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Finished Phoenix and Ashes by Lackey. Wonderful book. REALLY annoying continuity flip, but wonderful book. (There's a spot where one of the sisters is the elder and one is the younger. Then it's reversed within a page. It seems to consistently be the second one after that, but whenever they don't say elder/younger I wonder a bit if I've attributed it to the right person, because of the confusion. Fairly beautifully, they are so almost-interchangeable that this doesn't impact the flow of the story all that much....)
So I checked my holds at the library, since I knew I had several things in transit. Yes, yes I did. One book I'll have for a month. One I may have for a month - some libraries have The Outstretched Shadow filed in SF, some have it filed in new SF or new books. The latter will be 14 days only. Only one book shows a transit hold, so that's likely mine if they list things the way I think they do - if so, I should have a month with it also. One book will for sure be a 14-dayer. And the other thing is the complete series of Firefly.
Which I may have to hand straight back. I placed the hold from the summary page, as you can do. And when I clicked through to details to try to see what it was listed under and how long I'd have it, I found once again that I should have been more careful. I knew they did this with magazines, but didn't realize they also do it with DVDs. I hate this. For magazines, they list a single title of the magazine for the year, and each copy of each month is an instance. If you hold the title, you get a random magazine from that year. If you hold a specific instance from that year, you get what you wanted - but maybe not the first one available, since you can only hold a whole title, or a single object, not anything between. This is a problem when the title contains magazines from each month of this year, and there are 6 copies of January, and you want to say "January, please, whichever one's available first" - you can't.
Well. So I click through to the Firefly page and truly look at it. (Why, I have no idea, in retrospect. The time for DVDs is 7 days, new or not; and I know there's quite a few holds lined up behind me, so renewal is not happening.) There are six entries. One is the complete set, from my library. Another is listed as '800 Firefly' which doesn't tell me a lot but is hopefully the whole set, from Lake Oswego. And four more are from the Milwaukie library, filed by individual disc, each disc as an item. Thing is? The one from my library that is complete, has a due date. That's not the one I got. The rest all have "Hold Requested" - except disc 4 from Milwaukie, which is Transit Hold.
Anyone want to bet the stupid screwups have sent me disc 4 when - by the title they gave me - I was asking for the complete set? This one piece of the system I hate, and if indeed it's disc 4 waiting for me, I shall return it and I shall complain. I'll complain anyway if I get the whole set, as the system needs to be fixed. But I don't think I'll get the whole set. I'm fairly sure I'll get only disc 4 of 4.
Now, with three books in, at least one of which is a two-weeker, it might not be that bad a thing to defer getting the Firefly stuff. Except. It took forever on that hold list. It's quite possible if I hold the single copy from my library that is complete, that the hold might expire before I got it. I suppose the logical thing to do is request-individual on the four discs from Milwaukie, one at a time, since it seems reasonable to assume that anyone who has placed a direct hold on an item will have gone for the one from my library or the one from Lake Oswego. If I hold on either of those two, I should do the one from Lake Oswego - Wilsonville is filed in DVD, Lake Oswego in New DVD. This makes no difference to the checkout time for a DVD, but someone used to the book times might think it does...and the Wilsonville copy is listed above the Lake Oswego copy in the display. Two reasons why people placing specific-item holds might have leaned toward the Wilsonville one.
What a pain. And pointlessly stupid.
So I checked my holds at the library, since I knew I had several things in transit. Yes, yes I did. One book I'll have for a month. One I may have for a month - some libraries have The Outstretched Shadow filed in SF, some have it filed in new SF or new books. The latter will be 14 days only. Only one book shows a transit hold, so that's likely mine if they list things the way I think they do - if so, I should have a month with it also. One book will for sure be a 14-dayer. And the other thing is the complete series of Firefly.
Which I may have to hand straight back. I placed the hold from the summary page, as you can do. And when I clicked through to details to try to see what it was listed under and how long I'd have it, I found once again that I should have been more careful. I knew they did this with magazines, but didn't realize they also do it with DVDs. I hate this. For magazines, they list a single title of the magazine for the year, and each copy of each month is an instance. If you hold the title, you get a random magazine from that year. If you hold a specific instance from that year, you get what you wanted - but maybe not the first one available, since you can only hold a whole title, or a single object, not anything between. This is a problem when the title contains magazines from each month of this year, and there are 6 copies of January, and you want to say "January, please, whichever one's available first" - you can't.
Well. So I click through to the Firefly page and truly look at it. (Why, I have no idea, in retrospect. The time for DVDs is 7 days, new or not; and I know there's quite a few holds lined up behind me, so renewal is not happening.) There are six entries. One is the complete set, from my library. Another is listed as '800 Firefly' which doesn't tell me a lot but is hopefully the whole set, from Lake Oswego. And four more are from the Milwaukie library, filed by individual disc, each disc as an item. Thing is? The one from my library that is complete, has a due date. That's not the one I got. The rest all have "Hold Requested" - except disc 4 from Milwaukie, which is Transit Hold.
Anyone want to bet the stupid screwups have sent me disc 4 when - by the title they gave me - I was asking for the complete set? This one piece of the system I hate, and if indeed it's disc 4 waiting for me, I shall return it and I shall complain. I'll complain anyway if I get the whole set, as the system needs to be fixed. But I don't think I'll get the whole set. I'm fairly sure I'll get only disc 4 of 4.
Now, with three books in, at least one of which is a two-weeker, it might not be that bad a thing to defer getting the Firefly stuff. Except. It took forever on that hold list. It's quite possible if I hold the single copy from my library that is complete, that the hold might expire before I got it. I suppose the logical thing to do is request-individual on the four discs from Milwaukie, one at a time, since it seems reasonable to assume that anyone who has placed a direct hold on an item will have gone for the one from my library or the one from Lake Oswego. If I hold on either of those two, I should do the one from Lake Oswego - Wilsonville is filed in DVD, Lake Oswego in New DVD. This makes no difference to the checkout time for a DVD, but someone used to the book times might think it does...and the Wilsonville copy is listed above the Lake Oswego copy in the display. Two reasons why people placing specific-item holds might have leaned toward the Wilsonville one.
What a pain. And pointlessly stupid.
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