Sign blindness

I have long been a proponent of directional signage -- when I worked at the shall-remain-nameless kopy kompany I stuck signs to every computer and printer I could. I'd a million times rather scotch tape neon instructions to a machine than explain for the fourth (fourteenth, fortieth, four-hundreth) time how that machine worked.

But library patrons, paradoxically, while they visit the library because they both know how to and actually like to read, refuse to read signs. All the exclamation points and bold fonts and bright paper in the world can't make people read signs in libraries. (My favorite is when people talk on their cell phones right underneath the "no cell phone zone" signs.)

So imagine the struggle between futility and necessity when you really, really need to communicate something to every single patron or risk saying the same thing over and over four million times a day. Welcome to this Term at the college library.

What happened is we've changed the way that students print: instead of reaching over and picking up their print from a printer two feet away, they have to get up from the computer, walk fifty feet to the print queue monitor, and then walk back to the printer to get their print. While understandably unintuitive, this process is causing so much confusion you'd think we expected them to figure it all by themselves.

Which, of course, we don't, because, of course, there are SIGNS. Everywhere. Taped to the walls, taped to the printers, taped to the desks. But to no avail. They still come ask me how to print, and I still have to explain it, over and over, one by one.

But no more! Now, while the signs are still taped to everything, there are also handouts (little, yellow, different!) on the tables, spelling out in painful detail (a la "click the printer icon to print") how to do this whole dance.

The handouts made their debut a few hours ago and, while I'm still getting deluged with "why won't it print" whines, now I can just calmly hand the student a piece of paper and say "here you go. This will explain it all."

Ahhhhh. Sign blindness be damned! Handouts are heaven.