- 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
2 comments:
I got a GED and an MBA and while I might have been able to figure a bunch of these request I certainly wouldnt say I knew what someone with an MLS knew. My vote is for the MLS, while you might not use it right now its sure to come in handy.
I certainly agree that it comes in handy -- what I'm not sure about is to what extent it's worth the system paying for people like me when only 5-10% of the interactions we have really draw upon our MLS. This is something I'm struggling to figure out...
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