What we watch from a reading-room chair

Every atlas and every desk watch spends time in your room before a sheet is drawn in Lat Phrao. This page is the arrangement of that day: the chair, the hours, and the things on the counter we actually look at.

Before we arrive

You tell us the posted open hours and a door to use if the public entrance is crowded. Slips for the season, if this day is part of an atlas, are already in one room. A librarian is named who can leave the counter for twenty minutes without the queue stalling.

The chair

We sit where you point, usually just off the circulation desk, with a view of the stamp, the returns slot, and the path to the holds shelf. We do not take a staff seat, and we do not handle a reader’s card. A notebook stays on our side of the counter.

What is watched

The hour a queue forms. How long a hold pickup takes when the shelf is around a corner. Whether the returns slot jams after a class change. Which bay a reader asks for when the catalogue says the copy is in. Closures, fire drills, and a sudden rain that empties the room are written down as the day, not edited out.

What is left alone

We do not coach a transaction while it is happening. Questions about a column heading wait until the desk is quiet. Readers are not interviewed. If someone asks who we are, your staff answer; we follow their wording.

After closing

We leave when you close. Notes from a desk watch become the short written note within seven days. Notes from an atlas day go back to the studio and meet the slips. You see pencil drafts before anything is bound. Photocopies travel back with the folio.

If the day cannot be ordinary

A ceremony, a flood warning, or a strike at the gate is a reason to move the date, not a reason to call a half-empty room a typical Tuesday. Say so as soon as you know. One move of a confirmed day, with ten days’ notice, is described on the refunds page.

The chair is the start of the work. The commission itself — atlas, desk watch, holds shelf, or chart hour — is listed under studies.