Week 15 - In Charge At Last!

Why is this post so late in coming? Because last week ab-so-lute-ly nothing happened. It was two days before Christmas and the children's room was dead dead dead. A few kids came up to do some gaming on the computers, and that was it. The most exciting thing that happened is that since I was the only librarian at the branch, I was "in charge." The problem is that while I know that means something, I don't know what it is. I think, for example, if there were a fire or incident, I would be in charge of implementing the evacuation plan, or calling the police or whatever -- the only problem is that no one has ever explained any of this to me...

Week 14 - Back to Boring

Another week, another 4.5 hours in the children's room. After a hectic time last week, this one was slow again. Only two things of note: first, I got to use my rapidly deteriorating French when I overheard a woman speaking French to her two daughters, second, there was some kind of verbal jousting going on between some of the kids using the computers. I couldn't quite make it out (and half of it was in Spanish anyway), but when I distinctly heard "I'll kick your ass" spoken not in jest, I had to go over and ask if there was a problem. It was like a scene from a prison movie, the people beefing got all quiet and said, "No, no problem." Ugh. Anyway...this week's few interactions:

• A Hispanic man and his elementary-school-aged son came in looking for materials about the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. A quick catalog search showed that the system has a number of kid's books on each, but that none were available at our branch. This was for a school report, so instead, I printed out the Spanish-language Wikipedia pages for each, so the father could read them and help his kid. He seemed pleased with that.


• A woman wanted a copy of the classic Billy Goats Gruff story she could read to her little girl. Again, pretty much all our versions of the story were checked out or missing, but I did find a compilation of Norwegian folk tales that included it. She seemed OK with that.


• Yet another kid, this one a gangly, awkward white girl, came in looking for a copy of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass. All our copies were out, so she browsed and found something else.


• A young black girl, maybe 10 or 11, wanted the third and fourth books in Ann Brashares' popular Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, Girls in Pants and Forever in Blue. I was able to find the first of these downstairs in the YA section, the latter I put on hold for her.

Quote of the day comes from a 9-year-old girl (for some reason, she decided to tell me her birthday) who justed moved into the neighborhood after growing up across town: "The best part of moving is being close to the library -- that and having my own room for the first time, finally!"

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Only the first, I'd say...
Week: 1 for 4
Year: 12 for 82

Help Gustavo! (aka Mysteries for 11-year-old boys)

One of the most interesting and challenging requests I've had so far happened this week, and I thought it deserved a post of its own.

An 11-year-old Hispanic boy (Gustavo) came in looking for mysteries. He'd read the Encyclopedia Brown series but was looking for something longer. This was a total stumper to me... Adult mysteries I'm pretty conversant with, and I could probably do pretty well with stuff for teens, but once you get below age 16, I'm very shaky on what is age appropriate.

So I called the children's desk of another branch to get some help and got the following recommendations: Dorothy Hoobler's four book Samurai series (which starts with The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn), Bruce Coville's Alien Adventures series, Blue Balliet's art-themed mysteries (starting with Chasing Vermeer), Wendelin Van Draanen's Sammy Keyes series, and the Einstein Anderson series. I looked at some of these with Gustavo, but kept running into problems in that he didn't want anything supernatural, anything where the protagonist was a girl, or an animal (yes, I'm serious, we found a mystery series starring a mouse and another starring a cat.)

Eventually, I spotted Brian Selznick'sThe Invention of Hugo Cabret on the shelf and gave him that, which he seemed to think was a good prospect. I'd read it when it first came out and didn't think it was that great, but all the trade reviews and other librarians seem to love it, so what do I know? Fairly stumped, I ended up quickly running through all the books looking for those with a "Mystery" sticker on the spine, unfortunately, most of them had girl protagonists or some other sticking point for him.

So, I've asked a few friends for help and will doing some more research, results of which will be in my next post. If you have any suggestions for Gustavo, please pot them in the comments.

Week 13 - Busy Like a Beaver

This week I came in and finally was shown the schedule for the rest of the month. Which is how I learned that I am the defacto Sunday Children's Librarian for the branch through the end of the month...even though I know little to nothing about all the specialized children's materials... As if to drive the point home, in contrast to last week's deadly slow Sunday, this week I was kept pretty busy with various requests:

• A black mother came in looking for the kids DVDs and I directed here about three feet to her right to where they are shelved.


• A teenage Hispanic girl wanted books about Mexico, so I showed her the shelf where we have books about every country in the world arranged alphabetically. I also explained the difference between "Great Britain" and "England" to her.


• The same teenager later also wanted books about the painter Diego Rivera which showed his work. I did a quick catalog search and unfortunately all I could find in our branch were several skimpy illustrated books in the biography for kids section. The one book that was supposed to be in the adult section wasn't there, so I explained how we could get books from other branches for her. She said it was just for personal interest, not school, but would like to see more, so I took her to the adult librarian on duty and he sat down to help her.


• A teenage black girl needed a copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol for school, and of course she needed it for tomorrow. The catalog said we had two different copies in the Children's Room, but I couldn't find 'em on the shelf. She asked me to see if the Main Library had a copy, so I called down there and put one on hold for her. She was clearly glum about having to trek downtown for that, so I poked around the room a bit and found a copy face out on a windowsill display, for which she was super grateful. This is one problem with creating "displays" in windows or just along the tops of shelves, unless you're the one that's done it, there's no way for anyone else to know where a book is.


• A white man with a very thick accent of the British/Scottish/Welsh variety came in desperate for any of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. His daughter has read them all, but wanted to reread them in anticipation of the film version of The Golden Compass. All we had was book 3, The Amber Spyglass, but he seemed plenty pleased with that. He also wanted to see if we had any books in Hilari Bell's Farsala trilogy, which we didn't. But we did have Shield Stars, the first book in her new Shield, Sword, and Crown series, which he was plenty happy with. He left saying, "Hopefully these will keep her quiet for the rest of the day."


• A Hispanic girl and her mother came in looking for "chapter books," which was rather daunting, since per my lack of knowledge noted above, I had no idea what a chapter book was. (Apparently these are simply books for kids that are broken up into, uh...chapters...) The girl specified that she was in 5th grade, and somewhat desperate, I did a quick Google search for "5th grade chapter books" and found the following list from the San Francisco Community School. I jotted the author names down and just started pulling books for her to look at. The mother asked me if the books were marked by grade level and I said I didn't think so, which as far as I know, is right... I left them with a big pile of books and went to help someone else. When I checked back to see if what I'd given them was OK, they seemed satisfied, although I doubt they'd have said anythhing if they weren't.


• A Hispanic boy somewhere in the 12-14 range needed Sean Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens for school. Alas our copy was not on the shelf where it was supposed to be, which bummed his mother out because they had taken the bus here. And when I checked around the system, every copy was either out or missing -- clearly a popular title. The mother asked me to write a letter to his teacher explaining the situation, which I did.


• The same boy also needed material relating to the Cuban Revolution (the 1950s one). I gave him the two books on Cuba from the kid's section, Richard Crooker's Cuba and Kumari Campbell's Cuba in Pictures, each of which has about two pages on the revolution. Then we expanded it to the adult materials, where I gave him Lonely Planet's Cuba guidebook (since they usually have pretty decent potted histories of their locations), Richard Gott's Cuba: A New History (published by Yale University Press), and Marifeli Perez-Stable's The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy(Oxford University Press). I know giving scholarly books to a little kid isn't the most useful thing, but he seemed pleased that I treated him like a grownup.


• Right before closing, a young white man came in looking for Philip Pullman's of The Golden Compass. Now I know that above I said we didn't have it, but in the interim, I had made a trip to the "back room" where there are all kinds of stuff on the shelves. Including, I had noticed, a nice new copy of The Golden Compass. So I was able to snag that for him. I don't really get why there is so much on the shelves in the back -- since it's not listed as such in the catalog, there's no way for me to know if something might be back there when it's not on the "public" shelves.


• There was one other interaction, which is worthy of its own post. For the purposes of the MLS vs. GED tally below, it definitely qualifies as an MLS-level issue.

One other little tidbit. As I was cleaning up the room, I found a book sitting out called Osama bin Laden: A War Against the West. This is 130-page book for teens about bin Laden, largely cribbed from Simon Reeve's The New Jackals, Yosef Bodansky's Bin Laden, and various newspaper and magazine stories. I mention this book just by way of illustrating how you can find books about pretty much any topic written for the teen audience. Alas, School Library Journal writes "has little to offer readers who want to know what makes this man tick, beyond generalities about Islamic fundamentalism and a thin framework of facts fleshed out by suppositions." Ouch!

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
This week was mixed. Pointing out where the DVDs are and tracking down specific books don't rate in my world, but the other stuff does, meaning that this week I handled almost as many in-depth requests as the previous 12 weeks combined!
Week: 5 for 10
Year: 11 for 78

Week 13 - How to be a librarian when nothing works

Last Sunday, our catalog was down - in both online and staff versions. In addition, at my branch, the computer to log on to the internet was down as well, although I was able to sign folks up on my computer. This is how I handled the day:

Resign yourself to an afternoon as the keeper of the internet, signing up every single user yourself.

Explain that the system is down and that all questions regard a user’s account or holds, as well as regarding the library or the system’s collection cannot be answered at this time.

Look up books in other libraries’ catalogs and see if you can use that call number to locate an item on the shelf. Note that this will rarely work because the universe of books is big and your branch’s collection relatively small.

Apologize profusely.

Encourage users to call or come by tomorrow or later in the week when the system is sure to be back up.

Week 12 - Termination and Boredom

I had been wondering when I was going to meet the branch manager at my new location -- and the answer appears to be never... Turns out the fairly long-serving branch manager was fired on Friday, to the surprise of all the staff. Another librarian told me that branch managers at several other locations were fired as well. There's also supposed to be a huge all-staff meeting tomorrow morning downtown. Since I only work Sundays, I wasn't told to attend.

Today, there were three of us librarians on duty. One of them was the head children's librarian at the branch, so it was decided that I could man the children's reference desk while she caught up on some administrative-type work that had fallen by the wayside. That made sense to me, and we chatted a bit as she worked so I could learn a little more about the children's resources and what baselines she expects in terms of behavior and noise by kids in the room.

As is so often the case, some of the computers were down. Basically, people who wanted to use the computers couldn't sign up via the reservation system. Instead, I was able to do it manually from the administrative software on my machine. So, that's basically what I spent the day doing. No one came in looking for anything in particular, no one had any questions, nothing, zero interactions. Just signing kids up for the computers.

Good times.

Week 11 - A New Begining

This week marked the start of my switch to the branch I will now be based at. The two techs, one LA (library associate), and other librarian I met all seemed nice, and the first ten minutes were spent showing me around the branch. It's an old Carnegie library, and is filled with nooks and crannies. Plenty of junk stashed in back rooms, a real project of a place. It's allegedly next on the list of branches slated for renovation. Like many other branches, the children's area is upstairs, and the other librarian seemed eager for me to work up there. This struck me as kind of odd, since at my previous branch, the other librarians seemed to like to "hide out" upstairs. After a slow first hour, I started to see why she was so eager not to be up there.

This new branch is in a more economically mixed area, and the bulk of my duties in the children's area involved babysitting the use of the three computers and making sure all the kids who were waiting to get on didn't get too unruly. Theoretically, this is all automated using a reservation system named PHAROS, but I had to keep helping kids sign on, and hunt around to tell people it was their turn. Basically, after that first hour, the computers were in constant use the whole day. There were a few black kids, but it was overwhelmingly Latino boys, roughly 10-16. For the most part they seemed to be gaming, checking out girls on Facebook, or looking at cars.

Aside from that I had a few other things to do:

• A kindergarten teacher came in with a long list of books she was looking for. I helped her a bit and tried to explain that it's way more efficient to look everything up online from home, and then just grab the books that are here, as opposed to searching on the shelf for each item.


• A woman came in looking for books in the Amelia Bedelia series, so I looked up what we had in the catalog and let her know.
  
• A teenage black girl was looking for Walter Dean Myers' The Beast. We had it, but it was down in the YA section, which I took her to.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Nothing, I got nothing this week.
Week: 0 for 3
Year: 6 for 68

Week 10 - Substitute

Sorry for the delay in posting, a few things came up -- like Thanksgiving!

This first week following my transfer, I was sent as a substitute to one of the system's several temporary branches. These recently opened to serve communities where the main branch in that area was closed for long-term renovation or replacement. I'd been to one in another neighborhood before, and found it to be a very nice, clean, bright place brimming with current books and tons of computers -- in other words, markedly different from most branches...

I'd never been to this particular temporary branch before, but thought I knew where it was, and took public transportation there. Alas, while I had the street right, I was off on the number by about 25 blocks and had to take a taxi to get there in time. (As usual in our city, the cabbie ripped me off.) Anyway, I got there on time and met the tech who usually works there, along with another tech who was substituting. Like the other temporary branch I'd been to, this place is pretty small, but nice and well-stocked. There's no separate space for a librarian, so I basically hung out at the double-sided "island" where the circulation staff works.

It was quickly obvious that the main draw at that branch is the 20 computers. They were all in use pretty much the entire day. From what I could tell it was a mix of people checking email, job searching, writing letters, and checking social networking sites like Facebook. One aspect of this that the senior tech spent a good deal of time policing was the all the toing and froing of teen users. There's a rule that only one person can sit at a computer, and she was pretty rigid about that.

This tech definitely commanded respect from the kids, and that led me to think about the role race might play in dealing with kids in the library. She's black and looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, in other words, the same age as their mothers might be. I wonder to what extent a white male like me would be able to be as firm with them without somehow coming across as provocative. It's a real issue, given this city's history and my own experience living here -- and depending on which branch I'm assigned to in the future, something I'll have to figure out.

Anyway, since the computers are the main deal, I didn't have a whole lot to do. There were only three real "reference" questions:

• A middle-aged black woman was looking for something she thought was called the "Civil War Guidebook." I did a search in the catalog and then led her to the 973s, where we looked at a guidebook called Civil War Sites: The Official Guide to Battlefields, Monuments, and More, which proved to be exactly what she was looking for.


• Another middle-aged black woman was looking for biographical and/or critical information about the playwright Arthur Miller. After explaining to her that a small temporary branch like this one was unlikely to have too much on specific writers, I showed her how the Biography section was set up. There, we found Enoch Brater's Arthur Miller: A Playwright's Life and Work, which she spent the next several hours poring over. I also gave her a quick tutorial on how to use the online catalog to find relevant materials throughout the system, place them on hold, and have them sent to the most convenient branch.


• Finally, a black teenager came in looking for books about skateboarding. This branch happens to be next to the city's only skate park, so I figured there'd be a nice little set of books, but no dice. The only thing I could find in the 796s was Evan Goodfellow's Street Skateboarding: Endless Grinds and Slides, which the kid was really into. I felt bad that we didn't have more -- since I have seen plenty of skating books in branches in whiter neighborhood. So, I did another quick tutorial on how to search the catalog and have books sent over.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
The first interaction was super-basic, but I guess the other two used my MLS to a certain degree -- in the sense that I tried to show them how to do stuff on their own. It's kind of a borderline call, since anyone comfortable with our online catalog could have shown them the same thing, but I'll be generous and count those two.
Week: 2 for 3
Year: 6 for 65

Week 12 - Happy Thanksgiving!

It was a quiet day at library today. The big excitement was that three of our internet access computers were down when I arrived. As we only have 5 adult internet computers, this is a huge deal. The reservation software will not tell you what is wrong with the computer - so I have developed a system for dealing with this. I add myself to the queue and promote myself to the front. Then I enable one computer at a time. This ensures that this computer will be assigned to me and I can check out the computer and see if it is in fact working and should remain enabled for the rest of our customers. Today I was able to reenable all three computers, which helped the computer reservations to run smoothly. Internet access is a huge deal in libraries - and I think it is so important for libraries to do their part to bridge the digital divide, which is so very real (even in the neighborhood for my branch, which is relatively affluent).

Other interactions were as follows:

A patron called looking for four children's books: Lights of Winter (not in the system), Nine Days to Christmas (available at another branch, I placed a hold for the patron), Pancho's Pinata (on the shelf at our branch, placed it on hold at the circulation desk), and The Night of Las Posadas (not in the system).

A patron called looking for You: Staying Young, which was not in the system yet. I expect that it will be purchased, since we have others in that series and they are quite popular, but I went ahead a filled out a purchase request for the patron as well. This way it should be placed on hold for her once it is in the system.

Another patron came to the desk asking me to submit a purchase request for Day of Empire, which was recently reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. This happens not infrequently on Sunday. Folks in the branch read the book reviews in the Times or the Post and then come up to see if we have a particular book. Often we don't - either because it is so new that it hasn't been processed yet or because we simply hadn't planned to buy it. I think it's great when patrons request books. It ensures that we are buying books that will circulate, shows them that the library is responsive to what they want, and fills in gaps in the collection.

One of my regular young patrons came up looking for books on fish (639s), Skateboarding (796.22 - but we didn't have any in our branch), Soccer (796.33), and Math (510s).

A new young patron came looking for books on States (973-9), Countries (940s-990s), and Maps (912).

And that was it for my day. I imagine things will pick up next week when everyone is back in town.

"Conscious-Minded" Women, Listen Up

A known associate of SL1 and SL2 wrote the succinct Seven Reasons to Visit Your Local Library This Fall for the folks at ForHerInformation.com -- check it out.

Comments?

OK, I've had a few people tell me how much they like the blog in person, or via email. So I know there are at least a few readers...but don't be shy, add your 2 cents via the comments! Pretty please?

Transfer News

OK, so the system that us Sunday Librarians work for, suddenly decided to close about half the branches on Sundays -- including mine. According to my manager, this came out of nowhere, and she only learned of it midweek. The story is that with the holidays coming up, the system was having severe staffing problems. You see, the system's employees are largely unionized, and thus can't be forced to work on Sundays. However, a lot of them elect to, for the extra money. The system also hired a bunch of people like me and SL2 to just work on Sundays, to fill the gaps. Apparently, some of the regular employees who work on Sundays don't want to work as much over the holidays, and thus they were projecting staffing shortages. So, the people downtown did an analysis of the door counts (which are total BS) and circulation for Sundays, and figured out which branches to close. So last week I worked at a different branch just as a one-time deal, and starting this week, I'll take up residence at a new branch. This new branch is one I've been to, I sort of know the neighborhood, but I imagine it'll be somewhat more challenging just because of the demographics. My old branch was in a wealthy, quiet neighborhood, and the people who use the library there tend to be pretty self-sufficient. This new branch is in an area that is vastly more mixed in terms of race, class, language, etc. so I imagine I'll be kept on my toes a good deal more. Wish me luck... Oh yeah, the good news is that it's a much simpler commute.

Week 9 - Educated with Reading

This week I seem to have passed some sort of unknown test because one of our regular homeless patrons (a very nice man who always straightens up the table area before he leaves) decided that this was the week to tell me about his theories involving The Da Vinci Code, masons, religions, the holy grail, and all number of other related topics. This went on all day and was quite frustrating for me by the end, but I wasn't sure how to let him know I was not interested in these theories, but would be happy to help him if had an information need. He did however provide me with the title of today's post when he said "Librarians are supposed to be educated... with reading, not computers."

Our computer that holds the catalog is still not working, so all catalog searches had to go through me. I hope this is fixed tomorrow, because it is somewhat ridiculous to have patrons not be able to search for their own materials.

A patron called looking for the book How to Make Dances in an Epidemic. It looks like a fascinating book but neither our nor any of the other local systems had a copy - although must of the local universities did.

A patron asked if we had Stoner by John Williams. We did not. She then asked how long we kept the New York Times Book Review - a question I answered by walking over with her and taking a look. We had back to the beginning of the year.

A young woman was looking for three books: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, the new John Grisham (Playing for Pizza), and The Choice by Nicholas Sparks. Only Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was on the shelves, so I placed the other two on hold for her. She also wanted a guidebook on Dublin. We didn't have any Dublin specific ones at our branch, but I took her over to the travel section and showed her the general guidebooks on Ireland that we had.

A man was looking for an article in the Washington Post from March. We don't keep copies that far back, but I offered to call the central branch and see what they kept there. They do have the full run on microfiche, but the librarian let me know that the system provides database access to the Post online and I showed him how to access that. It was a good reminder for me to not forget about the databases.

A patron was looking for the phone number of a restaurant downtown - Food Docker. After talking to her for a minute, I realize she was looking for Fuddrucker's and looked up the number for her on yellowpages.com

In computer news this week, two of our public access computers were down, but I enabled both of them and they were working fine, so sped up the computer wait.

I helped a woman who was word processing her resume with edits and then showed her how to attach that to her email and send it on to someone who had promised to proofread it for her.

Finally, I helped a patron connect to our wifi, which was working that day!

Week 8 - Never Let Downtown Know Where You Are Happy

Due to the extreme lateness of this entry, you already know that there are changes afoot in our library system with half of the branches now being closed on Sunday and with SL1 being transferred. My branch will remain open on Sundays so I am staying put, but there have still been changes at my branch. The system decided to shuffle employees and many were transferred. My branch, which has only four full-time employees - branch manager, adult librarian, children's librarian and circulation clerk saw a 50 percent change. Both the circulation clerk and children's librarian were transferred elsewhere. I don't know what the reasoning behind this shuffle was, but as an admitted outsider to the system, it seems like a bad idea to me. The system refused to take commute times into consideration and, while they asked for location requests, they didn't seem to honor them. As a result, the commutes of both our transferred employees increased tremendously and the system has two unhappy campers on their hands. (The title of this post comes for the overheard comment of a circulation clerk who only works at our branch on Sundays, but was also transferred from his normal, during the week branch. The full statement was: "Never let downtown know where you are happy, because they will quickly change that.") Also, as a librarian who only works in the branch once a week, I was especially sad to think of the loss of the institutional knowledge that I had depended on.

Despite the workplace drama, it was a fairly quiet Sunday. I had the following interactions:

A woman called hoping to reserve one of our meeting rooms for a tutoring session. I checked that one was available that the time she wanted and reserved it for her. She wanted to know if the room had an outlet. I was sure that I did, but couldn't swear for certain, so I told her I'd check when I had a quiet moment on the desk (the meeting rooms are upstairs) and call her back if it didn't. She wanted me to call back either way, so when I finally got a chance to check at the end of the afternoon, I called back to report that the room had 5(!) outlets.

A patron came to the desk to report that while he had returned a DVD - one volume of the History of Britain, it had never been checked in. I did a little catalog sleuthing and determined that it was on it's way to another branch (thus showing that it had clearly been returned). I then checked the DVD in for the patron and forgave the fine that had accumulated. He was also looking for the next volume of the series, but it appeared to be missing. (The catalog showed it as on the shelf, but it was not there). As we have the only copy in the system, this was bad news for the patron.

A patron called to see if Peace Like a River by Leif Enger was on the shelf (it was!) and then asked that it be placed on hold at the circulation desk. The woman also asked about Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, but our copy was checked out so I placed a hold for her. I had to do it twice, because she asked that she be called rather than emailed when it arrives and this requires a special note in the catalog when you are placing the hold and I didn't put it in the first time around.

Our computer that provides access to the online public access catalog was not working. Or rather it was working, but in an effort to keep the computer for catalog use only it is set to not allow general web browsing and will also not let a second window open. Our website was updated and the catalog now opens in a separate browser window and is blocked as a result. As a result, patrons had to come to me for all searches (annoying for them and a definite barrier if there was some search they wanted to do that that didn't necessarily want to share with a librarian).

One such search was for children's books on number concepts. I was able to find some using the subject plus JUV search that SL1 talked about a few weeks ago and I walked the patron over the relevant area of the children's section.

Another patron came in looking for a children's book about Robert Frost for her granddaughter to use for a report. She needed the book that day (the report was due on Monday!) and so could not wait for any of the juvenile biographies of Frost that were in other branches of the system. However we were able to find a book of Frost's poetry that had a biographic essay in the beginning and that satisfied her need.

A regular patron of the library came to see if we had the DVD, The Nightmare Before Christmas. We don't have it at all in the entire system, which was surprising to me. I suggested that he place a purchase request for the DVD online, which I hope he will do.

A woman called asking when qi gong was. I checked the meeting room calendar and let her know.

A patron asked about health books by Marilu Henner that we might have in the system. I placed a hold on one for her.

Transferred!

Breaking news: The branch I work at will no longer be open Sundays, so I am being transferred! Details to come.

Week 9 - Back in the Fortress of Solitude

This week found me back in the children's room, which as I mentioned previously, is pretty dead:

• A young black father with his kids was looking for Andrew Griffin's Stanley: The Great Big Book of Everything. Looks like a nifty book, but we don't have it in the system.


• A harried middle-aged white mother was looking for books on Jacques Cartier for her son's 7th grade report (due the next day!). There were two different books in the system: Jennifer Lackey's Jacques Cartier: Exploring the St. Laurence River, Marylou Kjelle's Jacques Cartier, neither of which we had. We looked at the "explorer" area and she grabbed some general books and scooted out.


• A young white woman and her boy came in looking for books on prehistoric marine life. Apparently they'd seen a film or exhibit at a natural history museum the day before, and the kid wa all juiced to learn more. They found some decent stuff on the kids shelf in the dinosaur section, and while they did that, I grabbed some books from the adult section and brought them up. They were stoked, because two of the three books were very nicely illustrated, which the kid liked.


• A young white father was looking for Easy Readers, but not sure what level was appropriate for his kid. I don't really know anything about Easy Reader, but figured out that they are simple books designed to slowly build a kid's vocabulary, and each "level" corresponds to an age or grade level.


• An older white man with two small boys came in looking for some general fiction for them. I assumed he was their grandfather until they called him "Daddy"... It was kind of a weird scene because they kept bringing him books that caught their eye, often with flashy covers, and he kept saying "No, we're not getting that." or "No, you're not reading that junk." Really judgmental and negative, and probably not the best approach to getting your kids interested in reading. Instead, he seemed intent on picking out "classics" he knew. Eventually, he had me help him find Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Once again, a week with nothing that really drew upon my MLS. Had I specialized in children's services in library school, I suppose I could have helped the father more with the Easy Readers and maybe with the dinosaur kid too. But since I didn't, I just applied common sense, and the patrons seemed happy with the results.
Week: 0 for 5
Year: 4 for 62

Week 8 - Holding Hands

Sorry it's been so long -- been away and busy!
This week I was back in the adult room, but it was awfully slow:

• One minute after we open, a woman with a strong South Asian accent calls with a grammar question. She wanted to know which sentence was better: "Currently, I am working as a teacher's assistant at ____ Elementary School." or "I currently work as a teacher's assistant at ______ Elementary School." Since I'm not so strong on grammar, I carefully told her that I thought both sounded grammatically correct, but that I thought the latter was a little smoother. She seemed OK with this and thanked me.


• One of the first people using the computers was a middle-aged black woman. She clearly didn't have a lot of experience using a computer, and the woman next to her was helping her with some basic stuff. Eventually, however, she needed help drafting an email replying to a job advertisement. I basically ended up rewriting her response, explaining the changes as I went. She was super-duper grateful.


• A middle-aged white woman came looking for "non-junky" educational videos on science, travel, geology, etc. for her kid. We looked over the DVDs together and I agreed that there wasn't much. She said there used to be a bunch of videotapes, but neither of us could find them. I took down her info and promised to leave a message for the branch manager to call her. As it turned out, the branch manager called in, and told me where the videos were (on a table in a back room), and so I called the patron back and told her how to find them. Hopefully she got the message and was satisfied...


• A white mother and her young son brought Dugald Steer's The Dragon's Eye: Dragonology Book 1 in and wanted to get Book 2. It took about ten minutes of poking around Amazon.com and the rest of the internet to establish that Book 2 hasn't been published yet!


• A young woman, possibly Hispanic or Middle Eastern or South Asian, was looking for Justin Marozzi's relatively new biography Tamerlane: Sword of Islam. We didn't have it in, but I was able to put a hold on it for her. This led to a general discussion of Central Asia. This went on for a while before she mentioned that she was also interested in books about society and culture in North Korea. As I suspected, we didn't really have much of anything on that -- seeing as how it's arguably the world's most closed society. However -- I just happened to have recently read two books that provide glimpses. The first is a crime novel by a former Western intelligence agent: James Church's The Corpse in the Koryo. the other is French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle's Pyongyang, which is not a graphic novel, but graphic reportage of his time in the North Korean capital on business. I described them both to her and she was excited to see them, so I had them sent over from other branches.


• A middle-aged white woman came in looking for Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety, and I was able to pull it out the shelf for her!


• An elderly white man came in looking for Edith Wharton's The Reef, and I was able to find it on the shelf for him!


• A young woman came in looking for a general European travel guide. These are hugely popular, and consequently, usually out. However, most people don't know that we have older travel guides back on the shelves. So I was able to dig out a Fodor's from 2004.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Even though I helped patrons in a bunch of different areas (grammar, writing, reader's advisory), none of them had anything to do with my MLS... You could argue (maybe) that finding the books on North Korea would, except that I knew of those books from my own personal interest.
Week: 0 for 8
Year: 4 for 57

Weeks 6 & 7 - Two for the price of one

My day job kept me super busy last week and I never got fingers to keyboard to write about my Sunday, so this week, I’ll write up both.

Last week started with a conversation with my branch manager – rare because she never works on Sundays. She was in town to work a booth at a community festival and stopped to go over a memo on workplace violence that she was required to share with all employees (you’ll be shocked to learned that the library system I work for is opposed to workplace violence!). Apparently this reminder was inspired by a particular incident, but she had no idea what it was. She didn’t think that other branch managers were going to remember to go over this policy with their Sunday-only staff, so SL1… did you get this talk?

On to business…

My first customer of the day was wondering if our central library had sheet music. I didn’t know, so I called up the music division and asked. Answer – yes!

I placed a hold for a patron for Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, a fictionalized account of the woman who ended Frank Lloyd Wright’s first marriage. I’ve seen the book around and been curious about it, but haven’t read it yet.

The same patron was wondering how to request that the library purchase a book, so I showed her how to make that request in our online catalog. She was pretty excited to discover the process and said she had several books in mind to request.

A woman came in looking for a book entitled, How to Pray. She didn’t have an author or any other identifying information. I looked in our catalog and on Open WorldCat. There are LOTS of books entitled How to Pray, or something very similar. None of them were in our branch for her to look at and she had no way of knowing which one she needed. She left empty handed.

A patron asked where he stood in the holds queue for a video – F is for Fake. He was next in line, but seemed unwilling to believe that the video was actually circulating and not lost. A healthy degree of skepticism is not uncalled for with regards to holds, but in this case the video did seem to still be around (it had circulated quite frequently and recently).

Another patron stopped by to check on the status of her hold for Black No More (which I think I placed for her a few weeks ago). She was also next in line. Before these two interactions, I had no idea how you checked the status of a hold in Sirsi, but I figured it out on the fly. And it’s a handy thing to know, for sure!

A patron came over with the title and call number for a book - 121 Internet businesses you can start from home, and asked for help finding it. I walked her over to the stacks and found the book on the shelf for her.

My wandering patron from a few weeks ago was back, looking for Blonde Ambition once again. We still haven’t purchased it and I suggested that he put in a request for us to do so, but he didn’t want to. I don’t think it will show up otherwise, but if he comes back looking for it again, I will just put in the request myself.

I showed a patron where to find the books on CD, being sure to point out the books on tape and mp3 players as well.

I helped a child find the Goosebumps books (by R.L. Stine). Given how popular they are, I was surprised that we didn’t have more, although they might have just been checked out. He also was looking for books on different subject areas – math, social studies, reading, vocabulary. I helped him find the appropriate sections in Dewey, but my system does not collect textbooks, which was what he seemed to be looking for, so I’m not sure he got what he wanted.

A librarian from another branch called for a shelf check for The Bottomless Well by Peter Huber. We had it, so I was able to trap the hold for their patron. She also filled me in that we would be upgrading to a new version of Sirsi this week and I would probably be facing a new system next weekend. As a Sunday-only employee, I don’t have an email account with the system (where I assume such news is spread) and I’m not sure how I would have found this out if not for this librarian.

In addition to the encounters above, I had some more of a technical nature last weekend:

A patron came in and said that she had returned books to the bookmobile, but that they had never been checked-in. I have had similar problems in the past (that very week in fact!), so I went ahead and checked the books back in for her.

A group that had reserved the large meeting room asked if they could switch to the small room. As no one had reserved that room, I said that was okay.

The library intern came back from the community festival looking for a bookmark version of our newsletter (which doesn’t exist). I’m not sure where the message got garbled, but she headed back with the newsletters.

A patron trying to sign up to use the computers put her library card in the reader for the print cards. It only amazes me that this doesn’t happen more, because that reader isn’t labeled in any way. Our circulation clerk was able to get the card back out, thank goodness.

A patron asked for the password for the wi-fi. There is no password, it’s just that the wi-fi is ornery. I suggested the age-old solution of disconnecting and trying again in 5 minutes, which seems to work sometimes. I have no idea why our wi-fi is not more reliable, but it drives me crazy.

Which brings us to this week. Which was a very quiet week! (And also did not involve a new version of Sirsi. The upgrade has started, but the staff ended hadn't been updated by Sunday).

A patron came in looking for information on careers. She mentioned that she had heard that the Department of Labor put something out, so I went to their website and found the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This is published both in print and online, but our system did not have the print version. So I wrote down the title and url for her to use the online version at her leisure. We also went together to look at the appropriate section of Dewey, but all of our career books were hopelessly dated. Some weeding may be in order.

A patron with poor eyesight requested that I check the date on a volume of the Encyclopedia of Religion for him. It was published in 1987. He returned several times during the afternoon. I showed him how to find a subject in the index (he was looking for information on the Salvation Army, and then on religious organizations – we looked under Sects and Religious Communities). I think he finally ended up finding what he was looking for the 2007 World Book however.

A patron came in looking for Step Forward: Language for Everyday Life. We didn’t have it in the system and none of the other local library systems did either unfortunately.

A young patron was looking for books on animals. I showed her where to find them in the children’s section.

And that was it for this Sunday! I was working with the other librarian because I still don’t have keys, but our circulation clerk was in a car accident and didn’t come in, so it was good that she was there because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to open. (You must have at least two employees to open – one on the reference desk and one at circulation).

Week 7 - The Fortress of Solitude

Having been away on semi-vacation for a week, I decided to finally work the upstairs children's room this week. As I've noted in previous posts, our branch manager requires that a librarian be available downstairs in the adult section and also upstairs in the children's area. The upstairs in notoriously dead, so I've more or less avoided it so far (to the not-so-well-hidden delight of my coworkers, who are keen to kick back for the day and watch a DVD or read the paper). In any event, I thought it would be a good way to both ease back in and check out the children's resources. So I headed upstairs and spent about 15 minutes orienting myself before settling down behind the desk for what proved to be a very slow day:

• A father brought his roughly 10-year-old boy up to look for the last Harry Potter book, and we indeed had two copies. Father: "Are you sure you're ready for this? I heard it's scary..." Boy (clutching book) "Yes..." (I've never read any of the HP series, just seen the film.)


• A young girl was looking for Angie Page's Phyik (the third book in the "Septimus Page" series) which was right where it was supposed to be on the shelf. I've never heard of the series, but she left looking very pleased.


• A couple asked if they could use one of the upstairs meeting rooms to talk in so they wouldn't disturb anyone. I said sure.


• A woman with a roughly 8 to 10-year-old boy in tow was looking for book on St. John. Yikes! I did a few title and subject searches for St. John and didn't come up with anything age-appropriate. Then I started just looking for books on saints in general and was able to give her David Self's Loyola Treasury of Saints, which has a two page spread on St. John. I can't speak to the contents, but the presentation seemed quite nice, and it's allegedly for ages 9-12, so hopeully that worked out for them.


• A couple with a baby (roughly 1 or slightly younger) was looking for age-appropriate stuff. After a little scouting around the room, I was able to direct her to a few baskets of baby board books. She was psyched and plopped herself down on the floor to look at them for 30 minutes while the baby speed-crawled around the joint.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 5 (the St. John one)
Year: 4 for 49

Week 5 - All Quiet on the Western Front

This was my quietest week yet at the library. I had the following interactions:

• Showed a patron where we kept the latest issues of the Financial Times.


• Showed a patron how to make a reservation to use a computer - and where to check to see when it is your turn.


• Signed up a patron to use the computer with a guest card.


• Showed a teenaged patron how to use the copy machine.


• Found a book for a patron on how to improve your credit.


• Another branch called looking for In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming. Although we were supposed to have a copy, it wasn't on the shelf. I need to email my branch manager and see how to mark books as missing, because it is very frustrating to come to a branch because the catalog says a book is available and then not have it actually be there.


• Removed a hold for a customer who had found the book on the shelves. (What responsible library usage on the patron's part! I was so surprised that someone did that.)


• Showed an early elementary school student where to find "science books for kids". Although she was there with an adult, she came and asked on her own, which was very impressive. I confirmed that she was looking for books on science projects and led her to that section (I actually knew where it was without looking, because I had received a similar inquiry several weeks prior).

And that was it! One computer was still down, but we weren't at maximum computer usage this week any way - a first for me. Also, my phone didn't work for two hours (which I didn't realize until the circulation desk tried to transfer me a call), but unplugging and replugging the phone fixed that. Isn't it great when low tech solutions work?

I'm off next weekend, so I'll post again in two weeks.

Week 6 - Bestsellers, AOL, and the Old Mex

Pretty slow day (again). Worked with a 20-year vet of the system who normally works at the same branch as Sunday Librarian 2. S/he was nice and showed me how to do something potentially useful on the computer. I volunteered for downstairs again, and she was fine with that and checked back a few times during the day to make sure I didn't need a break. Nothing too exciting happened -- had another person spend a good portion of the day looking at porn on one of the computers. I'm going to save my remarks on that for a separate post. As for the patron interactions, they were few, but yielded one real hardcore librarian question!

• Showed a middle-aged woman how to place money on a print card.


• A young South Asian woman needed to borrow a pen. I lent her one. She returned it later. Awesome.


• A middle-aged woman came in with a bunch of book review clippings from the local newspaper, including the paperback fiction bestseller list, with half the items circled. Of the eight books, one wasn't yet available in the system, one was supposed to be on the shelf but wasn't, and the other six were all checked out, so I ended up placing holds on all of em (none of which I've read): Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great, David Baldacci's The Collectors, Donna Leon's Quietly in Their Sleep, Vince Flynn's Act of Treason, Nicholas Sparks' At First Sight, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. Also requested Karin Fossum's The Indian Bride. I've not read any of these, although I did read Norweigan author Fossum's first crime novel (Don't Look Back) and enjoyed it a great deal.


• A middle aged woman came over to leave a reminder for the branch manager regarding her inability to renew books or place holds from her home computer. Apparently everything worked fine at the library computer, but for two months it hasn't worked from home -- when she tried to log into her library account she got gobbledygook (ie. pages of server error codes). I wrote out the message and then asked her to show me what she does, to see if we could replicate her problem. Rather oddly, she logged into her AOL account and then searched for the system's website through their search box, even though she knew the URL. As she had said, she was able to perform the tasks she needed to from the library computer. I was pretty stumped, although I suspected that there was some kind of setting on her home machine interfering with how the system's servers were interpreting her requests. I said I'd think on it, but suggested that she try accessing the system's web site directly from home, instead of going through AOL. About half an hour later she called back and told me it worked! Now, I'm no techie -- but I know that when in doubt, eliminating AOL from your life can solve a lot of problems.


• Toward the end of the day, a middle-aged woman came in looking for books for her 16-year-old's AP history report on "the politics and economics of early Latin America." Finally, a classic reference question! In school we learned how to take very broad requests like this and conduct a "reference interview" to tease out further information and narrow it down a bit. Alas, since the student wasn't there, the mother had to call the audibly annoyed teenager for more info. We eventually learned that "Latin America" actually did mean everything from Mexico to Patagonia, and that "early" meant 1000AD. While the woman looked at books on tape, I poked around a bit for a general history which might provide a starting point. The only thing I found on our shelves was The Penguin History of Latin America, which seemed broad enough to meet the student's needs. It struck me that looking at some stuff on the Aztecs and Incas might help, but we didn't have anything useful in the adult area. There were a few things in the Juvenile section, but those seemed pitched unlikely to help someone in AP History... The mother and I discussed the possibility of consulting a local academic library, or even another branch located in a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population (and thus a collection that should theoretically be stronger in Latin American history). She seemed satisfied, but then ten minutes later the teenage daughter showed up with more info. Apparently we were supposed to be turning back the clock a little and checking out BC, not AD, and some bunch of folks called the "Old Mex, I think?" Er, yeah...that would be the Olmecs. The system actually had some good Olmec stuff, but mostly on their art, only two or three history books. Of course, the kid needed something this afternoon and wasn't interested in waiting a few days to have books sent over. She said "no thanks" and walked off while texting -- a living cliche.


• Minutes before closing, a young man came in breathless, looking for Robert Kaplan's Warrior Politics (I've read other Kaplan books, but not that one). For some reason, our copy had been discarded (probably damaged), so I had one sent over from another branch.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 6
Year: 3 for 44

Week 4 - The Rookie

The title of this week's post comes from the following interaction:
I arrived at the library about 20 minutes before opening. There has still been no key made for me, so the custodian is having to come in on Sundays to open and close the building. The lights are on, so I can tell he has arrived and I am looking in the front window to see if I can catch his eye. A patron helpfully tells me that the library doesn't open until 1. I say, thank you, I know, I work here, I'm trying to get in. He says to another patron waiting outside, must be her first week - and I say well, it's my fourth, but yes, I am new. He says, well I'd call that a rookie. So, a rookie, I am.

By my count there are 7 people waiting when we open the doors. 5 of those head straight to sign up for computers. Only one of our computers is down this morning - a great improvement over last week. Like last week, the first hour was very slow - I only had one patron interaction and that was a request for a pen and scratch paper.

The real stuff:

• A patron wanted to know if Iran's president was in the US. I did a Google News search to find out his scheduled (at Columbia on Monday, and the UN on Tuesday) and let her know.



• A young man was looking for mythology books. I directed him to appropriate part of the non-fiction section.



• A young woman was looking for A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Although our catalog showed that we had one copy available, it was missing, so I placed a hold for the patron.



• A patron came in looking for On Becoming a Person (this must be for a class or something, since Sunday Librarian 1 also had this request yesterday). Our copy had been discarded and she couldn't wait for a hold. She needed the book today, so unfortunately she was out of luck.



• I received a phone call asking if our wifi was working. Answer - Yes!



• An elderly gentleman came over and asked where we kept the mp3 players (which contain preloaded audiobooks). I walked him to the appropriate section, while he explained that his wife was using them to read all the classics. I thought this was pretty great!



• A patron called me over to her computer because she said it was freezing. It wasn't actually freezing, so there wasn't much I could do to help her.



• A patron came in and asked if we had Blonde Ambition - we did have a book by that title, but it was a YA book and I didn't think that was what he meant, so I did a quick search on Amazon to see if there was another book by that title. There was - a biography of Anna Nicole Smith, which is the book he meant. We didn't have it. He then asked for the new book by Bill Clinton - Giving. Our copy was checked out and he didn't want to place a hold. He then asked for the latest by Hillary Clinton, but she hasn't published anything since Living History, which he had already read. Finally he asked if we had anything by Sylvia Brown. One book, My Guide, Myself, showed up in the system, but both copies were missing. So 0 for 4 for this patron. The annoying thing about this interaction was that the patron would ask for something and then walk away, so that I had to follow him around or raise my voice so that he could hear me. It was very disconcerting.



• A patron called me over to his computer to ask why he "couldn't move on". After determaining what he meant (the website wouldn't let him go anywhere but the homepage), I let him no that this was because the website's server was down (which the page that was appearing said) and that he would have to try again some other time.



• A patron came in looking for "Web of Man" which he described as an ecology textbook from the 1960s. There was no book by that title in our system, but a search of Open Worldcat found Man in the Web of Life, which was the book he was looking for. Unfortunately our system still didn't have the book (nor did any of the other local systems), but I was able to give him a slip with the correct title, author (John Storer) and publication year (1968).



• A patron came in looking for Black No More. Our copy was checked out, but I placed it on hold for the patron.



• Another branch called for a shelf check for The Ludlum Triad by Robert Ludlum. Our copy was on the shelf and I was able to trap the hold for their patron.



• I showed a patron how to print from the public access computers. Although I knew how it worked in theory, this was the first time I had walked a patron through it and I was gratified to see that it worked in practice too.



• As per usual, I also helped a patron get on a computer using a guest card, although she also got a library card while she was there, so she'll be able to use that next time. And finally, 4 weeks, I had my first question about where the bathrooms were!

Week 5 - Traffic, Pizza and a Plea For Advice

Once again, my co-librarian was late... Fortunately, I had the phone list in my bad and was able to reach him and find out he was caught in traffic. So I called the branch manager at home, and she came over and opened up. That all went fine, and once the other librarian showed up, he elected to take the upstairs desk, where he could catch up on his magazines and watch a DVD. That didn't really bug me, since I'd just as soon have more patron contact while I'm new and learning. I was a little taken aback when he left for 15 minutes without letting me know and then came back with a pizza and large beverage!

Meanwhile, the circulation staffer wore his headphones most of the day, and must have sent about 20-30 text messages. This, combined with his really soft voice might have given the impression of surliness to some. Or at least to the elderly woman who came over to me and said "If your check out person hates people so much, he should get another job." Ouch! This presents a bit of a dilemma, because I believe I'm supposed to report any complaint to the branch manager. But like the shirt says, no one likes a snitch... But the branch manager seems to greet every elderly woman by name, so it's possible the woman knows branch manager and will mention her complaint to me. Argh, not sure what to do. Advice anyone?

There were a few other notable events, such as the failure of our internet connection for about half an hour. This is a pretty bad thing to happen, since the majority of Sunday patrons are there to use the internet. We called the Sunday supervisor to let him know, but basically there's nothing we can do other than put an out of order sign on the computers and apologize. Unfortunately, it means we can't do anything basic like look up books or anything.

A strange moment involved one branch calling looking for the phone number of a third branch... I read them the number off the phone list which is on a flyer all the branches have sitting out for patrons and they seemed pleased. Not sure why they felt the need to call us for help... Anyway, on to the patron interactions:

• A young woman, probably a teacher, wanted picture books about airplanes appropriate for preschoolers. This was the kind of request I knew was coming eventually, and still dreaded. There's actually a nice reference book that is basically lists of picture books by subject. The problem is, even though it had something like 50 books listed for "airplanes," who knows which ones we actually had? The branch manager showed me the quick way to solve this (which I then demonstrated for the patron so she could do it herself in the future.) In the system's online catalog, basically search for the topic you want picture books for, and use booleon logic to add "JUV" to the search. This will generate a list of all the children's books about the topic. Now, it's hardly perfect, since not all JUV books are picture books, but it's probably a good way to go, since you can limit the search to the branch you're in. Once again though, the limitations of SIRSI are frustrating...


• A middle-aged woman was looking for Thursday editions of the local newspaper from July. We keep four months worth, so I was able to dig them out from the back room. Apparently she was looking for some kind of probate announcement that was supposed to have run in the legal notices section of the classified ads. One interesting twist to this interaction is that I learned that the full-text database of the local paper does not include any of the classifieds -- only the articles -- so if she needed to check on an older announcement, she would have been out of luck.


• A middle-aged woman came in looking for a copy of Roddy Doyle's excellent novelThe Woman Who Walked Into Doors. Don't know how good the recent sequel (written a decade later), Paula Spencer, is.


• A 30something man, who turned out to be an adjunct history professor, was looking for a copy of Sebastian Haffner's 1939 memoir Defying Hitler, which I was able to find for him on the shelves.


• A middle aged woman was looking for four books, Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land, Paul Bowles' classic 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky, Nassim Taleb's breezy pop non-fiction exploration of randomness, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, and Patrica Beard' Blue Blood and Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley. The first three of which were checked out and I ordered from other branches for her. The fourth was just published, so I put in a request for her, even though its billing as "The inside story of the power struggle that rocked Wall Street's most prestigious financial institution" sounds like a real snooze-fest.


• A young woman was looking for Carl Rogers' 1961 psychology classic On Becoming A Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy, which I was able to find for her on the shelf.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 6
Year: 2 for 38

Week 4 - "The Easiest $100 You'll Ever Make"

After two weeks of "training" by the branch manager, I'm now back to working by my own wits and ingenuity. Since I still don't have a key and the librarian with the key was a little late, that meant convincing a building engineer to let me in when he came to check the AC system ten minutes before opening. A few minutes later my co-librarian arrived and checked the voicemail, learning that the circulation staffer had called in sick. So, that left just the two of us to run the place for the day. What that means is that one of us sits upstairs in the children's room and basically does nothing (since that room doesn't get much use on Sundays), while the other person takes care of both circulation (checking books out) and the reference desk. I chose to do the latter, since sitting upstairs would be kind of a waste of time, in terms of learning opportunities, and the other librarian seemed awfully content to disappear up there with the Sunday newspaper (aside from the 20 minute trip s/he took to Safeway).

As it turned out, despite the increased traffic generated Friends of the Library booksale, things were pretty quiet -- which was a good thing, since I was flying by the seat of my pants on the circulation desk. SIRSI is such a cumbersome and non-intuitive system that trying to sort out people's problems was pretty frustrating. Some typical problems included dealing with fines, a woman who'd checked out a DVD, but one of the two discs was missing, a woman whose sister's nanny had used her card and not returned any of the items, and other such mundane stuff. But there were only a handful of non-circulation interactions:

• An elderly woman came in looking for a book on hold, Stendhal's The Red and The Black. We didn't have it on hold, but it was on the shelf, so no harm done. This is one of those classics that I'm seriously unlikely to ever read: a 600 page satire of post-Waterloo French society? I think not...


• A middle-aged woman called looking for Mark Salzman's The Laughing Sutra, which I pulled and held for her until she came in a few hours later. I've heard of the author, but not this particular book. Apparently it's a kind of fantastical young adult book published about 15 years ago. Must be for a book club, since you'll se in the previous post that a patron at Sunday Librarian 2's branch was also looking for it.


• A young woman, whom I'd talked to a few weeks ago, asked for a reminder on how to access the downloadable audiobooks. I gave her the flyer with the URL.


• A middle-aged man called and wanted assistance with the system's downloadable audiobooks. The problem was that he knew more about it than me! He'd gone through a video tutorial, read through all kinds of help pages, and now wanted to know whether he should use Overdrive or NetLibrary or both. As far as I knew, the library didn't even subscribe to NetLibrary, so it was fairly embarrassing to sit there with him on the phone as he directed me to the page on our system's web site that detailed that we did. This raises the semi-interesting point of how the system keeps us librarians abreast of the latest services, databases, and events. I assume that we would all get emailed updates with this sort of info, but since I have yet to get an email account, I can't verify that yet. Will post about that later when I do.

This last one is the only interaction I might classify as requiring an MLS, however since I didn't have the training/info to deal with it, I ended up looking somewhat foolish.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 4
Year: 1 for 32

In any event, the day went by pretty quickly thanks to all the circulation work I did. One semi-good thing about getting a lot of circulation work in is that it helps you understand just how porous the system's databases are. For example, there's no obvious way to merge patron records in the event of duplicates (which happens quite a lot, pretty much whenever people lose a card). Or the surprising number of books I checked in that had never, in fact, been checked out!

At the end of the day, the other librarian came down to shut down the joint and we traded smalltalk, and I learned that s/he was a regular full-time librarian and the Sunday hours were overtime, which s/he characterized as "the easiest $100 you'll ever make." Badda-Bing!

Week 3 - Flying Solo

This was my first week on the desk by myself. When I arrived there was a note from my branch manager explaining that only one of our public access computers was working. One of the non-functioning computers was turned off (explains why it wasn't working!), but three remained non-functioning for the whole work day. I started the day by calling the IT department, but they were not fixed by the close of business.

There were only a handful of people waiting when we opened and the first hour was very slow. 3 weeks in, I recognize some of the regulars and they are all very friendly - making a point to say hi. This definitely reminds me that we are a neighborhood branch!

My interactions for today were:

• A regular patron brought me two books (The Queen Gene and Sufficient Grace) and asked me to put them on hold for her. I'm not sure why she didn't want to check them out now, since she was here, but I did and they will be waiting at the circulation desk when she returns.


• A woman came to the desk looking for books for her children's school projects. There was a book list provided by the teacher, but almost the whole system had almost none of the books. I doublecheck a few of them on Amazon to get author's names, etc, and they were fairly old books (one from 1953 on the Magna Carta, etc). It made me wonder how the teacher had chosen those books. I was able to reserve a copy of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on CD for the patron to be delivered to the branch closest to her house, but on the whole she struck out, I am afraid.


• A patron was looking for books on photography, and I directed him to the appropriate section of Dewey. I should find and print out the general Dewey breakdown, because at the moment I am having to do a subject search and check the Dewey numbers of several books that come up. A little librarian homework for me.


• A couple came in looking for guidebooks to Egypt. I directed them to the appropriate part of the non-fiction section.


• Another branch called asking if our copy of The Laughing Sutra by Mark Salzman was on the shelf. It was and I was able to trap the hold for their patron.


• A high school student came in looking for books that dealt with East African history during the period 8000 BCE-600 AD. Such a specific topic area is a little bit beyond the breadth of our small collection, but she said she had already been to the central library and had not found much that was helpful. We did find one book that covered that period and I also gave her the appropriate article in the Encyclopedia Britanica and showed her how each entry ends with a bibliography that could suggest other sources. I think we found her some relevant information, but I don't think we completely met her information need by any stretch.


At the end of the day, when we were closing, she came back looking for a copy of the Kite Runner, but, even though the catalog showed us having 2 copies, I wasn't able to find either one on the shelf. She didn't want to put the book on hold, so I fear she will have the same problem next week.


• I placed holds for a patron for "the latest James Patterson" (The Quickie), The Happiness Myth, and "the new mystery by that author, i can't remember, her name begins with E" (Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich).


• Received a phone call asking if we had White Pages for the surrounding suburbs (we do). The patron was looking for the phone number of his old roommate, there were two possible numbers in the phone book, which I gave him. Then, because our White Pages were from 2004, I also checked whitepages.com, which confirmed that the second number I gave him was the one he was looking for. He was very happy and grateful, which felt pretty good.


• Another branch called looking for The Transformation by Mette Newth. I eventually found the book shelved in the Adult section, even though the librarian who called described it as a YA book. I was then I able to send the hold to that branch for their patron.


• A patron called with his daughter who was looking for The Boyfriend Trick. We didn't have the book, but I read off the branches that did and they found a branch close to them to try to get the book at today. I then gave the patron the branch address so that they could drive over.


• Another branch called for a shelf check for Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Our copy was on the shelf and I was able to trap the hold for their patron.


• A young woman came looking for Charlotte's Web. Although we were supposed to have two copies available, neither was on the shelf - either where they were supposed to be or misshelved in YA or Adult. I did place a hold on the item for the patron to be delivered to another branch more convenient to her.

Other Activities:

• One of my duties as a Sunday Librarian is to reshelve the new books in our front display areas. I am amazed by how many financial planning books we have - such a popular subject matter!


• Gave a patron her pin number so that she could renew her books online.


• Directed a patron to the circulation desk so that she could get a library card.


• Helped out with the computers, to the best of my ability. Gave a patron a guest user card. Having only two computers available was definitely limiting and it is good that the day was relatively slow.

Final Thoughts:

The missing copies are frustrating and I wonder what we could do to limit them. I wonder how often the shelves are read and if that would cut down on some of this. I also wonder if I should be marking these books as missing in some way to prevent folks from coming to the Branch for materials that aren't actually available.

I still find SIRSI to be clunky and it is especially annoying for trying to search for only age appropriate materials (I still can't seem to limit to only YA or Juvenile or Children's). Advice from SIRSI users kindly welcome!

Why Sunday Librarians and the NFL Don't Mix Well

One of the things anyone who works on a Sunday might face is that you can't watch football (aka helmetball) live. I'm no longer nearly as big a fan of football as I used to be -- primarily because after years of watching soccer (aka football), NFL games are, by comparison, pretty boring stop and start affairs.

However, I still like to watch the home team, and as I mentioned in my last post, last Friday was the start of the NFL season. Since "the big game" was during library hours, I set the VCR (yes, VCR not DVR) and trundled off to work. Watching the game later with the ability to fast-forward through commercials and any dead spots in the game is actually pretty ideal. However, the problem is that you have to make it home without learning the outcome of the game...

And the reason I bring this up is that the circulation staffer sitting 30 feet away from me had the game up on the circ desk computer as soon as he got in. Seeing this, we talked about the team's prospects a while and then I told him I was recording it and to please not say anything about the game. Alas, over the course of the day he spent a good portion of any dead time on his cell phone talking to buddies about the game's progress in tones just loud enough for me to catch every fourth word. Then, at the end of the day, he completely forgot and recapped the game for a patron right near me.

So...opening day spoiled... Just one of the hazards of being a Sunday Librarian!

Postscript: I did still end up having the game on while I worked on assembling a small bedside table from Ikea. That thing was a nightmare, it had more parts than any Ikea item I've ever bought! Turns out that taped NFL is a pretty good match with annoying Ikea assembly tasks.

Week 3 - Books in the Dumpter

This week I learned a little more about various procedures -- like what to do if the building's on fire, or if someone falls down the stairs, or if a kid barfs. All useful tidbits that I will share if the occaison warrants. In the meantime, here's my log of patron interactions for the day:

• A middle-aged white woman was looking for any of Sam Llewellyn' nautically-themed mysteries. There were a number available in the system and I placed a hold on three: Maelstrom, Clawhammer, and Death Roll. I'm a crime fan, but I'd never heard of this series. As a librarian, it's good to know about themed genre series though.


• A young white woman was looking for Hermoine Lee's 870-page doorstopper of a biography Edith Wharton. I'm convinced that contemporary biographers are wildly inept, as no one seems to be able to write one under 600 pages. Somewhere, I hope the remainders of these are being used to build houses... Seriously, how many people are going to sit down and plow through almost 900 pages on Wharton? Our copy was out, and I offered to have one sent over from a different library. However she wanted it sent to a location I wasn't familiar with, at which point a more senior librarian stepped in and took over. I'm not sure what ended up happening, but when the woman was leaving, she seemed pretty annoyed and was complaining to her friend.


• A teenage white woman was looking for Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This relatively straightforward request was complicated somewhat in that the two or three copies that used to be in the Adult Fiction section were all missing. However, there was an ancient copy listed in the 800s (Literature) section that we managed to find for her. Don't get me started on why some things are in the 800s... Anyway, not a book I've read -- although I have, of course, seen the famous film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson when he could act rather than just ham it up.


• A young woman called from another branch looking for a copy of Orhan Pamuk's Snow. It was where it belonged on the shelf, and I pulled it for her. Not a book I've read, although I did read another of his and found it pretty uncompelling. When she came in we had a brief conversation about book clubs and how one often puts off reading the book until the last minute. Her friend was looking for audiobooks for a car trip, which gave me another chance to tell people about the downloadable Overdrive stuff.


• A young white woman needed to use the internet, but didn't have a library card. I gave her a guest card and showed her how to log on.


• A young white couple asked if I knew a good place to buy a couch! Since distance wasn't an option, but price was, I suggested Ikea and West Elm.


• A young woman called looking for Irene Hunt's Across Five Aprils, which I didn't immediately find on the shelf. Then, I went back and checked the computer and found it in the Young Adult Paperback section. Never heard of it, but it's a Newbury winner from 1965 about the Civil War.


• A young woman, possibly a girl, called to ask if we had any free magazines. As far as I know, we don't, but I directed her to another branch, where I know there is a big trunk of donated magazined.


• A man called looking for help with the "Playaway" version of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans he had recently checked out. Playaways are basically cheap little MP3 players that are preloaded with audiobooks - kind of an interesting format. The selection is somewhat limited (only about 20 or or so titles per branch) and I haven't seen a title that's sparked me to try them out. I had to turn him over to the senior librarian, since I don't know anything about the devices. I later figured out how to pop the back and replace the AAA battery.


• A young white man was looking for DVDs and pointed out our woefully non-alphabetical selection.


• A middle-aged white woman needed help logging onto the computers and using the print card system.


• A young white man was looking for books on yoga. Here's a case where not knowing the Dewey system by heart slowed me down a lot. I had to go into SIRSI, search for "yoga" in the title, and scan the list of result for the right Dewey number. Yoga is a little bit of a pain, because it appears in a few different areas, such as Eastern Philosophy as well as Health.

So, a little more variety this week -- a few things I had to learn about, but still not any significant challenge.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 0 for 12
Year: 0 for 28

This week was the opening of the NFL season, and I was expecting things to be relatively quiet. Despite what I've logged above, they were, so I ended up doing some really basic stuff to fill the time. For example, at one point, the circulation worker was pretty backed up, so I went over to help check out books at the second computer. (However the scanner wasn't working, so I ended up typing in all the barcodes by hand, which took for-ev-er.) At another point, I went outside and emptied the after-hours drop box (almost gashing my hand in the process). One of the two boxes wasn't locked, and were someone inclined to go around the city checking these things, they would have struck a jackpot of about twenty DVDs and thirty books with this one. Normally, this is something the circulation staff would do, but since there was only one working, he couldn't leave the disk. Then, toward the end of the day, I started working on alphabetizing the DVDs. Got about halfway through before closing, and am curious to see what shape they're in next week.

Which brings me to the title of this week's post. Our branch has a pretty active friends group, and their annual book sale is next weekend (conflicting with the central branch's own sale, don't ask me why...). They've been sorting through donations like crazy, and had about fifteen bags of books to throw away. I fully understand that there are some books that just aren't salable, but I'd just as soon see them offered to local artists to make into altered book art, or at least recycle those that can be... But as a newbie, I'm not going to sit there and argue this with my boss -- not to mention the PR fallout were the local media to learn of books in a library dumpter. In any event guess who got called in to haul the heavy stuff out? Yep, that's how Week 3 ended for me, throwing out books.

Sunday Librarian 2, Week 1

This is being written two weeks after I worked for the first time, so there will be more general impressions than specific details.

After three months of post-interview waiting, things with the library system moved very quickly once they made the offer – a week later I was in a branch. My training consisted of one hour of informal conversation/time on the desk with the branch manager earlier in the week and then Sunday I was on! Luckily the branch manager had arranged for another adult librarian to work with me my first two Sundays and show me the ropes. Like my colleague, my first day started with a tutorial in opening the building – doors, lights, security alarm… The circulation staff was late (and we weren’t allowed to open without them) and so we opened a few minutes late, much to the consternation of several patrons. There were probably about 15 people waiting when we opened, most of whom headed straight for the computer sign-up station.

For the first half of the shift, the other, experienced librarian worked the desk with me and handled shelf checks and patron interactions. She showed me the basics of SIRSI and how to give someone a guest card to use the internet. Then for the second half of the shift, I was on my own.

Through the haze of two busy weeks, my interactions were such:

• A middle-aged white man came in looking for books on Maryland or Baltimore history. I was able to direct him to the appropriate portion of the non-fiction section and also let him know that we could place a hold for him on any books that he might be interested in from other branches.


• A twenty-something white woman was looking for travel guides to Kyrgyzstan or (if that was too obscure) Central Asia. My branch didn’t have anything, but there were guides available at the central library and I offered to place a hold and have them delivered. Since that library was near her work, she decided she would just go over on her lunch break one day.


• A middle-aged African-American man was looking for books and, later in a separate interaction, videos on Germany. After a reference interview, I determined that he was looking for travel guides or similar general information and not information about World War II or specific historical events. I directed him to the appropriate portion of the non-fiction section. Unfortunately, our video and dvd selection is somewhat limited, but I found some materials in the central library that might be of interest and let him know about those.


• A thirty-something white woman was looking for a specific book in the YA section (title and author now escape me). We were able to find it on the shelf together. Success!


• A twenty-something white man was looking for audio books. I led him to that section and pointed out that we had books on tape, cd, and individual mp3 players (one of which I will have to check out next time, just to see how they work). I also let him know about the downloadable audio books.


• A thirty-something African-American woman was looking for books on science fair projects for 2-5 year olds. I wasn’t able to limit by age (although maybe there is a way to do this in SIRSI), but I took her to the appropriate section of the children’s non-fiction area and she was able to find a few books. She later came up looking for read-aloud books that dealt with play (I got the impression that this was for a class assignment). This was incredibly hard to look for (lots and lots of children’s books have play as a subject, I still couldn’t figure out how to limit by age and so I was getting not just picture books, but board books and easy readers, picture books are vaguely organized by author’s last name, so there wasn’t a section we could just browse in). I’m not sure that I satisfied her information need at all. (The fact that she asked 15 minutes before we closed didn’t give me much time to figure out the best way to look for these sorts of books either). I think this is the kind of question that the children’s librarian in the branch would have been able to answer fairly easily – being much more familiar with the literature in general and also with the branch’s particular collection. Next time, I will be sure to suggest calling or coming back by at a time when she is working.


• A thirty-something white man came in looking for two specific books on mortgages. One was available in the system and I placed a hold for him. The other was not, but I let him know that we could do any interlibrary loan and also that another local library system had the book and that he would be eligible to get a library card in that system too, if he wanted to travel out that branch.

Other interactions:


• Directed 3-5 local college students looking to get library cards to the circulation desk.


• Set a young woman up with a guest card, so that she could use the internet. At that point in the day (an hour until closing), all the computer time for the next hour was booked, but I was able to get her onto the 15-minute machine, so at least she got a little internet access.


• Called an elderly male patron’s wife to come pick him up since the library was closing. I’m still not sure what I think about this interaction, but at least he got home.

Shockingly (to me), no one asked me where the restrooms were! Also, I was surprised that over the 4 hours in the library, there were only ever two children. I'm not sure if that is a reflection on the neighborhood or Sundays or just the fact that it was the last weekend before school started.

There was probably other stuff too that I have since forgotten, but overall it was a good introduction to public librarianship and I think I survived okay. One more day with training wheels this Sunday and then it’s sink or swim for me.

I am going to stay out of the “do librarians need master’s degrees debate” (although in brief, I say yes, just not necessarily for what happens most of the time on the reference desk at a public library), so no tracking of interactions for me!