Most of the book I want can only be read at the Schwarzman Building. I don't mind sitting there for a couple of hours devouring a book, even if their chairs are ridiculously uncomfortable, but the request is the part of the process that bugs me. If it's a regular book, you log onto the NYPL website, click you want it and say which library you want to pick it up from, and you're done. If it's for the Schwarzman, this has to happen.

Yeah, it's a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but each time I do it I wonder why it has to be this way. Why do I manually have to type in the author's name, the name of the book, and the call number? Do you know how easily that's susceptible to error? The part that really gets me is that I have to input my name and library card number. I'm already fucking logged in! Why do I have to do this? And if you fuck up on this part, everything goes wrong when you head to the library because they scan your card and nothing comes up. Then you realize you've written 9595 instead of 9585, and the clerks spend fifteen minutes searching for this shit because it was missorted thanks to your mistake.

I initially guessed, besides the expensive, the NYPL was unwilling to upgrade the system because a lot of their materials are old shit you can't easily slap a barcode on. But they are! They have to scan it anyway before they hand it to me to assure I'll return it. So what the fuck? Everything's already set up, just hire a company for $100,000 to program a new request system. We're the second-largest library in the world (largest if you count Brooklyn and Queens). Surely we can do better.