Week 18 - Finally Downstairs

Finally, I spent this week on the adult desk -- my first time at this branch. The desk is right in the middle of things, making it atmospherically hectic. That said, I didn't have too many people coming to me with requests:

• A middle-aged man approached me holding a disk, saying he needed help printing his resume. Normally I would have him sign up for a computer and do it himself, but since seven of the twelve adult computers were "down" (ie. not working), I was feeling pretty generous. I slipped in the disk and opened up the Word document to take a look. It was a pretty messy resume, in terms of formatting, wording, organization, everything. The guy's spoken English was pretty good, but he admitted that his writing wasn't so strong. So I sat him down next to me and for the next hour and a half we reworked his resume from top to bottom.


• A middle-aged black man asked if we had any of Linda McCartney's photography books. We didn't, but both Sun Prints and Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portraits of an Era were available downtown, so I put in a request to have them sent to the branch for him.


• An elderly Asian woman asked if we had information on "broomstick knitting." I had no idea what that was, so I took her over to the knitting books and asked her to poke around in them while I poked around online. Eventually, I found an article online, which I printed out, showed her, and she pronounced just what she needed.


• A pair of men came over and asked if we had any study rooms. I didn't know of any, but after asking other staff, I learned of one in the basement, which I unlocked for the men.


• A young woman killing time while waiting for a computer asked if we had any aviation books. I looked in the transportation area, but couldn't find anything other than something about military transportation. She didn't seem to care that much and said she'd go check out the magazines.


• A teenage boy came in looking for information about how to get a driver's license in our jurisdiction. His situation was a little complicated because he was in school in a neighboring jurisdiction, but lived with his grandfather in this one. I went to the DMV web site and tried to figure out what he needed. The process for getting a provisional driver's license is pretty complicated, not to mention all the hassle of proving residency, so in the end I printed out about ten pages and highlighted a bunch of stuff on them for the kid (who was very nice and polite).

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
This week is a little tougher to judge -- despite the range of stuff, probably only the knitting one, and even that is iffy...
Week: 1 for 6
Year: 13 for 88