Weeks 6 & 7 - Two for the price of one

My day job kept me super busy last week and I never got fingers to keyboard to write about my Sunday, so this week, I’ll write up both.

Last week started with a conversation with my branch manager – rare because she never works on Sundays. She was in town to work a booth at a community festival and stopped to go over a memo on workplace violence that she was required to share with all employees (you’ll be shocked to learned that the library system I work for is opposed to workplace violence!). Apparently this reminder was inspired by a particular incident, but she had no idea what it was. She didn’t think that other branch managers were going to remember to go over this policy with their Sunday-only staff, so SL1… did you get this talk?

On to business…

My first customer of the day was wondering if our central library had sheet music. I didn’t know, so I called up the music division and asked. Answer – yes!

I placed a hold for a patron for Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, a fictionalized account of the woman who ended Frank Lloyd Wright’s first marriage. I’ve seen the book around and been curious about it, but haven’t read it yet.

The same patron was wondering how to request that the library purchase a book, so I showed her how to make that request in our online catalog. She was pretty excited to discover the process and said she had several books in mind to request.

A woman came in looking for a book entitled, How to Pray. She didn’t have an author or any other identifying information. I looked in our catalog and on Open WorldCat. There are LOTS of books entitled How to Pray, or something very similar. None of them were in our branch for her to look at and she had no way of knowing which one she needed. She left empty handed.

A patron asked where he stood in the holds queue for a video – F is for Fake. He was next in line, but seemed unwilling to believe that the video was actually circulating and not lost. A healthy degree of skepticism is not uncalled for with regards to holds, but in this case the video did seem to still be around (it had circulated quite frequently and recently).

Another patron stopped by to check on the status of her hold for Black No More (which I think I placed for her a few weeks ago). She was also next in line. Before these two interactions, I had no idea how you checked the status of a hold in Sirsi, but I figured it out on the fly. And it’s a handy thing to know, for sure!

A patron came over with the title and call number for a book - 121 Internet businesses you can start from home, and asked for help finding it. I walked her over to the stacks and found the book on the shelf for her.

My wandering patron from a few weeks ago was back, looking for Blonde Ambition once again. We still haven’t purchased it and I suggested that he put in a request for us to do so, but he didn’t want to. I don’t think it will show up otherwise, but if he comes back looking for it again, I will just put in the request myself.

I showed a patron where to find the books on CD, being sure to point out the books on tape and mp3 players as well.

I helped a child find the Goosebumps books (by R.L. Stine). Given how popular they are, I was surprised that we didn’t have more, although they might have just been checked out. He also was looking for books on different subject areas – math, social studies, reading, vocabulary. I helped him find the appropriate sections in Dewey, but my system does not collect textbooks, which was what he seemed to be looking for, so I’m not sure he got what he wanted.

A librarian from another branch called for a shelf check for The Bottomless Well by Peter Huber. We had it, so I was able to trap the hold for their patron. She also filled me in that we would be upgrading to a new version of Sirsi this week and I would probably be facing a new system next weekend. As a Sunday-only employee, I don’t have an email account with the system (where I assume such news is spread) and I’m not sure how I would have found this out if not for this librarian.

In addition to the encounters above, I had some more of a technical nature last weekend:

A patron came in and said that she had returned books to the bookmobile, but that they had never been checked-in. I have had similar problems in the past (that very week in fact!), so I went ahead and checked the books back in for her.

A group that had reserved the large meeting room asked if they could switch to the small room. As no one had reserved that room, I said that was okay.

The library intern came back from the community festival looking for a bookmark version of our newsletter (which doesn’t exist). I’m not sure where the message got garbled, but she headed back with the newsletters.

A patron trying to sign up to use the computers put her library card in the reader for the print cards. It only amazes me that this doesn’t happen more, because that reader isn’t labeled in any way. Our circulation clerk was able to get the card back out, thank goodness.

A patron asked for the password for the wi-fi. There is no password, it’s just that the wi-fi is ornery. I suggested the age-old solution of disconnecting and trying again in 5 minutes, which seems to work sometimes. I have no idea why our wi-fi is not more reliable, but it drives me crazy.

Which brings us to this week. Which was a very quiet week! (And also did not involve a new version of Sirsi. The upgrade has started, but the staff ended hadn't been updated by Sunday).

A patron came in looking for information on careers. She mentioned that she had heard that the Department of Labor put something out, so I went to their website and found the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This is published both in print and online, but our system did not have the print version. So I wrote down the title and url for her to use the online version at her leisure. We also went together to look at the appropriate section of Dewey, but all of our career books were hopelessly dated. Some weeding may be in order.

A patron with poor eyesight requested that I check the date on a volume of the Encyclopedia of Religion for him. It was published in 1987. He returned several times during the afternoon. I showed him how to find a subject in the index (he was looking for information on the Salvation Army, and then on religious organizations – we looked under Sects and Religious Communities). I think he finally ended up finding what he was looking for the 2007 World Book however.

A patron came in looking for Step Forward: Language for Everyday Life. We didn’t have it in the system and none of the other local library systems did either unfortunately.

A young patron was looking for books on animals. I showed her where to find them in the children’s section.

And that was it for this Sunday! I was working with the other librarian because I still don’t have keys, but our circulation clerk was in a car accident and didn’t come in, so it was good that she was there because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to open. (You must have at least two employees to open – one on the reference desk and one at circulation).

Week 7 - The Fortress of Solitude

Having been away on semi-vacation for a week, I decided to finally work the upstairs children's room this week. As I've noted in previous posts, our branch manager requires that a librarian be available downstairs in the adult section and also upstairs in the children's area. The upstairs in notoriously dead, so I've more or less avoided it so far (to the not-so-well-hidden delight of my coworkers, who are keen to kick back for the day and watch a DVD or read the paper). In any event, I thought it would be a good way to both ease back in and check out the children's resources. So I headed upstairs and spent about 15 minutes orienting myself before settling down behind the desk for what proved to be a very slow day:

• A father brought his roughly 10-year-old boy up to look for the last Harry Potter book, and we indeed had two copies. Father: "Are you sure you're ready for this? I heard it's scary..." Boy (clutching book) "Yes..." (I've never read any of the HP series, just seen the film.)


• A young girl was looking for Angie Page's Phyik (the third book in the "Septimus Page" series) which was right where it was supposed to be on the shelf. I've never heard of the series, but she left looking very pleased.


• A couple asked if they could use one of the upstairs meeting rooms to talk in so they wouldn't disturb anyone. I said sure.


• A woman with a roughly 8 to 10-year-old boy in tow was looking for book on St. John. Yikes! I did a few title and subject searches for St. John and didn't come up with anything age-appropriate. Then I started just looking for books on saints in general and was able to give her David Self's Loyola Treasury of Saints, which has a two page spread on St. John. I can't speak to the contents, but the presentation seemed quite nice, and it's allegedly for ages 9-12, so hopeully that worked out for them.


• A couple with a baby (roughly 1 or slightly younger) was looking for age-appropriate stuff. After a little scouting around the room, I was able to direct her to a few baskets of baby board books. She was psyched and plopped herself down on the floor to look at them for 30 minutes while the baby speed-crawled around the joint.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 5 (the St. John one)
Year: 4 for 49

Week 5 - All Quiet on the Western Front

This was my quietest week yet at the library. I had the following interactions:

• Showed a patron where we kept the latest issues of the Financial Times.


• Showed a patron how to make a reservation to use a computer - and where to check to see when it is your turn.


• Signed up a patron to use the computer with a guest card.


• Showed a teenaged patron how to use the copy machine.


• Found a book for a patron on how to improve your credit.


• Another branch called looking for In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming. Although we were supposed to have a copy, it wasn't on the shelf. I need to email my branch manager and see how to mark books as missing, because it is very frustrating to come to a branch because the catalog says a book is available and then not have it actually be there.


• Removed a hold for a customer who had found the book on the shelves. (What responsible library usage on the patron's part! I was so surprised that someone did that.)


• Showed an early elementary school student where to find "science books for kids". Although she was there with an adult, she came and asked on her own, which was very impressive. I confirmed that she was looking for books on science projects and led her to that section (I actually knew where it was without looking, because I had received a similar inquiry several weeks prior).

And that was it! One computer was still down, but we weren't at maximum computer usage this week any way - a first for me. Also, my phone didn't work for two hours (which I didn't realize until the circulation desk tried to transfer me a call), but unplugging and replugging the phone fixed that. Isn't it great when low tech solutions work?

I'm off next weekend, so I'll post again in two weeks.

Week 6 - Bestsellers, AOL, and the Old Mex

Pretty slow day (again). Worked with a 20-year vet of the system who normally works at the same branch as Sunday Librarian 2. S/he was nice and showed me how to do something potentially useful on the computer. I volunteered for downstairs again, and she was fine with that and checked back a few times during the day to make sure I didn't need a break. Nothing too exciting happened -- had another person spend a good portion of the day looking at porn on one of the computers. I'm going to save my remarks on that for a separate post. As for the patron interactions, they were few, but yielded one real hardcore librarian question!

• Showed a middle-aged woman how to place money on a print card.


• A young South Asian woman needed to borrow a pen. I lent her one. She returned it later. Awesome.


• A middle-aged woman came in with a bunch of book review clippings from the local newspaper, including the paperback fiction bestseller list, with half the items circled. Of the eight books, one wasn't yet available in the system, one was supposed to be on the shelf but wasn't, and the other six were all checked out, so I ended up placing holds on all of em (none of which I've read): Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great, David Baldacci's The Collectors, Donna Leon's Quietly in Their Sleep, Vince Flynn's Act of Treason, Nicholas Sparks' At First Sight, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. Also requested Karin Fossum's The Indian Bride. I've not read any of these, although I did read Norweigan author Fossum's first crime novel (Don't Look Back) and enjoyed it a great deal.


• A middle aged woman came over to leave a reminder for the branch manager regarding her inability to renew books or place holds from her home computer. Apparently everything worked fine at the library computer, but for two months it hasn't worked from home -- when she tried to log into her library account she got gobbledygook (ie. pages of server error codes). I wrote out the message and then asked her to show me what she does, to see if we could replicate her problem. Rather oddly, she logged into her AOL account and then searched for the system's website through their search box, even though she knew the URL. As she had said, she was able to perform the tasks she needed to from the library computer. I was pretty stumped, although I suspected that there was some kind of setting on her home machine interfering with how the system's servers were interpreting her requests. I said I'd think on it, but suggested that she try accessing the system's web site directly from home, instead of going through AOL. About half an hour later she called back and told me it worked! Now, I'm no techie -- but I know that when in doubt, eliminating AOL from your life can solve a lot of problems.


• Toward the end of the day, a middle-aged woman came in looking for books for her 16-year-old's AP history report on "the politics and economics of early Latin America." Finally, a classic reference question! In school we learned how to take very broad requests like this and conduct a "reference interview" to tease out further information and narrow it down a bit. Alas, since the student wasn't there, the mother had to call the audibly annoyed teenager for more info. We eventually learned that "Latin America" actually did mean everything from Mexico to Patagonia, and that "early" meant 1000AD. While the woman looked at books on tape, I poked around a bit for a general history which might provide a starting point. The only thing I found on our shelves was The Penguin History of Latin America, which seemed broad enough to meet the student's needs. It struck me that looking at some stuff on the Aztecs and Incas might help, but we didn't have anything useful in the adult area. There were a few things in the Juvenile section, but those seemed pitched unlikely to help someone in AP History... The mother and I discussed the possibility of consulting a local academic library, or even another branch located in a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population (and thus a collection that should theoretically be stronger in Latin American history). She seemed satisfied, but then ten minutes later the teenage daughter showed up with more info. Apparently we were supposed to be turning back the clock a little and checking out BC, not AD, and some bunch of folks called the "Old Mex, I think?" Er, yeah...that would be the Olmecs. The system actually had some good Olmec stuff, but mostly on their art, only two or three history books. Of course, the kid needed something this afternoon and wasn't interested in waiting a few days to have books sent over. She said "no thanks" and walked off while texting -- a living cliche.


• Minutes before closing, a young man came in breathless, looking for Robert Kaplan's Warrior Politics (I've read other Kaplan books, but not that one). For some reason, our copy had been discarded (probably damaged), so I had one sent over from another branch.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 6
Year: 3 for 44

Week 4 - The Rookie

The title of this week's post comes from the following interaction:
I arrived at the library about 20 minutes before opening. There has still been no key made for me, so the custodian is having to come in on Sundays to open and close the building. The lights are on, so I can tell he has arrived and I am looking in the front window to see if I can catch his eye. A patron helpfully tells me that the library doesn't open until 1. I say, thank you, I know, I work here, I'm trying to get in. He says to another patron waiting outside, must be her first week - and I say well, it's my fourth, but yes, I am new. He says, well I'd call that a rookie. So, a rookie, I am.

By my count there are 7 people waiting when we open the doors. 5 of those head straight to sign up for computers. Only one of our computers is down this morning - a great improvement over last week. Like last week, the first hour was very slow - I only had one patron interaction and that was a request for a pen and scratch paper.

The real stuff:

• A patron wanted to know if Iran's president was in the US. I did a Google News search to find out his scheduled (at Columbia on Monday, and the UN on Tuesday) and let her know.



• A young man was looking for mythology books. I directed him to appropriate part of the non-fiction section.



• A young woman was looking for A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Although our catalog showed that we had one copy available, it was missing, so I placed a hold for the patron.



• A patron came in looking for On Becoming a Person (this must be for a class or something, since Sunday Librarian 1 also had this request yesterday). Our copy had been discarded and she couldn't wait for a hold. She needed the book today, so unfortunately she was out of luck.



• I received a phone call asking if our wifi was working. Answer - Yes!



• An elderly gentleman came over and asked where we kept the mp3 players (which contain preloaded audiobooks). I walked him to the appropriate section, while he explained that his wife was using them to read all the classics. I thought this was pretty great!



• A patron called me over to her computer because she said it was freezing. It wasn't actually freezing, so there wasn't much I could do to help her.



• A patron came in and asked if we had Blonde Ambition - we did have a book by that title, but it was a YA book and I didn't think that was what he meant, so I did a quick search on Amazon to see if there was another book by that title. There was - a biography of Anna Nicole Smith, which is the book he meant. We didn't have it. He then asked for the new book by Bill Clinton - Giving. Our copy was checked out and he didn't want to place a hold. He then asked for the latest by Hillary Clinton, but she hasn't published anything since Living History, which he had already read. Finally he asked if we had anything by Sylvia Brown. One book, My Guide, Myself, showed up in the system, but both copies were missing. So 0 for 4 for this patron. The annoying thing about this interaction was that the patron would ask for something and then walk away, so that I had to follow him around or raise my voice so that he could hear me. It was very disconcerting.



• A patron called me over to his computer to ask why he "couldn't move on". After determaining what he meant (the website wouldn't let him go anywhere but the homepage), I let him no that this was because the website's server was down (which the page that was appearing said) and that he would have to try again some other time.



• A patron came in looking for "Web of Man" which he described as an ecology textbook from the 1960s. There was no book by that title in our system, but a search of Open Worldcat found Man in the Web of Life, which was the book he was looking for. Unfortunately our system still didn't have the book (nor did any of the other local systems), but I was able to give him a slip with the correct title, author (John Storer) and publication year (1968).



• A patron came in looking for Black No More. Our copy was checked out, but I placed it on hold for the patron.



• Another branch called for a shelf check for The Ludlum Triad by Robert Ludlum. Our copy was on the shelf and I was able to trap the hold for their patron.



• I showed a patron how to print from the public access computers. Although I knew how it worked in theory, this was the first time I had walked a patron through it and I was gratified to see that it worked in practice too.



• As per usual, I also helped a patron get on a computer using a guest card, although she also got a library card while she was there, so she'll be able to use that next time. And finally, 4 weeks, I had my first question about where the bathrooms were!

Week 5 - Traffic, Pizza and a Plea For Advice

Once again, my co-librarian was late... Fortunately, I had the phone list in my bad and was able to reach him and find out he was caught in traffic. So I called the branch manager at home, and she came over and opened up. That all went fine, and once the other librarian showed up, he elected to take the upstairs desk, where he could catch up on his magazines and watch a DVD. That didn't really bug me, since I'd just as soon have more patron contact while I'm new and learning. I was a little taken aback when he left for 15 minutes without letting me know and then came back with a pizza and large beverage!

Meanwhile, the circulation staffer wore his headphones most of the day, and must have sent about 20-30 text messages. This, combined with his really soft voice might have given the impression of surliness to some. Or at least to the elderly woman who came over to me and said "If your check out person hates people so much, he should get another job." Ouch! This presents a bit of a dilemma, because I believe I'm supposed to report any complaint to the branch manager. But like the shirt says, no one likes a snitch... But the branch manager seems to greet every elderly woman by name, so it's possible the woman knows branch manager and will mention her complaint to me. Argh, not sure what to do. Advice anyone?

There were a few other notable events, such as the failure of our internet connection for about half an hour. This is a pretty bad thing to happen, since the majority of Sunday patrons are there to use the internet. We called the Sunday supervisor to let him know, but basically there's nothing we can do other than put an out of order sign on the computers and apologize. Unfortunately, it means we can't do anything basic like look up books or anything.

A strange moment involved one branch calling looking for the phone number of a third branch... I read them the number off the phone list which is on a flyer all the branches have sitting out for patrons and they seemed pleased. Not sure why they felt the need to call us for help... Anyway, on to the patron interactions:

• A young woman, probably a teacher, wanted picture books about airplanes appropriate for preschoolers. This was the kind of request I knew was coming eventually, and still dreaded. There's actually a nice reference book that is basically lists of picture books by subject. The problem is, even though it had something like 50 books listed for "airplanes," who knows which ones we actually had? The branch manager showed me the quick way to solve this (which I then demonstrated for the patron so she could do it herself in the future.) In the system's online catalog, basically search for the topic you want picture books for, and use booleon logic to add "JUV" to the search. This will generate a list of all the children's books about the topic. Now, it's hardly perfect, since not all JUV books are picture books, but it's probably a good way to go, since you can limit the search to the branch you're in. Once again though, the limitations of SIRSI are frustrating...


• A middle-aged woman was looking for Thursday editions of the local newspaper from July. We keep four months worth, so I was able to dig them out from the back room. Apparently she was looking for some kind of probate announcement that was supposed to have run in the legal notices section of the classified ads. One interesting twist to this interaction is that I learned that the full-text database of the local paper does not include any of the classifieds -- only the articles -- so if she needed to check on an older announcement, she would have been out of luck.


• A middle-aged woman came in looking for a copy of Roddy Doyle's excellent novelThe Woman Who Walked Into Doors. Don't know how good the recent sequel (written a decade later), Paula Spencer, is.


• A 30something man, who turned out to be an adjunct history professor, was looking for a copy of Sebastian Haffner's 1939 memoir Defying Hitler, which I was able to find for him on the shelves.


• A middle aged woman was looking for four books, Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land, Paul Bowles' classic 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky, Nassim Taleb's breezy pop non-fiction exploration of randomness, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, and Patrica Beard' Blue Blood and Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley. The first three of which were checked out and I ordered from other branches for her. The fourth was just published, so I put in a request for her, even though its billing as "The inside story of the power struggle that rocked Wall Street's most prestigious financial institution" sounds like a real snooze-fest.


• A young woman was looking for Carl Rogers' 1961 psychology classic On Becoming A Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy, which I was able to find for her on the shelf.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 6
Year: 2 for 38

Week 4 - "The Easiest $100 You'll Ever Make"

After two weeks of "training" by the branch manager, I'm now back to working by my own wits and ingenuity. Since I still don't have a key and the librarian with the key was a little late, that meant convincing a building engineer to let me in when he came to check the AC system ten minutes before opening. A few minutes later my co-librarian arrived and checked the voicemail, learning that the circulation staffer had called in sick. So, that left just the two of us to run the place for the day. What that means is that one of us sits upstairs in the children's room and basically does nothing (since that room doesn't get much use on Sundays), while the other person takes care of both circulation (checking books out) and the reference desk. I chose to do the latter, since sitting upstairs would be kind of a waste of time, in terms of learning opportunities, and the other librarian seemed awfully content to disappear up there with the Sunday newspaper (aside from the 20 minute trip s/he took to Safeway).

As it turned out, despite the increased traffic generated Friends of the Library booksale, things were pretty quiet -- which was a good thing, since I was flying by the seat of my pants on the circulation desk. SIRSI is such a cumbersome and non-intuitive system that trying to sort out people's problems was pretty frustrating. Some typical problems included dealing with fines, a woman who'd checked out a DVD, but one of the two discs was missing, a woman whose sister's nanny had used her card and not returned any of the items, and other such mundane stuff. But there were only a handful of non-circulation interactions:

• An elderly woman came in looking for a book on hold, Stendhal's The Red and The Black. We didn't have it on hold, but it was on the shelf, so no harm done. This is one of those classics that I'm seriously unlikely to ever read: a 600 page satire of post-Waterloo French society? I think not...


• A middle-aged woman called looking for Mark Salzman's The Laughing Sutra, which I pulled and held for her until she came in a few hours later. I've heard of the author, but not this particular book. Apparently it's a kind of fantastical young adult book published about 15 years ago. Must be for a book club, since you'll se in the previous post that a patron at Sunday Librarian 2's branch was also looking for it.


• A young woman, whom I'd talked to a few weeks ago, asked for a reminder on how to access the downloadable audiobooks. I gave her the flyer with the URL.


• A middle-aged man called and wanted assistance with the system's downloadable audiobooks. The problem was that he knew more about it than me! He'd gone through a video tutorial, read through all kinds of help pages, and now wanted to know whether he should use Overdrive or NetLibrary or both. As far as I knew, the library didn't even subscribe to NetLibrary, so it was fairly embarrassing to sit there with him on the phone as he directed me to the page on our system's web site that detailed that we did. This raises the semi-interesting point of how the system keeps us librarians abreast of the latest services, databases, and events. I assume that we would all get emailed updates with this sort of info, but since I have yet to get an email account, I can't verify that yet. Will post about that later when I do.

This last one is the only interaction I might classify as requiring an MLS, however since I didn't have the training/info to deal with it, I ended up looking somewhat foolish.

MLS or GED?
Which of the above interactions really need an MLS to sucesfully resolve?
Week: 1 for 4
Year: 1 for 32

In any event, the day went by pretty quickly thanks to all the circulation work I did. One semi-good thing about getting a lot of circulation work in is that it helps you understand just how porous the system's databases are. For example, there's no obvious way to merge patron records in the event of duplicates (which happens quite a lot, pretty much whenever people lose a card). Or the surprising number of books I checked in that had never, in fact, been checked out!

At the end of the day, the other librarian came down to shut down the joint and we traded smalltalk, and I learned that s/he was a regular full-time librarian and the Sunday hours were overtime, which s/he characterized as "the easiest $100 you'll ever make." Badda-Bing!