Week 19 - When Being a Librarian Has Nothing to Do with Books

(or research or finding information... It still has something to do with helping people.)

Last Sunday was a busy one. Folks coming and going all day, but the biggest excitement didn't happen until the end of the day.

A little after 4, I got a call from the clerk at the circulation desk. He told me that patron standing in front of him said he was having a seizure and asked me to call 911. I did.

The 911 operator then proceeded to ask me lots of questions that I didn't know the answer to - first among them what our address was. I didn't know our actual street address, just what corner we were on. I actually had to look it up!

I also didn't know name, exact age, if he had a history of seizures or was on an medication. After asking the circulation clerk to call, he had gone and sat down at a table which was out of my range of vision, so I had to get up and walk over to him to confirm for the 911 operator that he was still breathing.

Finally, after what seemed like forever (but was probably 2 minutes tops), the operator told me that the paramedics were on their way, asked for someone to go out front to meet them and gave me instructions should he have another seizure (do not hold him down or put anything in his mouth while he is seizing...)

I passed the instructions on to our security guard who was keeping an eye on the patron and then went out to meet the paramedics. They arrived very quickly (the fire station is just around the corner from my branch). Within 5 minutes, they had gotten all the information they need out of him - all that stuff I didn't know (history of seizures? yes. medication? yes.) - and taken him on to the hospital.

After they had left, the clerk thanked me for calling so quickly and told me that he had always been told that only a librarian could call 911. What?! First of all, if I were having an emergency in a public library, I would hope that I wouldn't have to wait around for a librarian to be located. Secondly, if this is one of my major "librarian" responsibilities, I sure would have appreciated it if someone told me when I started - especially if there was some procedure I needed to follow. I had to write up an incident report afterwards, but I wouldn't have known to do that if the regular, during-the-week librarian hadn't been working in the office that day.

It's one thing to not train me on the catalog (which really, they should do!), but to expect me to be in charge in an emergency and to not give me the least bit of information on how I should handle it is more than a little frustrating for me.

So, fingers crossed that nothing this week necessitates a call to 911. And here's hoping that the library system learns that training really is necessary. Even for folks you are only employing for four and a half hours a week.