Why A Librarian?

Today a woman came into the Children's Room looking for reading material for her husband.  She was older than I was, so I think I can get away with calling her elderly.  Her husband had had some sort of episode that was like a stroke a year ago, but has fully recovered physically and has all his memory back.  Unfortunately, he is frustrated by his reading.  He can sound everything out - he recognizes all the phonics stuff - but the process is so agonizingly slow that by the time he finishes a paragraph, he can't remember what he read.  She was hoping that some children's books, with simpler sentences and more familiar words, would give him the practice he needed.  And he is now desperate enough to try anything.

I started by showing her the adult literacy materials we have (which still might be a bit advanced for him at this point) and then the beginning readers.  She asked about a particular book she remembered reading to her own children and a copy of that happened to be in as well.  I told her that I did storytimes and now and then could hold up a book and say, "This book is even older than Miss Marf."  We reminisced about favorite stories and I asked about Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.  She wasn't familiar with it, but knew her husband loved that sort of stuff.  She took a sampling from each area and then asked me, "Are you always here?"  Mostly in the mornings.  She would see how this went and maybe next time she would bring her husband in.

Maybe next time we can look at the children's book kits - the ones that come with the cd.  I wonder if they have a cd player in the home.  I know they don't have one in the car.  We were looking for books on cassette in the adult audios.  She went away very pleased.

Moments like this make me very happy in my job.  Moments like this show how much more useful a librarian is than a computer.

And Another Thing ...

Let's have a frank talk about Dewey decimals (yes, another one).  And let me head off any dispute by saying, "Yes, it does matter."  I'd rather starve to death (after working my way through all my savings at various Indian and Thai restaurants, perhaps) than work in a place where fundamentals like how Dewey decimal works does not matter.
I just spent an hour or more reading the non-fiction shelves in the Children's Room.  I know things cannot be perfect here.  Kids yank a book off a shelf and do one of the following:

• Just jam it back anywhere
• Just jam it back at the front/back of the line of books
• Just leave it lying somewhere
• Just jam it back in spine-first.

I was guilty of all of these as a child.  I clearly remember my sister explaining to me how the spine was supposed to face out.  This made no sense at the time because if you jam books back in pages-first, you inevitably imbed another book inside them and crumple the pages. 
So, when I see J 398.209H shelved between J 398.2H and another J 398.2H, I suspect an adult was responsible.  Let's not get into why we have 398s, 398.2s, 398.209s, and 398.21-256s.  Let's just accept that we have them and if 398.209 is mixed in with the 398.2s, then it's two whole stands of shelves away from where someone would be looking for it.  Yes, we have a lot of books of folklore.  It's a Children's Room.  But the system works the same from 001 to 999.  So let's learn it, shall we?
Imagine you have money (this may take some doing if you work in a public library).  You have $1.20 and I have $1.25.  Who has more?  Imagine you made interest on this money in a bank (cue hollow laughter) and at the current lousy rate (1%) you ended up with $1.212.  Who has more?  If you're shelving in our library, I bet you'd be wrong. 
How can you tell?  It's simple.  You add some extra zeros to the end to make both numbers contain the same number of digits after the decimal point then compare them: $1.250 versus $1.212.  Now which one is more?  Easy-peasy.
There now.  Do I feel better for venting?