News Release
        

SOLANO COUNTY LIBRARY
1150 Kentucky Street
Fairfield, CA 94533

September 22, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:   Ann Miller, 707-784-1506 ; amiller@solanocounty.com

LIBRARY’S TELEPHONE ASSISTANCE CENTER HITS QUARTER MILLION MARK

Fifteen minutes before closing on Saturday, September 18, Valerie Santos, customer number 250,000, called the Telephone Assistance Center (TAC) of Solano County Library. Some requests are routine, like Valerie’s renewal of an item she had checked out, and some are stumpers, like the caller who asked, “When did time begin,” but one thing in common for everyone who calls TAC is a real human being on the other end of the call.

“Online renewal is always an option, but for many people it’s easier to dial a few numbers and talk to a real person,” said Ann Miller, the Library’s community relations coordinator.   These “real people” are a team of four local library professionals who field e-mail and phone calls from an office in library headquarters in Fairfield.  They are available 62 hours a week, the same hours that that the larger Solano County Library branches, Fairfield Civic Center, Vacaville Cultural Center and John F. Kennedy Library in Vallejo are open. 

Whether the requests are easily solved, such as reserving an item for later pick-up, or require hours of detective work, such as finding and obituary of a long lost ancestor, help is only a toll-free call (or email message) away. The questions are never dull; TAC customers want to know about everything from gourmet bacon distributors to the title of a song in last night’s dream. In spite of a world indexed by Google, or maybe because of it, some questions still need a human touch.