a monetary choice. It was like I could go get an English degree and then become, you know, a, uh, a librarian and then hope to God that I can find a life, that, you know, my current

system or somewhere nearby gives me a decent library, library position by the time that happens. And pretty much was just like, yeah, the way my life's going, that's not going to, it's not work out great in the long term. So, like, I've pretty much been on my own since I was 18, so I didn't have any sort of, like, parental backup or, you know, family money to rely on. I was pretty much living paycheck. So it was like, how can I do this fast? And that was pretty much the decision. And I'm not, like, I'm not actually much of an IT person in the sense that, like, when you talk to IT people, they all have, like, the origin story. That's like, I played with computers when I was a kid. and I, you know, took apart my Macintosh, you know, whatever, and I still have it.

And, you know, I really got into video games and programming and, you know, all of this stuff. And I, zero percent of that. I straight up was just like, I think I can do this, even though I grew up terrified of technology because I was poor. And if you fuck up technology, it breaks and it's expensive to replace. But maybe if I'm doing it as a job, it won't be so scary anymore. And yeah, so I started going to IT. started getting a degree in networking and eventually basically got a job at the current system I was working at. Do you have Cisco certification or was it like a more generic?

Most of the classes were actually basically just prep classes for various certifications. So Cisco was one of those. That's actually the one like line of classes for the degree that I haven't taken or didn't take. but like a bunch of the comp Tia like A-plus and you know Microsoft certifications Microsoft server certifications and stuff basically

it was kind of bullshit just because I had shitty shitty professors who had weird power issues and pretty much their entire curriculum was I had to pay to buy textbook and pay to

buy like the prep course for it. And then very little actual teaching happened, especially because I was an online student. So I just took the prep courses and that was your final. Like passing the prep courses was literally the final. So it was like, what is the fucking point here? Yeah, I remember my dad was at like a local community college working on a Cisco certification because my dad's like all self-taught and that kind of stuff and like used to work in an internet company. But then they like, he wanted to get a new job and no one was hiring because he doesn't have a degree. And the person offering the Cisco certification at the community college he was doing it at, they left before they offered the

final one. So my dad never finished the Cisco certification. That fucking sucks. Yeah, that's the bad thing about like those like trade schools and certifications. Like they're great. But I assume that can also be like kind of temperamental with like, do you have people to teach them and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And the one, the one, the one. One professor that I had for almost all of my courses that were IT-based was like he'd worked at the college and taught there for like 20-something years and pretty much had built the entire IT program and had a very big head about it. He was one of those teachers that was like, did you read the syllabus? Did you read the syllabus? How dare you ask me a question? Did you

read the syllabus? And I'm like, what the fuck are you even doing here then? But yeah, so that's part of the reason why I don't actually have the degrees because I got stressed out. and I started to have a mental breakdown, so I stopped taking classes. Oh, so you didn't finish the associates either? No, I didn't. I have like two-thirds of the degree, but also it's a thing where, like, you don't really know what it's like until you're working in the position. Like, you know, there's all those library jokes about, like, how it's like other duties as assigned, like, becomes like 50% of your job. And it's like, I didn't learn this in library school kind of stuff.

IT is pretty much very similar in the fact that I could never, like, me personally, I'm sure there are people out there with that sort of encyclopedic memory, but not me who I can't, I literally couldn't remember all of the stuff I would need to remember like between various commands and passwords and all of that stuff. Like, because my position now is really, I cover pretty much everything. I'm not really specialized. Yeah. So I basically have to look it up every time I change projects. Thank God for Stack Overflow, right? Right, exactly. And I'm assuming that like, I mean, I'm assuming like the skills in general that you learn in your courses is transferable and applicable to what you do. But I'm assuming that like the examples and the way you learn the skills, it's not applicable at all to how you're actually doing it. Because that's what I always run into when I like try to do like self-taught techie stuff is it's like, I don't need to make a calculator. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I know I've struggled. with language is like that too because like if I think we kind of discuss this with the episode

with John too or it's like if I don't have something to do with it I'm not going to really remember how to do it because I'm a kinetic learner. So yeah. So it's like you can learn kind of the basis is good but when it gets into that practical application there's literally nothing you're doing besides hitting the ground running on that. So and then you know you slap together power shell scripts from six places from stack over flow and hope that it works. And hopefully you have a testing environment, which probably don't. No one builds testing environments. I remember when you were in those classes, though, and you had like Bitcoin guys back

then who were like even weirder because it hadn't made any money yet. No, there was, I was taking an algebra class actually on campus. and this kid that I sat next to, I say kid, but I was like in my 20s, asked me what I was getting a degree in, and I told him. And he instantly was like, oh, so have you heard about Bitcoin? And I'm like, yeah. And he was like, well, and I was like, I don't actually care at all about Bitcoin. Like I'm not that kind of IT person who's going to get, you know, super excited at the concept

of making money over everything. But yeah, there's all sorts of Bitcoin dudes and IT people are insufferable. Everyone's insufferable. Yeah. I find my own, like, colleagues insufferable half of the time. Like, not my, like, my library colleagues, but, like, the IT world, I'm just like, could you just fucking get over yourselves and do something practical with what, like,

you know, please? But I'm a bitch. that's why we love you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my IT department hasn't been fun lately. They called me at like 8 in the morning after I put in a ticket the day before. And they were like, what department in IT does this go to? I'm like, I don't know.

Why don't you talk to your coworkers? Why don't you know that? And so he was like, well, I was like, we've already done a ticket on this. He's like, oh, you can just tell me that ticket number. And then I'll see where they sent it. I'm like, okay, that's actually practical. That wasn't the worst interaction I've had with them. It was just like that woke me up.

It was like 8.20 and I was sleeping in. See, like my dad when I was in like middle school taught me how to like troubleshoot and like how to figure things out on my own and like Google error codes and stuff. So I like forget that I can ask IT questions. But I'm like, no, I'm just figure it out by myself. It's fine. I'll just Google it. That's what you're going to do. You know, one of the sysadmins that I used to work with who,

I loved had like the t-shirt that was like what I think I do, what my mom thinks I do, what the internet thinks I do, and then what I actually do. And what I actually do was just literally Google search bar with like PowerShell for, you know, whatever. And that was kind of the moment because it was right when I first started working in IT that I was like, oh shit, maybe I can't really do this. Like, I mean, it's a library. So you kind of have to figure out how to Google search, especially because I was taking reference questions. And so. stuff as a, like, a library assistant occasionally. So it was like, just going to turn around and use those skills in a different forum. So why not? Right. Yeah. I mean, my first library, my first librarian job was mostly providing support for students who were learning office. Like the students who had like absolutely zero tech skills, they were just in the library

constantly because they didn't have computers at home and they'd never used a computer before. And so they would just be in the library just all day. with these horrifying books that were made for, they're designed around the Microsoft certification for like Word and PowerPoint and stuff. So they're like, here's how to change the theme colors. And that's like the third thing you learn instead of like how to draw up a document.

It's like how to find clip art, find this clip art. And like the clip art doesn't exist anymore because the book's like two years old or whatever or because they've integrated some new Bing thing. This is why I hate learning tech. Like every time I try and learn like any like Adobe kind of stuff like audition or Photoshop, it's like I always like I paid for this master class one time. And this guy was like, oh yeah, they just changed everything. So like all my old stuff doesn't matter anymore.

But here's how I set up my. So the whole first class was just like customizing it to get it back to the way that he was used to using it from the default. He was like, because they moved everything around. I don't like it. So say that's Windows server. It's like every time you finally get everything on one operating system, the next version comes out. And like especially like when I was in school,

it was like you could never find used textbooks because you had, because it was a different operating system every three years. So it was like there were no used textbooks for this course because you had to buy the brand new one that just came out a year before. It was just irritating. OER makes so much sense for like anything tech. because it just evolves so quickly. Heck, you need new materials,

not even annually, but like multiple times a year, depending on what it is. Like, I know the new Python that like 3.10 totally changed the game. And it gives you better error codes. So like stuff that's for 3.9 is already like out of date. Yeah. Traditional classroom learning is just so weird for IT stuff. And I'm so glad I never have had to take like an IT course.

is after high school. Like I tested out of the one in college. And I remember everyone just being like, this class makes no goddamn sense. I'm like, why didn't you test out of it? And they're like, you could do that. And like it was like a five minute test. Yeah, like the only class that I like that I find not useful that I took in

my graduate program was, I took a like a database design. I was like, oh, this is going to be with databases. It was basically a MySQL course, which was confusing. I could figure it out. And I was like, oh, this is kind of like a metadata schema, but relational. But basically, I didn't pay attention during the lectures. And the textbook was kind of useless.

Anytime, there was like a thing I couldn't figure out. I just went on Stack Overflow. And that's how I passed, like, got an A in that course, was just looking things up on Stack Overflow. I couldn't figure out. That's also how you should pass math classes. Yeah. I had a friend who was an engineer, an aerospace engineer, and so he had to take a lot of math. And he was just like, no, just like mathematics or whatever it is. He's like, that's just what I use all day. No point to reinventing the wheel or the PowerShell script or, you know, whatever. Like, it's probably out there. So unless that's something you actively enjoy, like, why bother? Yeah, like you can, you know, if you need a very specific tool, you can. You can. You know, if you need a very specific tool, you can.

can write it yourself or figured out yourself. But most of the time, someone has figured it out and needed that almost exact same thing before you. And either you can use it exactly or adapt it to your needs. Yeah, I do that a lot, especially with like different PowerShell scripts and stuff. It's like, I just tweak it like to my particular environment. And there's no, no real reason to like write it from the ground up unless it's something I want to do. Yeah. Yeah. Even basic Linux commands. Like I still run a Linux. I'm like one of my laptops that just died for some reason. And I didn't have any windows for it.

But even just basic commands, I'm just like, I don't remember how to do this in the terminal. I'm just constantly Googling it. That's pretty much me every time I touch a Linux machine. And it's never hard. It's just like, what was, what's the name of the text editor? Is it nano? Do I have nano on this machine? Yeah, there's nano.

There's VIRVEM. There's Emacs, which I'm a nerd for now. The thing that always gets me is which one is case sensitive and which one is not. Oh, yeah. I believe that it's Linux. That's case sensitive for all of the like command line stuff and it's Windows that's not. But I'm always like, why isn't this working? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let's go back to the library-ish questions.

So I've got like how I have interactions with library and library administrators been? Like, you mentioned the one trying to get you into library school. But, like, how have they been throughout your career? I think I've been at an advantage because I came from library, like, work and went into IT. So, like, especially when I first went into IT, everybody that I worked with, I had worked with previously at my branch. So, you know, I would wander back into, like, the CERC area and, you know, talk to them or they would come to me because they knew. me and they weren't intimidated by me, which is like a really huge thing. I think in IT that could

be a lot better is so many people are, you know, intimidated by technology and they feel like an idiot just for asking. And it's like, this is literally something I'm paid to know and not you. So like, why would I be an asshole to you for not knowing the thing? But that's a lot of IT for you. So, but yeah, uh, there were a lot of, there was a lot of talk about, you know, people. going back to library school and a couple of the people that I worked with who I was friends with did do that and our librarians now and um but interactions um but definitely moving into IT moved me up the respect chain if that makes sense like more or less like people listened to my ideas more that weren't IT because I was IT, you know, I'm supposed to know so much stuff and all of this kind of thing. And it did, I did definitely change my interaction with library admin at both of the libraries I've

worked at. It has definitely meant that they rely on me for certain things because they don't know, you know, they don't know IT, which is fine. But, you know, it definitely changed the power dynamic there because instead of it being like, well, I used to do what you do and I know how easy it is or, you know, you don't have this degree kind of deal. Like it was, I got listened to more and I got asked to do more interesting things. And yeah. And like I don't necessarily feel like that's bad, but I don't like it for other people. You know what I mean? Like coming from a part time position where I worked like 15 to 20 hours at three different jobs. and then going over years to this position where I could literally just be like, hey, I'm going to run out and grab Starbucks and nobody's going to keep track of where I am for 25 minutes, you know, kind of thing. It was just, it was kind of a culture shock because how people approached me was was different. And I, I've always had this thing where it's like, why are the people who are working the hardest, the ones who get the least money and benefits and kind of thing?

I have so much flexibility in my schedule. Like, I work nine to five. I don't have to work weekends unless something happens. And, like, I have all of this freedom that I didn't have when I was getting paid half of what I was paying and working twice as hard in some ways. And that's always just, like, pissed me off in so many ways. Yeah. But that's probably why I'm on a leftist library podcast now. So.

This is what I expect from this podcast. Yeah, I think about that too, like recently, because we have two kind of IT guys who just are mostly maintaining all the software and all the hardware in the library. And then we have a web developer who does like a lot of committee work and, you know, he's very involved. And I don't know what he's paid at. I know his rank, but I don't know what that rank pays. So, but I imagine it's not very much, but it might be more than library assistance. But I remember our dean was talking to me recently and he was like, yeah, if I could get them to get a MLS. And I was like, why do you need another person with an MLS?

You have three people with MLSs who are not in library, librarian jobs and haven't been able to get them library and jobs yet. It's been, you know, we have tons of people with MLSs, just lie around. Yeah, they got rid of library AT at UNH. I mean, we still have we have like kind of like a liaison guy and then like a lot of the tech services

people just by nature of us working with Alma Primo that's a lot of it and then we have like Kristen who works on like the website and whatnot but otherwise they like got rid of our own IT and they just absorbed it

into the system IT so yeah. His job is technically web developer. So that's his rank and his title. But, yeah, we don't have, like, really internal IT. It's more, like, support. They don't really handle tickets.

They're not integrated with IT at all. It's kind of like, hey, I need a monitor. And it's like, yeah, you just call them, like, see if we have an extra monitor somewhere. Yeah, Kristen is our, like, web content manager is what her role is. Like she like she doesn't design the like droople template because campus does that. But like she's the one in charge of all the content in it and like a lot of our UX testing and stuff. And that's specifically for the library? Huh?

Yeah. What were you saying, Justin? All your websites at you and H are built on Drupal. Uh, yes. Wow. Yeah. And it's like specific template. So like the library was on its own thing separate from.

the rest of it. And so we had more control over the layout of it. But then understandably, the university wanted to have like consistent templating and stuff across the board and have it sort of centralized manage. But that means that like there's no like login button on the main library web page for like people to get into their like library. And like, because I was like, hey, Kristen, why isn't this on here? She's like, trust me, I've asked there's no place in the template for us to put it and they won't like do a special one for us. And so that's like a access barrier and stuff. But yeah, no, we're all in Drupal.

Yeah, we use Cascade. It's not great. It's definitely not designed for libraries. And then we moved to a new template and we had to, you know, because I'm our backup website person for whatever reason, because I was just chair of the website committee when we needed a backup, even though I haven't been the chair for two years now. But, yeah, we just migrated everything over.

And it's, you know, library websites have specific needs. And so if it's not built to do that, it's really, really annoying. So our text and everything under the search bar is all fucked up all the time. And it's just kind of like, yeah, but it works. It looks better than it did, but it still doesn't look great. Yeah. But because it's all bootstrap now, it's just constantly resizing the fonts into weird configurations. Oh, because it's responsive. Yeah. I mean, it was responsive before. It's just,

it was extremely awful before. This is something I'm incredibly grateful for. We also have like a web content person and I don't, beyond just the server maintenance, I don't have to do anything the website, which I'm grateful for. I don't really have to do things, but like I manage our discovery layer, but because I'm the discovery strategy librarian and not just the person who manage as Primo librarian, like my role of discovery, like, I'm heading or like migrating our A to Z database list project right now, for example. So sometimes, like, I don't, I won't be the person who does the maintenance or the work or the workflow, but sometimes it's like, oh, hey, we should probably change this on the website for capital D discovery reasons. So sometimes I know

about the goings on of the stuff on our website, even though I don't manage that or you know we just are just signing a contract for a discovery layer when previously we just had the like standard polaris pack but now we're we're moving to an actual discovery layer and that'll be that'll be fun will you be managing that as like a systems person or would they have like a systems librarian or something to do that we don't have a systems librarian or anything no i i will I will probably be on that committee with a lot of that. And our technical services manager is the lead of the project. But yeah, I'll probably be doing the technical, the non-TS side of stuff.

Right. Yeah. I think we previously had a systems librarian because I have seen her name mentioned in a couple of places. and we have like a couple of like the like accidental system library and books and stuff in our professional collection, but I have no idea what happened there and whether or not that worked out. I have no idea what our systems library does because like I know what everyone else does and I'm like, what's left for him to do? Yeah. Right.

Because like if you use Alma Primo, it's like the way it's divided up, it's like there's not really one person who manages is that whole thing. There's people who do the resources stuff, and it's really cataloging people, and there's people who do like fulfillment stuff, and there's, like, the people who do the primo stuff. And, like, it's more compartmentalized than, like, a person managing the whole, like, LSP.

Yeah. So. Systems librarian seems like a small library kind of role, where it's like, okay, you're the person who knows how to run, like, the most systems. Yeah. So therefore you get the systems library. You see, I always got the impression it was the

opposite, because at least in my region, the actual titled systems librarians positions that I've seen have all been at, like, the really big branch systems, like Seattle Public and that kind of thing. So both of the places that I've worked for were sort of mid to the one I work in now is pretty freaking small. And there's no systems librarian to speak of at least like, well I work there. you don't have a systems person. So, you're the only person who does it, or you are in a place that's well-funded enough to have,

like, a department that does that, and you're kind of the overseer of it. It seems to be how it works. Yeah, my sort of fancy full goal, and I'm still, like,

not entirely opposed to it, was to eventually, if I got there, get an MLIS and be a systems librarian, but the roles have changed so much. And so, like, everything changes so rapidly. I don't know what systems librarians do, to be honest. And I'm a librarian who works in tech services, like, on the discovery layer.

And I don't know what systems librarians do. Yeah. If you're a systems librarian and you're listening, tell us what you do in the comments. Yeah. Justify yourself. Yeah. I don't know. I felt like everyone I met who was a systems librarian before my current job where I don't know what the systems librarian does was like it was kind of like

their unofficial title. But it was like the person who had the logins for the most systems. So like they had the back-end login for like, you know, the catalog and the lib guy. Like, who was over the admin on the most stuff? Where they might not be the people doing the labor for like the actual tasks for those systems, but they kind of maintain and administer the systems. Yeah, basically. Yeah, that makes sense. When I was working at a community college briefly, there was a guy, I don't remember if it was his actual job title, but he was like, oh, that's our systems guy. I don't actually think that was his job title. My job title is Systems Administrator, which is pretty common.

Oh, you're just a Siz admin? Yeah, I'm just a Siz admin. And that's pretty much my job. There's frequently points where somebody will come ask me something and be like, oh, well, can you, like, change this about, like, our reservation system or whatever. And I'm like, I can, but I'm not exactly in the position to, you know, make that change for everybody. That's more of like a policy versus a systems maintenance thing. So those are always kind of fun to navigate. Like, how do I help you get what you need and want and what will work the public better,

but also not step on any management toes by making decisions that I maybe are out of my ballpark, kind of thing. You might be able to relate to this and speak on this because I run into this all the time. So I'm like the person who does Primo stuff. Like I'm the only one who manages it, maintains it. I'm often like the final decision maker on stuff. But because it's something like the entire university community like uses, I can't like, and I don't say this to be like, man, people don't know things. But like, you know, I'm, and like, I didn't know all this stuff going into the position, but I've been teaching myself, but in that role, I am like the expert and the authority on that thing. Like, that's my job to know.

But I often, like, can't do my job. Like, I can't make decisions and, like, just do things because I think or I know that they're an appropriate thing to do because there's so many stakeholders involved that often these, what seem to be very simple decisions turn into, like, more policy things or, like, I have to ask, like, all of the reference librarians. I have to often bring it to faculty who don't know what I'm talking about, but it will affect the work that they do. Or I am willing to do UX testing because students use it or all of this other stuff, which is not bad things. But I'm wondering how often you run into that where it's like, you know, because of the, I mean, I feel like all IT people should maybe think about this. But especially in a library where like no matter what you're doing in the library, there's like this focus on how the end user and the patron. you know, we'll use it and like how that will affect their experience. Like how does that affect your ability to just like do your job and how much does that like tie you up and all this

write tape and stuff? I'm I consider myself incredibly lucky because I work at a small enough library that I know everybody and or have like an existing relationship with people. So like I know all the branch managers pretty well. And even like our director, like I've worked with him on plenty of stuff too. And so when that kind of thing happens, I normally know exactly who I need to talk to for a certain thing. But yeah, it does come up and it, I think for me, at least a lot of it is because things get put on IT, like solely on IT that really could use a lot more like public service staff input. And it doesn't, it doesn't, we don't get the feedback we need until it's already been out there. And somebody finally brings up that a patron can't, you know, can't get like audacity run or something like that, you know.

So it's like, okay, now I got to figure it how, you know, to set aside the time to test this and how to most, you know, how to the smoothest, like put it, put the change out and all that stuff. So, no, I get where you're saying where it's like, I could just do this and then deal with the consequences of it. Or I could wait around for three months for somebody to get back to me on what the consensus is for this fairly small change. But will inevitably either piss patrons off or make them very happy. And often it's like if you try to like bring like the idea to people who like don't do the work that you do so they don't understand it, if you like bring the idea sort of as a like, like, hey, would this be something that would make sense or that you would like? About 100% of the time, the response I get is, well, I don't know enough about that to make a decision. And so then I have to put all of this labor into basically getting a full prototype up and going,

only to be told like, oh, no, we don't want this or no, we don't like this because people automatically, like they hear tech or something. And then they go, that's not me. Sorry, I don't know enough about that. That's your job. You just do that. But then I'll do the work. And then they don't like it.

I totally get that. Yeah, and that's been like... You know when you try to bring them in, they won't. Exactly. And like, when I started working in IT and started to actually like really figured out what I really liked about it, because I do really like it. Yeah. It's, it's so much of it is just trying to figure out like that because there are the hard skills that you can Google a lot of or, you know, over, stack overflow or Reddit or wherever else. there are all these resources.

And the number one thing I feel like is sorely, sorely, sorely, sorely lacking in IT is the sort of like how you, I don't want to say soft skills because I hate that term. But like your job is a customer service job just because you're not actually. Exactly. So like it is actually your job to figure out how to communicate these systems and these needs to the people who will be using them. It's very similar to other types of library work. Exactly. Exactly. It's always kind of baffled me how siloed the sort of IT and then the sort of librarian like metadata and all that stuff just can get because to me they're like so similar in how they work.

And I try to be like super sort of customer focused in like my relationships with the staff and stuff and try to. I work really hard to try to meet people at the. level that they understand. And a lot of times, I feel like a lot of IT people do that thing where they're like, well, I know this. So everybody must know this basic amount of level. But it's like, it's, you really got to come at it and just be like, how much, if I say this, do you know what I mean? And then kind of peel it back or go forward from there. And it really, it really varies. And we had that problem with previous management where it was like too, too much was just like, oh, well, you know, your IT, you know that stuff.

You can do it. And it actually created like a rift that is still, we're still trying to like navigate back to like helping some of like the people who've been in this library system for a long time like sort of smooth back over because it was, you know, IT people love to talk about this shit. Not even necessarily if you even understand. Like I do this with my wife a lot where I'm like, can I ramble about this thing? and I don't expect you to actually remember or understand a word of it afterwards. I just need to bitch about this or I just need to like think about this out loud kind of thing. So like if you're willing to just spend like five minutes listening to an IT person ramble, you will probably have like a 50% boost to that relationship because we like to talk about our shit as most people do.

But because so many people are intimidated by it, it can be kind of hard. Or like in libraries, it's like basically, no matter where you work in a library, and I'm assuming this is true for IT as well, although it might not be for library AT, I don't know. But there's always this, like, I feel like there's this expectation that everybody should be aware of like how reference and instruction work. Like, you should be able to know how to sit at a desk. Like, I feel like there's that expectation. But then there's not the expectation to at least be literate enough in the tech stuff to know how it affects your work so that you can communicate

effectively with the people doing that work to communicate. Like, this is how this will affect me and this is what I need. Like, I see this also comes. I'm very much one of those people. It's like, you know, catalogers and metadata people should, like, probably know how to do reference because that affects how you approach metadata work, right? And I'm assuming, like, you know, you've worked front end. I'm putting quotes around that stuff too.

So you know how this affects. But then, like, reference librarians aren't expected to, like, they know. it's something I configure, like something that you configure and stuff. But beyond that, they're like, well, you're the expert on that. You trust that. Even though like I know how to do a reference interview and I don't go, well, I don't know anything about instruction or reference. So I'm sorry, I can't input on this faculty decision because yeah, right, right. We ever talk about tech stuff. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And that's definitely like something I have tried to like really work hard on because we, the system I'm at now,

when we have enough new hires, we kind of put them through like a, like a week-long training. Like, it's like two to three hours on a bunch of different topics. So there's like an intellectual freedom one. There's a reference interview one. And there's, you know, like a youth services one. There's all of the sort of, you know, areas of a public library you would expect. Right. That's great.

Exactly. And it doesn't matter what position you're hired into. Everybody's expected to go through all of that. training. So it's like you could be hired into IT or an admin position, you know, or like a facilities person who like helps maintain the ground and like maintenance and repair and stuff. And they're all still expected to at least sit through these trainings and internalize some of them just for the culture aspect of it. But at the same time, there's no IT component. Right. So I like, of course there's not. And especially because I went through these like the

Library Freedom crash courses, it's like there's so much stuff that I really wish I could get staff to understand. And it's a repetitive thing. Like when you come across things like fishing, like how to spot fishing, that's not a one and done sort of training. You really have to be able to like do like the, like make it easy for them to report it or, you know, be approachful enough that they feel like they can report it or, you know, also remind them because a lot of times people you get lax or like forget like, oh, maybe I shouldn't just click this link in this email kind of thing. So it's like trying to work that, that IT training in so they at least understand like why we have the password like restrictions that we have, why they can't just

use the same password for everything or, you know, like, so, so yeah, so they could understand where we're coming from to make it easier for us to help them, but also for them to give us the information we need. Because I've had people, I got an email once that was literally just, the catalog computer won't work. And I'm like, okay, like, that's a great start. Let me do that reference interview on you. Exactly, exactly.

And it's like, okay, so, so like what part is it working? Is it the monitor? Is it making a noise? Walk me through what you done. So what have you already, like, what have you already tried kind of thing? And like, yeah, so it's like, there's like the IT reference interview. And like sometimes it can be kind of delicate depending on your user because there are some people who are like, of course I tried to restart it. Of course I, of course I turned it off and turned it back on again. And then there are people who are like, oh yeah, I always forget to do that or like, you know, they're, they feel like we're asking dumb questions. But we're mostly just covering our bases because we're kind of idiots too. There have been times. know this stuff you can forget at it. Exactly. There have been times where I have gone out to like troubleshoot like one of our public computers and completely and utterly forgot to check the fucking power cord. Yeah.

Right? It's like, I'm in there like, oh man, it could be, it could be a group policy that's doing this. It could be, you know, something else. There could be the profile could be corrupted and it's, you know, the fucking power cord isn't plugged in all the way or, you know, that kind of thing. And it's just like, what direction do you start to troubleshoot from? And when we ask all of these questions, we're not asking them because we don't. have faith that you haven't tried anything, but just because we need to know what direction we need to come at it. Because there's kind of this, at least when I was taking classes, it was kind of like you can kind of come at things from one way or another.

And I imagine there's probably an analogy for this somewhere in like your work, J, or anything really, where it was like we could start troubleshooting from software down to hardware or you can start at hardware and up to software. So like you can try to like figure out if it is like an actual physical connection. causing the problem. Like, I had, like, especially with like, Ethernet issues. It's like, I, I, I was troubleshooting just this, like, computer that just would not work with the scanner that we have out for the public. I worked on it for weeks and weeks and weeks and could not figure out why this one couldn't work. The whole time, I needed to just switch out the cord that was plugged in. And it took me three weeks to figure that out. That was three weeks that this piece of equipment wasn't available for the public to use, right? So there is kind of that angle where it's like,

Do I start with the physical connections and kind of work my way up like the OSI layer? Like where do I enter into this troubleshooting kind of spot? And yeah, being able to have a conversation with your user about it greatly informs that kind of thing. So yeah, I think that there's a lot of work that could be done both ways. And especially in like academic communities like the LFP courses, I don't think a single person had a single good thing. to say about any of their university IT. And most of them were, like UJ, where their library IT had vanished and they were reliant on the university IT and it just was not good.

Who don't know library stuff. Exactly. And so I really feel like there is that silo does a lot of harm. And, you know, it really depends heavily on the environment, the size of your library. You know, there are a lot of public libraries who are reliant on like city or county IT or are like technically part of a township kind of thing. Mine's part of the county, but we're our own entity, so we do our own IT, which is really nice because we can make unilateral decisions that are best for the library system and not have to worry about what the local city thinks about

it kind of thing. Yeah. I know Justin has more questions, but if it's okay, I'm just like, not helpful to me, but I'm assuming like this would be relevant, like no matter it, you know, what sort of non-library and role you have in a library. but like what do you wish that the people who were in more like library roles in a library? Like what do you wish that like what would help you to have them like know about the work that you do where you could communicate about it? Like what sort of to what level like would be helpful? And even like vice versa. Like what do you wish like library IT people knew about library work?

Well, I wish more library IT people, or at least people who do IT for libraries, because those two things are not the same. But I really wish that they would think more about the privacy sides of things of what they're doing, like how they're keeping their logs and all of that stuff. And I saw this tweet once that was like, people in Infosec are one of two backgrounds. One, I'm former military and two, I'm an anarchist. and I wish a lot My dad is used to be in the Air Force Yeah And I'm an addict And there are a ton of people Because it's free training, right?

And that's what the military needs And that's where like the internet came from And so there's this huge thing But then I really wish that More IT people who work for libraries Understood the anarchist side Oh yes You know?

Because like And I'm a much Mr. Robot At least the first season Right. And this is why I really like the Library of Freedom Project, because it's like, it's exactly that. It's like, this is how you can use Tor and, you know, possibly piss off the Homeland Security who can't actually do anything to you about it, you know, like that kind of stuff. So I really wish that it was a little less nasal gaving in that way, gazing in that way. What I wish librarians knew. I'm trying to think of how to phrase how to phrase it. I really wish that librarians knew how to partner with IT better. You know, like, again, it's like a lot of it is that sort of just basic understanding of what we do and maybe some of the underlying systems that we have and like just being able to listen and have conversations, but also just like, and we talked a lot about this in LFP too because IT is such a stakeholder and so many privacy, like projects and things. And like setting up a lot of the tech that you would use. you implement that stuff at your library. Exactly. Like, like, how, like, kind of just like how,

what the basic amount of stuff is that you need to know to be able to have, like, a slightly IT-leaning conversation with people, or how do you even just necessarily say, like, listen, I don't understand this. How can you break this down for me? Like, you know, really trying to, like, make it obvious how your goals align with their goals. And I realize that that's also on IT. because, like, we're also not very good at articulating our goals, and they're kind of all over the place. And there are plenty of times in my job where I'm like, you know, this would be best for, like, when it comes to, like, logkeeping and stuff, it's like, this would be best for me from like an information, like security level. Like, I could use this information, but also, like, there's the privacy aspect and there's, you know, but then who's going to need this information later? and am I just really just indulging my own geekness for systems, you know, because I love to set up systems and watch them work.

But then, you know, there's that aspect where it's like, oh, yeah, but somebody else is going to be using this because my job is not to make things and then preying over them. My job is to actually like, you know, make these systems work so other people can use them. That's like the endpoint, right? Like the patron. But yeah, I just, I don't actually think if I was going to come down on one side or another, I would, say IT needs to reach across that gap more than library people do. Really? Really, because I think library people, because of the training from library people,

librarians get how you have to organize stuff. So much of librarian science is just simply how you're going to organize things. So they work in a way that- Reference work is like organizing how you find information and ask about it and stuff. Exactly. And like both things are about information. Yeah. And like IT is the infrastructure of that information, but library science and like that kind of thing is is the use of that information and the application of that information.

And I feel like librarians understand that better. And one of my favorite things that I love about my current job is when I first started, there was this librarian who I was immediately warned. was kind of a pain in the ass. Oh, yeah. Like, they were like, oh, you know, she'll come back and she'll, she'll ask for all of these things. And, you know, she'll, um, she doesn't always, there's always a squeaky wheel kind of thing. And like, because I've been on the other side of that, I'm like, you know, generally people don't bring things up unless it's actually hurting their workflow. And ultimately, I'm supposed to be oiggling people's workflows, right?

that's what IT, that's the whole point of IT systems is to make it easier for us to do stuff. And it was, it was like the first two or three times, like she would come in the back and she would go straight to me. She wouldn't even bother talking to any IT people. She would come over to me. Yeah. And email you directly. Email you directly. Email me directly and that kind of thing. And like, usually I'm like, that's a, that's a great sign because that means that they like and trust me now, you know, how you get that. so it can be a little more spread out. And the second or third time that she did this, my manager at the time was like, wow, she really likes you.

And I was like, yeah, because I don't make her feel like an app. Like, I don't make her feel like what she's complaining about doesn't fucking matter. You know, like Chrome keeps crashing on her computer. Of course that fucks her up. Like, of course we need to address that. Just because it's happening to one person and that one person always seems to have issues. doesn't necessarily reflect on that person's skills or abilities at all. And there are always, always, there are like four users in my library,

but even like our newest guy is like, these four people are the people who have the gremlins. If something's going to go wrong, it's going to go wrong on one of their computers. And they all are in very different positions. They all have very different, like, one of them is really, you have to tread kind of carefully because they kind of can get indignant

or like have a temper or just get super frustrated with technology when it's not lurking. Like, well, you told me this last time. And it's like, well, okay, it's not quite the same thing this time. And then there are other people who are just like, oh, I didn't even bother to tell you because I just work around it. And it's like, neither of those things are good. I want to hear what your problems are, but I also don't want you to like feel like,

I'm just jerking you around for my own fun and not because I don't know how to do my job. But yeah, so when that one librarian came back and she just came straight to me and she talked to me and I talked to her and she went back to her desk and my boss came over and was like, wow, she really likes you. I was like, I'm doing something fucking right because of the squeaky wheel came to me first and that would irritate the shit out of a lot of IT people who come from a business perspective. Yeah, a lot of information architecture people come from business. Exactly. And so it's like I like, that's a good sign. It makes my job harder sometimes because then I have to. to juggle things that maybe necessarily other people in my department aren't hearing about or whatever.

But I try to keep it positive. And that means that these people trust me. They like me. They will like understand my perspective of where I'm coming from. Because sometimes there are just hard limitations. It's like, oh, can we get this to do this? We have one software that I fucking hate. And people are like, well, can it do this?

And I'm like, straight up, no. There's literally nothing I can do about this. I've even talked to the people who make it, and they say, oh, that would be a nice feature maybe in the future sometime and never, never do anything with it. So it's like, there are sometimes where it's like, I have to deliver the hard news that's like, we got this whole thing set up. And the one feature that you were really counting on that everybody kind of assumed would be there isn't there, you know? And but yeah, so it is really kind of a balance in that sense. But like, if the irritating people come to you, it's not because they're. they're irritated. They're trying to irritate you. It's because you're probably doing your job okay.

Yeah, I always try to imagine like, okay, what do I feel like when I get frustrated about something? Yeah, that's what I always try to remember. Yeah. And like, technology is frustrating with everybody. I always tell people like, I fucking hate printers. I swear God. Right? No. And it's like, if you can commiserate with people with the user and be like, I am also a user of this thing, despite the fact that this is also my area of expertise, like that little bit goes a long way. And like one of the things I really, really liked about the LFP courses

was how much Allison Mcrina just emphasized how much it's really just about your relationships with other people. Like you can know. Shout out to Allison. A shout out to Allison. You're fucking fantastic. But, you know,

it really is just about how you build the relationships between your admin, your IT, you can get them on your side and like figure out how their goals align with yours so you can make shit happen instead of it sitting in a project management black hole for six months until somebody forgets the project was even like occurring. So yeah, uh, I really wish that IT taught a lot more of that because that was definitely something that was entirely missing from my education in classes.

It was like, how well do you know your command lines? how well do you, you know, troubleshoot a network connection issue and all of this stuff. And there was pretty much nothing about, you know, user experience and, you know, how to communicate these concepts to people who maybe it wasn't natural for. And pretty much all of that I picked up either through non-it classes or from straight up just work experience.

Yeah. So. I think IT courses actually do have like help desk classes now. where it's like how to run a help desk. If it's a help desk focused degree, if you're going for something. Yeah. But like,

so my degree was in networking. And it never really talked about that stuff because it just kind of assumed that the people who are maintaining a network or whatever aren't actually talking to the end customers of the network, which isn't true. Like it'll be brought to them. Yeah, exactly. So, you know,

there was none of that sort of. customer service skill aspect to it. So I wish that, yeah, I would see more libraries integrating sort of basic IT concepts into their overall staff training, and then IT kind of figuring out how to like focus on that customer service side of things and learn how to communicate their side of things to non-techie people. Because, I mean, it's a public library. You're going to get the one old man who still keeps his passwords written down in a notebook and can't figure out how to get into his Google account.

And then there are going to be people who insist that you know, you have to have this one particular very specialized set of software because they don't want to have to pay for it kind of thing. So right. Yeah. Like I am not a software developer, so I don't know how actual software developers view the whole like Sprint Agile methodology. But in my own usage of that methodology, the thing I like about it is that. it is forcing to constantly communicate with the stakeholders of this product or whatever you're making. That's the core of that methodology.

So I'm glad that that's like something that's being introduced into like a tech world. Yeah. I think like project management would be good to learn. I mean, we definitely have like an admin course as well. But I feel like a lot of IT things especially are like just finding out whose responsibility this is so that you know who to escalate it to. because, like, you know, my last job, like, we got these new printers, and then IT was coming to me to ask me about them because, like,

I was the only person who had talked to the rep while they were there, but I'm like, this is the IT director's project was these new printers. Like, the library wasn't even consulted. It was just like, but I spent the most time answering users questions about them because they're all in the library. So I, like, I was eventually, like, just emailing the company and being like, what's going on with your, software this isn't working.

I think libraries could, it's a good thing that like almost all library programs teach things like reference and in their courses, but it's also, I saw recently someone was talking about like most librarian jobs involve instruction, but most of the time instruction isn't a required course in library school. And most people don't think they're going to do instruction as a library. Because even like training, even like a one-on-one or like just the ability. to, because the one thing, like, that was important thing I take away from, like, the reference interview is that, like, people are bad at asking questions, and that's not just relevant

to people asking reference questions. That's, like, a universal, people can be asking you a question about, like, an IT thing for your job because they're having a problem, and knowing a reference interview is useful with that, or if you have to teach someone something, knowing instruction skills is useful for that. Yeah, I know UYUC has, like, a library technology course in the, like, grad program. And I heard good things that one of my friends took it. It seemed to be like an overview

and like my friend's final project was on like trans women and twine games. But like it was just like a sort of like a general library tech course and I hear it was really cool. So I know UYUC at least has that kind of course, but I don't know what other courses like library schools are offering. Yeah, trans women only know eat hot chip and twine. basically.

Yeah. I guess we've covered like everything I wanted to cover just sort of organically. I want to know the weird situations one. Do you want to do that? Yeah, any weird situations maybe related to interactions with librarians or library admins or anything with patrons. I think kind of working the front line of stuff before going into IT actually like give me a really good basis for the weird interactions because most of my weird interactions happen. like there. Like, before we like were kind of in this like partial closed state that we're in now because of

COVID, there was like teenagers who would come in and like put condoms on the feet of the chairs or like over like the mice kind of thing. And like, you know, there's that kind of weird, like weird silly shit that happens. And I'm trying to think if there have been any like truly bizarre interactions. we have had one guy come in lately, like a patron who absolutely insists that there are viruses on our computers and now is refusing to use them and gets very upset because he's convinced that some of the less usable things

about the computers means that there's viruses. Oh, and not just like you locking down things? Yeah, not just me like locking down things or things being slightly misconfigured because, you know, for whatever reason. But yeah. Does he think like the Chinese are behind it? Is that his like why he won't use it? I actually haven't been able to speak to him directly, which I've been like every time he's come in, he'll come up and complain to the frontline staff and then immediately leave. And I'm like, no, you have to be here and show me what your issue is so I can try to explain it. But yeah, I tried to think about this some last night and was just like kind of coming up blank because I don't know what's weird anymore. Like after after like the fifth or six time you've pulled a condom out of a book or disposed of like a half drunk can of beer buried in the back of the stacks or you know had to call the cops on a drunk dude who's on your public computers you know the weird shit from the IT side of things just it seems a lot less weird.

Any like funny like fishing emails or anything? Oh my god. Oh my God. Okay. Yes. Thank you for reminding me that because this is this is this. was one of the funniest things. There was this email going around at one point that was straight up like, we hacked your computer and we got a hold of your webcam and we recorded you masturbating. And we're going to send it to all of your friends and family, everybody in your contact info, unless you give us Bitcoin kind of thing. And you're actually fairly, fairly standard kind of email where it's like, it's alarmist because they want you to panic. And like it's like it's like it's not out of the realm of possibility.

It's not out of the realm of possibility. And so there was a couple of months there where one of the staff would get one of these and just be entirely freaked out. Just like I don't even know what this means because it didn't actually say that. It just said that like, oh, we we caught you doing. We know, we know what websites you were going to. and we know what kind of things you were doing while you were at those websites like blink blink kind of thing and I'm just and they're just like I don't even I don't even know what this is like how this would even be possible and I'm like it's not it's literally all a lie like it's trying to

freak you out but that always kind of cracked me up because like like you work in a library I'm sure you seem weirder shit than that so like the kind of emails that I get just because I like yeah I'm a librarian but like because I have faculty status and if like published and stuff I get a lot of those like if someone weren't aware they don't necessarily always come off as fishing emails but it's like people asking you to publish in journals and it's always a like scam thing I mean it's all scam but you know that kind of thing and they're always like calling me like Dr. Colbert and I'm like no I'm not a doctor sadly I've got some weird vendor emails. Like academics get is like just asking us to publish in journals and stuff. One thing that always cracks me up, but I think I may have mentioned this before and probably said it on Twitter because it really does crack me up is when,

because in our email filter we have like certain phrases and terms just like absolutely blacklisted. Oh, right. Like, you know, like Viagra and any sort of like using an at, symbol instead of an A sort of configuration. Because, you know, like, maybe somebody is legitimately going to email about Viagra, but the very mass majority of it is going to beat spam, right? So we just block that all together. But occasionally, an email header that is just like a random, like, cryptographic string

will produce a swear word that is blocked. And they're like, I don't know why I got this email. And I have to go in there and be like, oh, it's because it spells fuck. like you didn't get this email because the email wanted to swear before it got to you and our email filter was like uh no thank you and so that's always kind of fun because i'm always just like yeah so um our email sort of our filter sort of inadvertently blocked it it's not likely to happen again meanwhile i'm giggling because i like the word fuck so it's just stuff like that or like the time that i had the the HR the director of HR call me in an absolute

panic because she had Googled IRS and just clicked the first link from Google, which was one of those ad links. And it brought her to a scam site with the flashing, you know, like, your computer's infected and you need to call Microsoft this number and blah, blah, blah, blah, and they'll walk you through stuff. And, you know, all of that sort of alarmist stuff. And she's just like, I don't even know what I did. And I'm just standing there like, this is so mundane to me that, like, I'm not freaked out in the slightest. And she's like utterly panicking because she thinks she has just infected the entire library system kind of thing. So, yeah, it's like, don't worry, people do this shit all of the time, which is why I'm

not panicking. But, yeah, it's always kind of an interesting thing because the things that I'm used, I'm used to dealing with really freak other people out a lot of the time. Yeah. So, you know. I got an email one time that was from our university's domain. Oh. But the person's name was like, I'm a fisher, but F-I-N-S-H-E.

are and I looked at it and I was like this is Paul Hackerman from the it's from the S&BC comic. One of those things. My boyfriend's work like an employee there who worked in IT or something like and left. I don't know if he got fired or something. But then he started sending me like fishing emails because like the name of the company, like their email address.

Like he he set up an email where it like looked like it was from that. as there was like one letter different, but it looked similar or something. Yeah. Yeah. So he was like doing that for a month or something. Yeah. I like I looked up like the active directory to find the person and it was like, I don't remember if they were actually in there or not or if, but I told IT about it because I was like,

I think someone's creating users, which could be a problem for you. Yeah. But using sort of like masking service because then you could get a telephone numbers. Domain spoofing. It's, is that what it's called? Yeah.

And like it's, we've had to deal with it with our email filter too. Because yeah, it's, it's possible. And there are ways that you can like work around that and like get that to not happen. But yeah, like, yeah, it happens. Some of our vendors do it do spoofing for like their products. So then it all gets picked up in the spam filters. So like, like, like, B Press will try and send you something from UTRGV.edu kind of thing. Or like, it'll have you to RGV in the name.

And so it looks like a spoofed email. And I think PressBooks had this issue recently because every single email from the software was getting blocked. And then I just got an email from Pressbook saying like, hey, we need you to change some DNS settings so that we can update our security certificates. And I was like, yeah, I put in that ticket for you, buddy. It's, I don't think it's getting done until spring. I'm trying to help. Sorry, Steele. The hacker man thing just reminded me.

There is this big vulnerability that just came out over the past couple of weeks, the log for Jay. Oh, I remember seeing that, yeah. And I've been keeping track of our firewall to see, like, what we've been hit with. But I, like, search part of the string just to see what comes up. And, like, it's like JNDI comma, L, DAP, IP, and then it's slash exploit. And it's like, you really, like, But that's how ubiquitous this whole thing is, is that, like, you can literally say what you're doing in the string. And there's no way people can like, you know, it's hard to, there's so many avenues that it doesn't even matter, like, how obvious you are about it. So, but that just kind of cracked me up because I'm like, oh, exploit? No, really. I wonder why, I wonder if that's why my firewall blocked it. Like, hacker voice. Hacker voice. You're not in. That was our, the one thing I do give our IT credit for is being really good about security.

And they kind of always have been at this institution, but everyone's like, oh, it's so annoying. I'm like, you guys don't know what it's like to be on the opposite end of that where, you know, you've got I'm a Fisher emailing you. And they're like, it's probably nothing. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's no big deal. But we got an email for all everyone about the exploit. And then they searched through, I guess, all the share drives on the network. And they were like, oh, open refine is on one of your share drives.

that's known to have to be vulnerable to this exploit. So we wanted to let you know to update it. I was like, oh, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, and I just opened or find put in an update like yesterday or something. Yeah, because log for Jay has had to do three updates to actually cover all of the vulnerabilities that have come out. It was first like, you know, 2.15, if you have that upgrade to 2.16. And now it's like, oh, you have to upgrade to 2.17 because they discovered stuff that wasn't covered by 2.16.

and you know but no there there is that that balance of security and usability which isn't always necessarily a hard balanced strike but yeah no it's like when you're on the other side of it and you're like if ransomware happens i'm fucked everybody else is inconvenienced but i'm fucked and like maybe not so much in the library world but in the wider business world if you're if you're the If you're the person who is responsible for that and it squeaked past you, you're getting fired. Like, that's, that's it, you know, kind of, kind of thing. So, like, if people are, you know, uptight about security, I can't really blame them. Yeah.

Well, we've gone pretty long. Yeah. And we're going to talk about this some more because we're going to have more people come on for this series. So. This is really fun. Yeah. I'm glad because I never know what it's going to be like when I talk for an hour straight because ADHD. I want to hear you talk for an hour.

or start more. Oh, thanks, Jay. Yeah, hopefully we can get some more people who've done IT and some people who do different things in libraries

that aren't librarian positions. I'd love to have a facilities person on. Yeah, that would be interesting. So the shit that they deal with is just fucking crazy. Oh, yeah. So we work pretty closely

with our facilities department and, yeah. Yeah, especially like with archives and museums because then you've got like hazardous materials or like decaying materials and that's always like temperature control. Yeah,

like I've had to go down to like the, our facilities like place back when I was in grad school and uh, because we were working with nitrate film and we were like, we just wheeled out a whole cart of it and we were like, or not nitrate film. Uh, it wasn't that dangerous.

But we had to walk down and be like, can we see, keep any of this or do we have to put it in the special discard? So we just wheeled it all down to facilities and then went through it, like opened it and smelled it and threw it away, open, smelled through away. It just looked at how decayed it was. So I imagine there's lots more of that, especially like batteries and everything, too.

Yeah. And at least from the IT side of things, it's sometimes incredibly hard to get rid of stuff. So like we have like six old printers that we literally have no idea how to get rid of because nobody will take them. And that's technically supposed to be facilities job. But man, I'm sure that they've gone through some interesting stuff. Yeah. Okay. Well, good night.