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.