Week 25 - Saying Goodbye

Yesterday was my last day as a Sunday Librarian. After 6 months of working at the library, I decided that working 6 days a week was too much for me - and that I wanted a full weekend (with the accompanying ability to go out of town occasionally).

I enjoyed my public library experiment, but I am very much looking forward to all the upcoming free Sundays - and I'm already filling them up with travel and sporting events.

Like all things in life I have mixed feelings about my tenure. I very much liked being able to help patrons when I could, although on the flip side, I often felt very frustrated by all the things I couldn't help with - when books that were supposed to be on the shelf were missing or when the wi-fi didn't work for example. Some of the problems were systemic and will need to part of a much bigger solution, but some were a direct result of not receiving any training. Who do I tell when the children's computer won't print? What am I supposed to do when a book we are supposed to have is missing? I found work around for these problems (help the patron print from another computer, put the book on hold for the patron and have it delivered from another branch), but I wasn't really helping the problem get solved in any instance. if anything, I was just perpetuating it.

So, I have a few suggestions for every library system that hires part-time employees:

Figure out a way to ensure that they get all regular employee communications. If you don't want to give them an email address (and really, that is a lot of work for a person who is only there 4.5 hours a week), send email updates to their personal addresses. Our patrons don't know (nor should they have to care) that we are only there one day a week (although I certainly told enough patrons that when trying to explain why I didn't know where the neighborhood association forms were or if we had a projector that could be used in the meeting rooms). They just want information. There shouldn't be a different level of service on the weekends (or evenings or "non-standard" times), just because the staffing is different. Especially since non-weekday times are usually when most folks have time to use the public library.

Train your employees. This goes along with the point above - but part-time employees should get the same training as full-time staff. And if you aren't training your full-time staff on the catalog (and any other software that is regularly used), standard procedures (what do you do when you have to call 911?), and your library policies (how do you handle a complaint? what do you do when a patron is looking at porn on the internet? answer: nothing), you should be.

Give employees good contact information. If a computer goes down, who do you call? If you need to take a day off, who do you ask? Even better, pair new employees with a mentor to ask all those little "how do i..." questions. It will make the learning curve a little less steep.

Pretty basic things, but they will make both your employees and your patrons happier.

And thus ends my tenure in public library land.

Moving Again?

The latest scuttlebutt is that the branch I started at is reopening on Sundays, and I'm getting moved back over there. That would be a bummer for me convenience wise, and seems a little odd from a staffing perspective, but I go where I'm needed... It's not at all clear who decides where I work...

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.

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.

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

Weeks 16 & 17 - The Dead Zone

Apologies for the tardiness... I had some problems with the blog software that prevented me from posting. Or rather, I was able to write the whole post and then it wouldn't save it... Unfortunately, I can't find my notes for these two weeks -- however I recall them being entirely uneventful, so no harm done. If they turn up, I will amend this post.

Week 17 - Twas the Day Before New Year's Eve

Last week was a very quiet week - probably because folks were still out of town. I had only three customers for the whole afternoon.

The first user was looking for two books: In The Woods by Tana French and Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman. Although the catalog said that both were available in the branch, were were only able to find Every Secret Thing. I placed a hold for the user on In To The Woods and for the newest Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know. This was a fun interaction because Lippman is one of my favorite mystery writers and it was nice to be able to talk her up a little. I really like the reader's advisory aspect of public librarianship and I would love it if I got to do more of that.

A user came in looking for old copes of the New York Times Book Review (from the past month or so). She had read a review of a book in which a female writer had revisted the old haunts of Dashiell Hammet and she wanted to find the book. After unsuccessful searches in the both the print and online versions of the Book Review, she realized that it might have been about Raymond Chandler, not Dashiell Hammett and voila - the book was The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman and it was indeed review in the New York Times Book Review. Success!

I also renewed an overdue book for this user, placed a hold for her on Loving Frank by Nancy Horan and let her know that another book she wanted - Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach was available at the central branch of the library, which she thought she would just go by and pick up on her lunch break one day since she worked near there.

This was a fairly long interaction and one that I enjoyed - and not just because the patron said that she was happy that I was working on Sundays now because I was "nice" and some people aren't. I enjoy my job most when I feel like I am being genuinely helpful, and I feel like we accomplished a lot during our interaction.

On a broader scale though, I think librarianship, especially reference librarianship, is a service profession, and so patrons shouldn't have to seek out or feel grateful for the "nice" librarians. We should all be nice!

Finally, I helped a patron find Brick Lane by Monica Ali. The catalog said we had it and sure enough, it was actually on the shelf! She was also looking for tapes by Garrison Keillor, but we didn't have any in our branch. She said she'd check out one of the other branches that had the tape she was looking for this week.

And that was my Sunday. Quiet, but good.

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.

Week 11 - A New Begining

This week marked the start of my switch to the branch I will now be based at. The two techs, one LA (library associate), and other librarian I met all seemed nice, and the first ten minutes were spent showing me around the branch. It's an old Carnegie library, and is filled with nooks and crannies. Plenty of junk stashed in back rooms, a real project of a place. It's allegedly next on the list of branches slated for renovation. Like many other branches, the children's area is upstairs, and the other librarian seemed eager for me to work up there. This struck me as kind of odd, since at my previous branch, the other librarians seemed to like to "hide out" upstairs. After a slow first hour, I started to see why she was so eager not to be up there.

This new branch is in a more economically mixed area, and the bulk of my duties in the children's area involved babysitting the use of the three computers and making sure all the kids who were waiting to get on didn't get too unruly. Theoretically, this is all automated using a reservation system named PHAROS, but I had to keep helping kids sign on, and hunt around to tell people it was their turn. Basically, after that first hour, the computers were in constant use the whole day. There were a few black kids, but it was overwhelmingly Latino boys, roughly 10-16. For the most part they seemed to be gaming, checking out girls on Facebook, or looking at cars.

Aside from that I had a few other things to do:

• A kindergarten teacher came in with a long list of books she was looking for. I helped her a bit and tried to explain that it's way more efficient to look everything up online from home, and then just grab the books that are here, as opposed to searching on the shelf for each item.


• A woman came in looking for books in the Amelia Bedelia series, so I looked up what we had in the catalog and let her know.
  
• A teenage black girl was looking for Walter Dean Myers' The Beast. We had it, but it was down in the YA section, which I took her to.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Nothing, I got nothing this week.
Week: 0 for 3
Year: 6 for 68

Week 10 - Substitute

Sorry for the delay in posting, a few things came up -- like Thanksgiving!

This first week following my transfer, I was sent as a substitute to one of the system's several temporary branches. These recently opened to serve communities where the main branch in that area was closed for long-term renovation or replacement. I'd been to one in another neighborhood before, and found it to be a very nice, clean, bright place brimming with current books and tons of computers -- in other words, markedly different from most branches...

I'd never been to this particular temporary branch before, but thought I knew where it was, and took public transportation there. Alas, while I had the street right, I was off on the number by about 25 blocks and had to take a taxi to get there in time. (As usual in our city, the cabbie ripped me off.) Anyway, I got there on time and met the tech who usually works there, along with another tech who was substituting. Like the other temporary branch I'd been to, this place is pretty small, but nice and well-stocked. There's no separate space for a librarian, so I basically hung out at the double-sided "island" where the circulation staff works.

It was quickly obvious that the main draw at that branch is the 20 computers. They were all in use pretty much the entire day. From what I could tell it was a mix of people checking email, job searching, writing letters, and checking social networking sites like Facebook. One aspect of this that the senior tech spent a good deal of time policing was the all the toing and froing of teen users. There's a rule that only one person can sit at a computer, and she was pretty rigid about that.

This tech definitely commanded respect from the kids, and that led me to think about the role race might play in dealing with kids in the library. She's black and looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, in other words, the same age as their mothers might be. I wonder to what extent a white male like me would be able to be as firm with them without somehow coming across as provocative. It's a real issue, given this city's history and my own experience living here -- and depending on which branch I'm assigned to in the future, something I'll have to figure out.

Anyway, since the computers are the main deal, I didn't have a whole lot to do. There were only three real "reference" questions:

• A middle-aged black woman was looking for something she thought was called the "Civil War Guidebook." I did a search in the catalog and then led her to the 973s, where we looked at a guidebook called Civil War Sites: The Official Guide to Battlefields, Monuments, and More, which proved to be exactly what she was looking for.


• Another middle-aged black woman was looking for biographical and/or critical information about the playwright Arthur Miller. After explaining to her that a small temporary branch like this one was unlikely to have too much on specific writers, I showed her how the Biography section was set up. There, we found Enoch Brater's Arthur Miller: A Playwright's Life and Work, which she spent the next several hours poring over. I also gave her a quick tutorial on how to use the online catalog to find relevant materials throughout the system, place them on hold, and have them sent to the most convenient branch.


• Finally, a black teenager came in looking for books about skateboarding. This branch happens to be next to the city's only skate park, so I figured there'd be a nice little set of books, but no dice. The only thing I could find in the 796s was Evan Goodfellow's Street Skateboarding: Endless Grinds and Slides, which the kid was really into. I felt bad that we didn't have more -- since I have seen plenty of skating books in branches in whiter neighborhood. So, I did another quick tutorial on how to search the catalog and have books sent over.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
The first interaction was super-basic, but I guess the other two used my MLS to a certain degree -- in the sense that I tried to show them how to do stuff on their own. It's kind of a borderline call, since anyone comfortable with our online catalog could have shown them the same thing, but I'll be generous and count those two.
Week: 2 for 3
Year: 6 for 65

Week 12 - Happy Thanksgiving!

It was a quiet day at library today. The big excitement was that three of our internet access computers were down when I arrived. As we only have 5 adult internet computers, this is a huge deal. The reservation software will not tell you what is wrong with the computer - so I have developed a system for dealing with this. I add myself to the queue and promote myself to the front. Then I enable one computer at a time. This ensures that this computer will be assigned to me and I can check out the computer and see if it is in fact working and should remain enabled for the rest of our customers. Today I was able to reenable all three computers, which helped the computer reservations to run smoothly. Internet access is a huge deal in libraries - and I think it is so important for libraries to do their part to bridge the digital divide, which is so very real (even in the neighborhood for my branch, which is relatively affluent).

Other interactions were as follows:

A patron called looking for four children's books: Lights of Winter (not in the system), Nine Days to Christmas (available at another branch, I placed a hold for the patron), Pancho's Pinata (on the shelf at our branch, placed it on hold at the circulation desk), and The Night of Las Posadas (not in the system).

A patron called looking for You: Staying Young, which was not in the system yet. I expect that it will be purchased, since we have others in that series and they are quite popular, but I went ahead a filled out a purchase request for the patron as well. This way it should be placed on hold for her once it is in the system.

Another patron came to the desk asking me to submit a purchase request for Day of Empire, which was recently reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. This happens not infrequently on Sunday. Folks in the branch read the book reviews in the Times or the Post and then come up to see if we have a particular book. Often we don't - either because it is so new that it hasn't been processed yet or because we simply hadn't planned to buy it. I think it's great when patrons request books. It ensures that we are buying books that will circulate, shows them that the library is responsive to what they want, and fills in gaps in the collection.

One of my regular young patrons came up looking for books on fish (639s), Skateboarding (796.22 - but we didn't have any in our branch), Soccer (796.33), and Math (510s).

A new young patron came looking for books on States (973-9), Countries (940s-990s), and Maps (912).

And that was it for my day. I imagine things will pick up next week when everyone is back in town.

"Conscious-Minded" Women, Listen Up

A known associate of SL1 and SL2 wrote the succinct Seven Reasons to Visit Your Local Library This Fall for the folks at ForHerInformation.com -- check it out.

Comments?

OK, I've had a few people tell me how much they like the blog in person, or via email. So I know there are at least a few readers...but don't be shy, add your 2 cents via the comments! Pretty please?

Transfer News

OK, so the system that us Sunday Librarians work for, suddenly decided to close about half the branches on Sundays -- including mine. According to my manager, this came out of nowhere, and she only learned of it midweek. The story is that with the holidays coming up, the system was having severe staffing problems. You see, the system's employees are largely unionized, and thus can't be forced to work on Sundays. However, a lot of them elect to, for the extra money. The system also hired a bunch of people like me and SL2 to just work on Sundays, to fill the gaps. Apparently, some of the regular employees who work on Sundays don't want to work as much over the holidays, and thus they were projecting staffing shortages. So, the people downtown did an analysis of the door counts (which are total BS) and circulation for Sundays, and figured out which branches to close. So last week I worked at a different branch just as a one-time deal, and starting this week, I'll take up residence at a new branch. This new branch is one I've been to, I sort of know the neighborhood, but I imagine it'll be somewhat more challenging just because of the demographics. My old branch was in a wealthy, quiet neighborhood, and the people who use the library there tend to be pretty self-sufficient. This new branch is in an area that is vastly more mixed in terms of race, class, language, etc. so I imagine I'll be kept on my toes a good deal more. Wish me luck... Oh yeah, the good news is that it's a much simpler commute.

Week 9 - Educated with Reading

This week I seem to have passed some sort of unknown test because one of our regular homeless patrons (a very nice man who always straightens up the table area before he leaves) decided that this was the week to tell me about his theories involving The Da Vinci Code, masons, religions, the holy grail, and all number of other related topics. This went on all day and was quite frustrating for me by the end, but I wasn't sure how to let him know I was not interested in these theories, but would be happy to help him if had an information need. He did however provide me with the title of today's post when he said "Librarians are supposed to be educated... with reading, not computers."

Our computer that holds the catalog is still not working, so all catalog searches had to go through me. I hope this is fixed tomorrow, because it is somewhat ridiculous to have patrons not be able to search for their own materials.

A patron called looking for the book How to Make Dances in an Epidemic. It looks like a fascinating book but neither our nor any of the other local systems had a copy - although must of the local universities did.

A patron asked if we had Stoner by John Williams. We did not. She then asked how long we kept the New York Times Book Review - a question I answered by walking over with her and taking a look. We had back to the beginning of the year.

A young woman was looking for three books: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, the new John Grisham (Playing for Pizza), and The Choice by Nicholas Sparks. Only Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was on the shelves, so I placed the other two on hold for her. She also wanted a guidebook on Dublin. We didn't have any Dublin specific ones at our branch, but I took her over to the travel section and showed her the general guidebooks on Ireland that we had.

A man was looking for an article in the Washington Post from March. We don't keep copies that far back, but I offered to call the central branch and see what they kept there. They do have the full run on microfiche, but the librarian let me know that the system provides database access to the Post online and I showed him how to access that. It was a good reminder for me to not forget about the databases.

A patron was looking for the phone number of a restaurant downtown - Food Docker. After talking to her for a minute, I realize she was looking for Fuddrucker's and looked up the number for her on yellowpages.com

In computer news this week, two of our public access computers were down, but I enabled both of them and they were working fine, so sped up the computer wait.

I helped a woman who was word processing her resume with edits and then showed her how to attach that to her email and send it on to someone who had promised to proofread it for her.

Finally, I helped a patron connect to our wifi, which was working that day!