Help Patrons with Printing & Tech in the Richmond

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San Francisco Public Library offers library card holders up to $2.00 a day free printing at each of our 28 locations. After that, it's 10 cents a page (40 cents for color).

The Richmond neighborhood location is seeking volunteers to assist patrons who need help with printing, and other basic-to-intermediate tech questions.

Examples of the general (non-printing related) tech help that is requested:

• setting up an email account
• using a mouse (functions of left/right/double clicks)
• navigating social media accounts (posting pix to FB, making a simple X (Twitter) post, etc)
• attaching/uploading files/photos to email/text
• basic document formatting (reviewing Home and Layout menus in Microsoft Word, or Format menu in Google Docs)

The main printing issues patrons request assistance with are:

• signing onto a public computer using their library card number and PIN
• signing into an email account on a public computer at the library
• downloading and saving attachments from email
• saving an email as a PDF
• uploading those documents to https://sfpl.org/print
• choosing options such as: number of copies, single/double-sided, or color printing
• navigating these tasks on their phone, which may save files to an obscure location

If these seem like fairly simple, straightforward tasks to you, great. That skill level is half of what we’re looking for.

The other half is a deep empathy and appreciation for the humanity of pre-digital generations. People grew up and were competent, capable adults for decades, confidently navigating a world filled with tangible stuff: The telephone's wire ran down the wall and out of the house to attach to a wooden pole. Typewriter keys struck paper to create a document. Record player needles ran over a groove on a vinyl disk. Photos were on film and came back with tiny negatives tucked in a sleeve in case you needed to order additional copies. Calls were made using the white pages (people) or the yellow pages (businesses), appointments scheduled by real people, and written down in a yearly planner in pencil (tentative) or pen (confirmed).

And now... all those once-concrete daily tasks are literally in a cloud, accessed by smearing and bumping a finger around on glowing glass or clicking series of menus that don’t even say "Menu" but rather look like = or . . . or > < ^ ⌄ and are tweaked with every "update."

For better or for worse, the logistics of life used to be "out there" and now, much of it is shrouded behind an inscrutable screen.

Now, many older adults adapted, picked up tech as a second language, and continue to thrive.

But for those who haven't, and who are facing a stressful, immediate need to sign a hardcopy, get a boarding pass, or print out medical instructions? Where are they going to go, if not the library? And when they turn up, we’d like them to find calm, patient, respectful help. Library users are often called "patrons" but we do not patronize them; assistance is offered and accepted as equals.

So we aren’t looking for pity, we’re looking for understanding and patience (if you’ve read this far, you passed the first test).

Signing into a computer can take 5-10 minutes. Signing into email can take 5-10 minutes. Finding an email can take 5-10 minutes. Sending, retrieving, and printing a document may take 5-10 minutes. And there’s a half hour gone by to accomplish something that you could probably do in 30 seconds.

But in that 30 minutes, you saved someone's bacon, preserved their dignity, and made the next time a little easier.

If you feel that’s worth your time, please click that "I want to help" button for further details.