A self service kiosk issues a book to a card, prints a receipt, and logs the loan, and the card has to be live or it refuses. Kiosk 2 issues one book a night at half past two to a card the system closed in 2021, prints the receipt, and the book is gone from the shelf in the morning and back by the afternoon.
I am a librarian and the kiosks are on my morning checklist, because the receipt rolls run out.
How a loan works at the kiosk.
The borrower puts their card on the reader. The system checks it is live and not blocked. They put the book on the pad, the chip is read, the loan is recorded against the card with a due date, the chip's security bit is switched off so the gates let it out, and a receipt prints.
A cancelled card is refused at the first step. The screen says so and nothing else happens.
Kiosk 2 issues one book at about half past two in the morning.
The card on the loan is a card the system cancelled in 2021, with a reason code for deceased, which is a code we use when a family tells us.
The receipt is in the kiosk's tray in the morning, printed, with the time, the title and the due date three weeks out.
The book is not on the shelf in the morning.
That is the part that took this out of the software. A loan on the system for a book that is on the shelf is a glitch. A loan on the system for a book that is gone from the shelf, from a locked building, is a book somebody has.
It is back by the afternoon. Not returned through the kiosk or the chute, which would log it. Back on the shelf in its place, with the loan still open on the cancelled card, until the system's overnight housekeeping marks it returned at the next half past two, when the next one is issued.
What has been checked.
The kiosk. Replaced under contract. The new kiosk did it on its second night.
The card. The record is closed with the deceased code and cannot be reopened without a manager's override, and the audit trail shows no override.
The building. Locked, alarmed, cameras on the doors and the floor. The camera that covers kiosk 2 shows the kiosk at half past two with its screen lit, which it is all night, and nobody at it, and the receipt printer's light coming on and a receipt feeding out, which it does.
I have watched that clip more times than I want to say. The receipt prints. There is nobody there.
The books.
They are not random. I have eleven months of receipts in a folder.
They are the books the cardholder borrowed while she was alive, in the order she borrowed them, from the loan history that we keep for two years after a card closes, which I looked up, which I should not have, and which I have not told anybody I did.
She is going through her own loans again, one a night, in order, and the receipts have her name on them because the system prints the cardholder's name, and I cannot bring myself to throw them away.
What is done about it.
The loans are on a closed card and they clear themselves, so nothing is overdue, nothing is fined, and the stock count is right by the afternoon.
I told the manager in 2023 and she watched the clip and said the kiosk needed looking at, and it was, and she has not raised it since, and neither have I.
What I do.
I refill the receipt rolls and I check the kiosks.
The one thing I have changed is that I do not do kiosk 2 first.
It is nearest the door and it used to be first, and I would take the receipt out of the tray and read it and go on.
I do it last now, when the building is open and there are people in it, and the reason is a morning in the spring when I was at kiosk 2 at ten to eight with the building empty and the receipt in my hand, and the kiosk's card reader lit up under my elbow, the way it does when a card is placed on it, and the screen said welcome, and it said her name.