The Safe Library - Service, Safety, & Security with Dr. Steve Albrecht

The C.O.B.I. at Your Library
What is the Cost of Bad Information at your facility? Part 1
By Dr. Steve Albrecht

Your library’s website says the building closes at 8:00 pm. Except it’s a local holiday and the library actually closed at 6:00 pm. A few dozen people came by between 6:15 and 7:45 and they are not happy campers. Somebody on the library’s social media side forgot to update the site and well, “stuff happens.” That “stuff” is yet another example of what my father, Dr. Karl Albrecht (www.KarlAlbrecht.com), calls “C.O.B.I.” or the Cost of Bad Information. Writing in the June 2025 issue of the Bulletin of the American Mensa Society (https://shorturl.at/wVEBn) he says:

“1. Bad information almost always costs somebody something. The cost could range from trivial, to significant, to catastrophic.

2. Bad information is literally everywhere. It pervades our lives. We encounter it every day.

3. We’re mostly oblivious to its effects; we mostly take it in stride and just try to climb over it.”

Here’s an example that maybe you have had happen:

Your doctor prescribes a prescription for you. The medical assistant confirms the address of your usual drugstore/pharmacy. They send a prescription there and you assume that since the store is open, the pharmacy will be open. The is nothing on the store’s website about a change in hours. You arrive at the pharmacy early on Friday evening to discover it won’t be open again till Monday morning. If you had known about the hours change, you would’ve had the prescription sent to an open pharmacy. Your doctor’s office is now closed, so you can’t get them to send it to another pharmacy. Three days with no meds because someone didn’t fix the pharmacy’s website.

Let’s apply C.O.B.I. to the library world and see who it impacts.

A patron who lives quite a distance away from the library calls the branch to ask if a certain hold is in. The staffer quickly glances at the hold shelf and thinks he sees the book. He confirms with the patron that the book is there and after a long drive, the patron arrives to discover that the staffer was wrong; he saw the wrong book and assumed it was the one the patron wanted.

A local community group wants to book one of your rooms for a lunch meeting. The library staffer collects their deposit and promises the room will be ready on the day they need it. That day comes, only to discover that another group paid for the room at the same time and neither library employee knew about it. Now both groups are standing in the room claiming ownership and are mad at each other and the library.

Patron: “Will I be able to drop of my absentee ballot at the library?”

Staffer: “I think so. I’m pretty sure I saw the drop box outside.”

The drop box was moved two weeks ago.

Patron: “Is there still time to sign up my kid for your summer reading program? Is there still room? Is there a fee?”

Staffer: “There’s plenty of space. The deadline is two weeks away. I don’t think there is a fee.”

See what happens below.

Who are the usual culprits when it comes to C.O.B.I. at the library?

The library’s website and Home page, and the people who are supposed to keep them accurate and current.

The library’s social media sites and postings, and ditto.

The Directors, managers, and supervisors who are supposed to provide both accurate and timely information (dates, times, places, deadlines, links, fees,etc.) and check to make sure the newly-posted content is correct.

Staff members, who should only tell patrons what they know to be actually true, not probably true (a big flaw in C.O.B.I. - “I thought they had until next Friday to sign up for the summer reading program. There is no more room and there is a fee. I guess I was wrong.”)

What are the excuses library employees at every level will use when they are accused of providing bad information or not verifying the correct information?

“”It’s not my fault. I didn’t know. No one told me about the change.”

“My boss is supposed to handle that.”

“The patron should have known better or checked with somebody else.”

“I shouldn’t be expected to know everything about this place.”

“So what? So they missed out on something. What’s the big deal?”

Preventing C.O.B.I. starts with taking responsibility for the accuracy of our information. This has to happen at every level in the library and it’s what I will discuss in Part 2 next week.

I’m originally from San Diego, which is home to one of the best zoos in the country. It’s also the home of what used to be called the San Diego Wild Animal Park (and is now called the San Diego Zoo Safari Park), where you can tour re-creations of the African plains and see all the animals that live there. The San Diego Zoo is in the downtown area and the San Diego Zoo Safari is in northern San Diego County, a distance of about 37 miles apart.

I was at the downtown library and I heard a staffer give directions to a tourist as to how to get to the park that was 37 miles away instead of two miles away. I politely intervened and asked which place the tourist was intending to see and then gave the correct directions as to the zoo that was a five-minute drive away. The library employee was embarrassed but shrugged it off by saying, “Well, I guess I misheard him.”

Two issues: Imagine how angry you would have been if you have followed the first set of directions and had to make a 74-mile, 90-minute drive back to the right zoo, because the person who gave you directions was completely wrong? And second, one reason for C.O.B.I. is employees who lack both listening skills and clarification skills. Both are critically important; don’t just take what you hear at first, investigate the issue and then provide the correct information before you send the other person off on a wild goose chase.