National Library

I am now the proud owner of a Kazakh library card! On Friday I went to the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan to see if they had any useful material for my research and to figure out how things work. I have never seen such inefficiency. First, I went to get my library card. The woman at the registration desk took issue with the fact that I had a US passport and that it was written in English. (Her: "Why is this passport not in Russian?" Me: "Because it is an American passport." Her: "Why do you have an American passport." Me: "Because I'm American." Her: Deeply skeptical look in my direction.) I also knew that you needed two passport-sized photos of yourself, but had heard that they could take those photos there at the desk. The woman refused to do that, saying only Almaty residents can have their pictures taken there, and sent me down the street to get it done. Phew, that process in itself took about an hour.

Then I got to the fun part of figuring out how to find and check out books. Kazakhstan has the closed stacks system, so there is no option of browsing through books on the shelf. First, you have to go through metal detectors and get a slip of paper from the security guard. This slip of paper must be signed and stamped by a librarian before you can leave the library, supposedly guaranteeing that you haven't any stolen books. Then you have to *buy* slips of paper (at 1 tenge, or less than a penny, per slip) to order books. Once you find the book you want in the card catalogue, you have to fill out these slips (one slip per book) with the appropriate information and give them to the librarian, who goes and finds the books for you. For no apparent reason, you have to write the book's information twice on the same slip of paper and you have to wait at least an hour for them to return with your books. Once you get the books, you aren't allowed to take them out of the library, but you can either read them there or photocopy them. Naturally, you aren't allowed to do the photocopying yourself. You have to pay for the librarians to do the copying for you, and there are only two librarians that do copying. Are you confused yet? I was.

After figuring this all out, I was so exhausted that I didn't actually get any research done. I had to come home and take a nap.