‘Law Books’
courtesy of ‘Mr. T in DC’
Have a DC Public Library card? Are you sure? According to John Kelly’s Post chat today, in recent system cleanup, the library cards of everyone who did not currently have a book checked out were wiped out. (Scroll down about a third of the way, or do a CTRL-F for “DCPL.”) As someone whose job depends on the functioning of a well-ordered database, I can think of lots of reasons to wipe out/archive old, inactive cards, but I can’t think of any reason to do so without a date cutoff to preserve people who just, you know, went on vacation. In the summer.
So if you were thinking about dropping by the library, you may want to check the status of your card.
Tiffany Baxendell Bridge is an Internet enthusiast and an incurable smartass. When not heckling the neighborhood political scene on Twitter, she can be found goofing off with her ukulele, Bollywood dancing, or obsessing about cult TV. She is That Woman With the Baby In the Bar.
Tiffany lives in Brookland with her husband Tom, son Charlie, and two high-maintenance cats. Read why Tiffany loves DC.
Hi Tiffany,
Mr. Kelly’s chat was not quite right. We purged the records of customers who had no book or media checkouts for the last 3 years. We also inadvertently deleted about 2,000 records that were incorrectly set up, and about 3,000 people who had cards but only used computers or e-books, music, and audiobooks. We are asking people whose records were inadvertently deleted to bring their card and a valid ID to their nearest library. We will reactivate their cards (They do NOT need to get all new cards or keychains). Reactivation takes about 2 minutes.
Thanks for coming by to clarify, but you should probably also be worrying about what DCPL staff is telling Washington Post reporters when they call.
Honestly, we couldn’t find anyone who talked to him. We asked everyone who mans the phones at the main branch and no one recalled or admitted speaking to him. Maybe he didn’t identify himself….