Week 19 - And Back to the Kid's Room

After a very different Sunday on the adult desk, this week found me back upstairs among the children... However, unlike the last several dead weeks, school is back in session and this seems to mean more business for me.

On an unrelated note, when I came in this Sunday I learned about a a fight that occurred in the children's room during the week. It was between two teenage girls -- one of whom I knew as a Sunday regular, and I can't say I'm surprised. She apparently was whaling (or is it wailing?) on the other girl with one of those thin metal bookends... Not sure how much damage she did, but sounds nasty. So, the result of this is that she is now banned from the library. However what that means is totally unclear to me. For example, it's not there's a rogue's gallery on a wall in the back back office. How are we supposed to know who is "banned" and who isn't? And is a banned person allowed to go to other branches? Questions which no one seems to know the answer to...

On to the patron interactions:

• A young girl was looking for Lois Lowry's The Giver, which we have many copies of.


• A teacher came was looking for three books, none of which we had: Shelley Pearsall's Trouble Don't Last, Jennifer Stewart's Close Encounters of the Third World Kind, and Carolyn Marsden's Moon Runner. She left only slightly disappointed.


• A young woman was looking for Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did Next which we also didn't have...


• A father was looking for Morris Gleitzman's Once, which posesd a special problem. Not only did we not have it, I couldn't find it on Amazon. (If our OPAC doesn't turn up a book, I like to check it in Amazon just to be sure I have the author and/or title correct. I eventually figured out that the book had only been published in England, and not in the U.S. -- which seems kind of strange to me...


• A mother was looking for Vicki Blum's Wish Upon a Unicorn, and yet again, we didn't have it. This time because the book was published in Canada, and not the U.S. -- not sure what the deal is with the international titles today!


• A mother was looking for some general children's non-fiction books about the Civil War. This seemed like a no-brainer to me as I walked her over to where the U.S. history stuff is. But when I started looking through the Civil War books, there were no general titles. Everything focused on specific events, topics, or themes, and there wasn't anything general! I apologized and felt lame.