I'm in a fairly unique situation. I'll admit, it's nice to be both in the U.S. And Korea. I get the adventure of living in a foreign country, but a lot of the little comforts of home that the folks outside the base miss. Butter, for example. There's also ibuprofen, Sunday brunch, clothing in American sizes, and a large supply of books and DVD's in English to borrow.
Which leads me to the other side of things. Supplying American library services in Korea involves a lot of annoyances that I never anticipated. Unless I have a lot of foresight, books have fallen off the bestseller list by the time I receive them. Actually, even if I do have a lot of foresight, publishers won't ship a book until, say, the day before it comes out, at which point it has a six week journey across the ocean. Six weeks, by the way, is a good travel time. It takes some items three months.
Previous Daegu librarians have paved the way with some suppliers. Others scoff at my unique situation when I register for an online account. My billing address is in the U.S., but my shipping address is in Korea. My phone number is Korean, but my APO is American, and I would like the English language website, please. Many companies haven't recognized that APO can go in the “city” box, and “Armed Forces Pacific” works a state (I'm talking to you, United Airlines!)
My staff are the most hardworking and dedicated people I could hope for, but they don't understand the items they manage. Even avid readers read books in their native languages. This has strange consequences. Biographies and fiction get confused a lot because B and F are similar. If an item is a bestseller, it has to have a red sticker or it will go on the regular shelves (bestsellers are superstars in regular American libraries, and everyone recognizes them). I made the mistake early on of finding bestsellers in the stacks and putting them on the display without the stickers. An hour later, they were back on the regular shelves (remember, diligent staff!) and I was livid. Book displays are not an option unless I put them together and keep them stocked, and ditto with reading suggestions. Alphabetical order is second nature to me and hard work for my Koreans.
The central office for Army libraries as well as my ILS is run out of the United States. That means contacting someone by phone is nearly impossible unless I want to do business at 11pm. Resolving issues involves many days worth of email conversations, and if the ILS is down, we have to wait until the following day for it to come up. I also have no access to webinars or remote meetings because of the time difference.
Oh, and my favorite little helper stubbornly refuses to give me search results in English. Google is so “smart” it won't give me the option of going to google.com, returning me to google.kr when I try. My home computer has come around somehow, but I can't do anything with the one at work. Et tu, Google?
And yet, I would much rather have these wonderful services than not, even if I am the one dealing with the inconvenience of providing them. As a matter of fact, I feel like Santa Claus a lot of the time. It's not like I'm competing with Blockbuster or Barnes and Noble's (okay, B&N ships to APO's, but still). I'm not just the president, I'm a customer, and an avid one at that.
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