More things I wish...

This is the long-anticipated companion piece to Five Things I wish My OPAC Did. This one, however, addresses the back-end (staff interface) of our computerized libary system. I'm not sure if I have five or not, but I'll start numbering and kvetching, and we'll see what happens!

1. Color, ways of using: The staff interface is monochromatic (with occasional blue highlights). Why? Color can be used to indicate all sorts of information. For instance, stoplights: green means go, yellow means caution, red means stop. How much easier my life would be if, when I was trying to reserve a book for someone and entered their card the next screen showed their card highlighted in red if the patron was blocked due to fines, or yellow (orange if yellow is too hard to see) if they were OK on fines, but needed to renew their card. Right now, I can't tell until I go to through the entire reserve process to the final screen where it tells me the hold has failed. And wouldn't color be nice on those lists of books that are always checked out (sometimes forever)? I mean, if I'm looking at a list of seven barcode numbers and the ones that have been overdue for over a year all show up in red I immediately know when I need to reorder a book. Simple. Why not?
2. Mouse-Reliance Windows are great for a lot of things, but I miss key commands. They're faster, they're often easier once you learn them, and you avoid "mouse elbow/shoulder". Sure, there are a few key commands in the back end of our catalog, mostly involving ways to select a button, but not enough.
3. Inconsistant Commands Speaking of "ways to select a button", what computer genius decided that on some screens the button for doing a new search will be button #1, on other screens button #4, and on yet others--button #5. This is totally counterintuitive and I don't like having to think too hard about these sort of things. I hate it when I think I'm on one screen and am actually on another and end up hitting the wrong button and closing the window I'm working on because stoogebrain who designed the program didn't think consistancy was important.
4. Too much information/not enough information. Our backend has an annoying habit of recording/displaying stuff I don't need that much and not recording/displaying stuff I do need. For instance, if we send a book to another library and it isn't picked up by the patron there, (and the other agency doesn't scan their reserve shelf promptly to send it back to us) the book, at least according to the computer, appears magically "on shelf" at our agency. Poof!--no transit time, no record of who we sent it to. Everything reverts as though we never sent it at all, and we say to ourselves..."hmmm, it seems like I just sent that somewhere last week". This really sucks! I know that somewhere out there there's a librarian that says "Gee, Mrs. Lomax didn't get her book yet--let's give her a few more days" and then doesn't immediately check the book out to their agency card, but just leaves it sit; the problem with that is, while the book is waiting another week (or two, or three) for dear Mrs. Lomax, I've got people berating me because its not "on the shelf where the computer says it is." In the meantime, I can see all the ordering we've done on the book since we got this system, some screens they must use in cataloging or something, a list of people who have brought the book back late and still not paid their fines (which I really don't need to know--get that offa there! Bad Dog! Privacy--once it's returned it should be off!) and myriad other stuff. I don't always need to know everything--and I definately don't need everything all at once. (but I do want to know where that popular book that 50 people are waiting for and I know I sent it out last week went.)
5. Booklist Capability I don't know if this is front-end or back-end really, but wouldn't it be cool if, when I was putting together a booklist, I could just scan the books barcode and the system would pull up the nescessary catalog information and export it to my word processing program (or even better, format to html and go directly to website)? Maybe even put it in alphabetical order for me? Right now, I'm not even sure if we can copy and paste! (This was a proposed upgrade and I don't know if they've finished yet!

Well, that's five, in a way. I wanted to suggest improvements/cool stuff to add (and 1 and 5 are) but mostly it's what our system isn't doing right, and I'm sorry it's so negative like that. Take comfort in the fact that though I'm sure could probably rattle off about 20 more things that irk me on a near-daily basis, I know this is a really technical topic and I'm not sure anyone cares ;(. I don't know why the library interfaces I've worked with have been (with the exception of one) cobbled-together monstrosities tacked onto a gleaming public catalog like an afterthought. Have I just been extremely lucky? Is everyone else out there in System nirvana? Or are we not demanding enough from our vendors?

Challenge:
Can anyone else see past the faults of their system into the gleaming world of the "library computer interface of the future"? I'm no giant, but you can stand on my shoulders if you think it'll help.
-tl