Sustainability Frustrations
Most days I’m quite a tolerant person. Today is not one of those days. Today I’m frustrated with the inefficiencies of my university’s library. I submitted a request to meet with a reference assistant to help me discover new and exciting resources for my work.
I saw the first red flag go up when I was completing the online form. On the form it asked a series of questions and then included 3 blanks in which I was to write my preferred days and times to meet. I couldn’t help but notice there were no parameters on those blanks. My schedule is not flexible right now, but since the library didn’t give me any guidelines of when they could or could not meet, I listed three different days and asked for 6pm on any of those days.
The second red flag was no communication verifying that my request had been received. It’s been over a week now and I have heard nothing. The third red flag for me was when one of my classmates sent us an email with a librarian’s contact info in case we hadn’t heard from anyone so we could contact her. I thought that was the purpose of the online form?
My assignment was to schedule and complete this appointment and then blog about the experience. This is what I am doing now. I’m blogging about my frustration with a system that doesn’t work and the fact that no one seems to be doing anything about it, and now others are suffering because of it.
But wait, isn’t that what really what my project is all about? It’s about systems that we have in place that appear to work on the surface, but over time we’ve learned that not only are they not working, they are actually bringing harm to others. This is not sustainable. In order for something to be truly sustainable, it has to be working for the present and bringing no harm to the present or the future. Sustainability means a cycle just keeps going that keeps things naturally alive and thriving and replenishing. It takes into account the triple bottom line: People, planet and profit.
This online reference appointment system is not sustainable. I’m now stuck. they missed all three of my suggested appointment times and now because of my trip to New York City next week i wont’ be able to get an appointment until two weeks from now. I have had to write to my professor to ask him to please not let this negatively affect my grade since it was out of my control.
So what am I going to do? I’m going to let the library know that their system is not working. It would be better to not have a system than to have a broken one.
All this reminds me of so many unsustainable practices that we just tolerate because they are in place. Inefficient fuel guzzling vehicles, typical front “lawns”, oil dependence, excessive plastic use, downtown South Bend’s lack of a commercial recycling program, pesticides, herbicides, GMO’s and more.
Why do we tolerate something that not only is hurting us, but will also hurt generations to come?
Shades of Green 
I used that same contact system and put in three dates. But nobody got back with me and so finally I just e-mailed one of the reference librarians directly and made an appointment.
I wonder what the difference was between you not getting a response and me getting one the same day. Possibly the topic? Or timing? I requested a consultation on Feb 5th and received confirmation of an appointment time less than 6 hours later. Hmmmm….
I had the same experience, I submitted the request on Monday and scheduled an appointment for Wednesday in the same week. But Wed has come and I got no response! So I had to make a quick trip to the library itself. I met with Ms Linda Fleshman who told me that all requests go to her email and she assured me that she didn’t get anything from me … my face was like this ===> :O how come?! I am really glad I went and asked otherwise, I would have been still waiting for a response assuming that they received my request! -_-