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?

You're Perfect For Your Job

Yaaaay! Puppets!

Those days come when you don't think you can stand one more kid with an excuse why he should have more than a half an hour on the computer ("I'm just waitin' for the program at 6." "It's ten of, kid - go find a good seat.").  You look down the road and see two one-man puppet shows coming at you like a semi full of rubber chickens and you're the 'possum with her paw caught on some gum in the middle of the road.  Your idea of a whole month of storytimes centered around music and dance suddenly looms larger and more teeter-y than a pile of all the discarded encyclopedia sets in the country.  And your simile circuits have jumped the shark.

The idea of a Dr. Seuss storytime using the huge compilation book (instead of the individual stories, which are checked out, of course) that cost so much that it was made a non-circulating tome doesn't seem as clever as it did before you picked it up and held it all the way through The Cat In the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham (2 times) and you're doing it again tomorrow.  The flannelboard of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish got out of control and storytime seemed to have fallen short of the 30 minute mark. 

Later, just when you wonder how much longer you can do this job, a mom says, "I want a job like you have.  I've watched you for years and this job was just made for you.  I want a job that's perfect for me like that."

That's when you remember that this job is perfect for you.  Your liberal arts education (five foreign languages, only two of them dead, none fluent but at least the Spanish comes in handy now), years spent doing theatre, love of puppets and toys, arts and crafts background, not to mention years of watching Warner Brothers cartoons, have all prepared you to know a little bit about a lot of stuff, to love stories, and enjoy thinking up things to entertain kids.  If this isn't the most perfect job for me, I don't know what is.  I've done lots of other things: factory work, secretarial, paralegal, data entry - blah-blah, and while most of that has paid better, this has been the best fit.  It only remains for me to turn the concept around.

It's not just that this job is perfect for me, but I am perfect for this job.  There is no one else like me.  Others might be just as good at storytimes or crafts activities or redirecting children instead of just yelling at them (note to self: work on that one) - but when it comes to the whole package, with the shelving and 18 years experience of Dewey Decimal, ease with Webtimewaster 2.0, small office machine repair and maintenance ("Marf! Show me again how the laminate goes in the machine!") - No one can beat me.  I pwn this job. I am in your non-fiction section reading your shelves.  Don't mess with me.  I am perfect for this job.

Gosh, now I need a nap.  Only ten more years to retirement.  Sigh.

Teensy Rant

I'd like to talk about decimals.  I'll start with the "Our children's room non-fiction collection is so small that I don't see the point of going out three spaces, much less four."  I understand that there is a jobber who does all this work for us so we don't need the MLIS's cataloging in-house and that company apparently can't discriminate between juvenile and adult collections (maybe without charging more), but still ...

Next up: Y'all, decimals are just like money.
Which is worth more: $90 or $97?
Let's put some numbers in front.
Which is worth more:
$56,790 or $56,797?
$567.90 or $567.97?
Okay, take that zero away.   [Occasionally the jobber puts the zeros in, but they're supposed to leave it out.]
Which is more: 567.9 or 567.97?
What if money were broken into even smaller pieces?  Let's look at this. 
Which is worth more: $900 or $912?
How about 567,900 or 567,912?
Which is more: 567.9 or 567.912?
Here are some trickier ones.
What's worth more: $970.40 or $970.04?
How about 970.4, 970.04, and 970.004?
Or 970.1, 970.004, 970.4?
That was easy, wasn't it?  So, tomorrow when I go to shelve some books, I don't want to see 398.209 coming after 398.24 or smack in the middle of the 398.2s.  Ithankyew.

Next week: The Alphabet.

I'd Sure Love to Have Your Job!

A recent post by a friend about the rigors of his job made me stop and think about mine, working in the Children's Room of a public library.  One slow night I had someone remark to me as she left the Children's Room, "I'd sure love to have your job, just sitting around reading."  This from a woman I had asked two or three times if I could help.  Yes, I was reading a book.  I lead an online book discussion.  I was actually having to take notes on it, which takes some of the fun out of reading, I must tell you.
But what do I actually do besides sitting there watching people search aimlessly for some unnamed book?
I read children's books to children.  I teach them fingerplays, tell them stories using a flannelboard or puppets, sing songs and dance with them, hug them when they leave.  It all sounds idyllic, doesn't it?  We have many people who come in who want to help by "reading stories to the children."  It looks so easy.
But I'm working with pre-school kids, kids with the attention span of a gnat.  This isn't the cozy, one-on-one reading you've done with your own child.  This is a roomful (sometimes) of strangers aged three to four, and though one year doesn't sound like a lot, developmentally it can be a Grand Canyon.  I have to be prepared to drop something that isn't working and move on to something that does.  I have to be prepared for anything - such as vomiting children.  There's a storytime stopper if ever I saw one.
Although I have boasted that you could turn me loose in a strange (to me) library and in five minutes I could put together a half hour storytime, that's only because I've been doing this for sixteen years.  My head can now pinpoint a familiar book or story, pull relevant peripherals from my memory, arrange it all and spew it out with verve and ... whatever.  However, that is all built on the back of using pre-existing flannelboards, fingerplays, etc. and reading books on doing storytimes and creating new flannelboards etc. that I like better or that will fit with some theme.  [Here I plug The flannel board storytelling book by Judy Sierra once again as being the absolute best and the blog Mel's Desk for more great ideas.]
And I do puppet shows.  These are programs I have created from scratch (well, using existing picture book stories I think lend themselves to puppet dialog): laying down audio with voice characterizations (I'm not exactly Mel Blanc, but you get the idea), sound effects, music (much provided by my brother-in-law), a sing-along in the middle; making props, puppets, and stage dressing; not to mention kicking the ankles of my assistants when they are too slow exiting puppets from the scene.  You won't believe the energy that goes into one of these.  But they are all recorded, so they can be put on again and again or remixed with each other or new stories to freshen them.
Lately I've been in charge of programming for homeschoolers, something I really enjoy because it involves school-age kids.  You can do so much more with them.  We've had programs ranging from Ancient Egypt to Geology, which key into my own interests in archaeology and science stuff.  Okay, so maybe that's just too much fun.
This season I've been spared the monthly craft activities that have to be multi-age friendly, but I'm still doing crafts with the homeschooler programs and the branch storytimes.
And this is just the fun stuff.
Then there is the sitting at the desk for hours at a time trying to help people who don't know what they're looking for half the time and you have to tease the information out of them with the Reference Interview.  I know all librarians have anecdotes about someone who comes in and says they're looking for one thing but actually they wanted something completely different, they just didn't know how to ask for it.  Insert your favorite anecdote here.
Part of my job is finding a book for someone to read that they will enjoy.  I have my own bad experiences with that, so I'm careful.  "What was the last book you read that you really liked?"  "A dog book?  Do you want a dog story or true stuff about dogs?"
While out there I have to monitor computer usage.  Children have to show me a library card to get on the computers, but most of them just go sit down and start playing so I have to ask them for their card and make them come to the desk and sign up.  I also have to refuse this activity to kids who don't have a valid card or one with too many fines on them (which, of course, is not their fault because they can't drive to the library, can they?) in some way that doesn't humiliate or traumatize them.  "Oh, honey, have your mommy take this card to the big desk and get it fixed first, okay?" 
Then there is the state-of-the-art printer/copier I have to help people use that makes me want to beat my head against the wall.  If you even lightly brush the screen, you'll make some hideous change and 30 copies will come out wrong.  "You want to make two-sided copies?  On this machine?  Let me take this in the back.  We have a machine back there that will do it automatically."
They come to the Children's Room for lamination because the machine is closest to our door.  "You want how many pages laminated?  You do know that it's a dollar a foot, right?"
We are in a new library and many people just want to wander through and look it over.  Well, adults are not supposed to be wandering around in the Children's Room, so I give them mini-tours and then send them on their way to "see the upstairs!"  This, at least, gets me off my duff.  They have to be politely reminded (or informed) that there are bathrooms, copiers, computers, etc. for adults elsewhere in the library.  As taxpayers they are owed some courtesy, aren't they?   I remind them that if they have purchased anything in the county, the sales tax is helping to pay for the library and I thank them for that.  Now, run along and see the view of North Main Street from the rotunda upstairs.
At the same time, although I'm 57 and chronically depressed, I have to be bright, helpful, and charming.  I have to remember how I would like to be treated if I were in this situation.  I've had a store owner complain about how her customers mess up her organization while I was still standing there.  Did I purchase anything in that store?  Oh, no!   I'll be nice to my patrons who want to stick things back any old way.  I use the old "I have to check that in as 'in-house use' first!" wheeze.  I stop to show kids that the spine needs to be pointing out and while I'm there, show how to mark where the book came from so it can go back in the same place (assuming that we put it away in the right place to begin with) and then give them the option of letting me put it away. 
Believe me, it's exhausting.  I can be totally zoned out when I get home.  Heck, I can be just staring into space while at the desk. 
I am not 100% happy all the time at my job, but it is the best job in the world ... for me anyway.  I hope you taxpayers think it's worthwhile.