Sunday, October 4, 2009

My library has a sunken pirate ship in the children’s room, a fireplace on the second floor, beautiful views of strawberry fields out the back windows, and Gaudi inspired mosaics. It is a beautiful place to work but what I think about most often are the people who come to the library. At least 2 days a week, several residents of a group home come to spend some time with us. Some of them use the computers, one plays checkers but my favorite is a tall, slender young man who comes to stand by the reference desk, not able to look us in the eye. The first time this happened, I waited expectantly and (I hope) patiently for him to let me know what he wanted. His caregiver came over and slipped me a rubber band to give him. Just a plain, ordinary rubber band, nothing special to me but to him, a source of delight. I’ve never seen anyone have so much fun with such a little thing.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

No two days are alike in my library, in any library for that matter! Some days it seems like all I do is crawl around on the floor checking computer cable connections and taking screenshots of error messages and other days I order books and even answer reference questions (my favorite thing to do!). I wonder why it seems that people who come to the library looking for books or information are often very hesitant to ask us for help, it’s what we’re there for, yet people who come in to use our Internet computers do not hesitate to ask any little thing and panic if something happens to the connection or they can’t log in, not to mention interrupting us when we are talking to other patrons to tell us that the printer is out of paper or whatever!

Monday, July 27, 2009

Day in the Life, July 27, 2009


9 - 11 Off desk

Checked the schedule, nobody called in sick (yea!)
Checked that computers had come on, turned on one
completed and distributed desk schedules for Reference & Children's Room
Took ILL requests from the weekend to the delivery
Passed on info about computer problems over the weekend
Started information sheet for staff on what they should know about the wireless access
Got a copy of the map of our access points, that will help!
Weeded several shelves in Reference 640's

11-1 Reference desk

How many study rooms do you have? 5
How long can you use them? No time limit
Do I need to tell you if I want to log on to an Internet computer? No
checked my Google Reader feeds (yes it was quiet)
Can I have a privacy screen for my computer? Sure
Books on raising chickens? Yes
LA Times for Friday? Yes
Where's new non-fiction? Downstairs
Volunteer working on our local history files had a few questions.
Books & audio stuff to learn Italian? Yes
Patron needs help to log on to the wireless
Returned call from patron about our computer classes
I don't live here, can I use an Internet computer? Yes
I need to look up names on the county recorders web site and I've never used a computer, can you help? (this one was about every 10 minutes, but he was doing well, making progress all the time!)


1-2 lunch

2-3 off desk

checked on a "hold expired" book
went for a 30 min walk, good to get outside even if it's hot!
3-4 Children's desk
headphones checkout: about 9
headphones check-in (clean the head & ears with wipes, put on clean ear covers): way too many!
Wizard of Earthsea
my fathers dragon plus about 8 more titles
PAWs for reading dogs came, 2 of them, brief flurry as they got to know each other!
Harry Potter bk 2, wow! We have 5 shelves of them and all but 5 books in the series are checked out! (#2 was there)
Judy Moody books
books on DNA
Envisionware (our Internet Computer reservation system) is doing odd things, had to go make more guest strips
Tracked down where the expired hold book might be, will call when off the desk

4-5 off desk

Sent emails about Value Line subscription and for copies of forms we are missing
Checked on the Envisionware system, seems OK now
patron was printing his email on one of our receipt printers, I explained normal procedure
While on my way to the copier, I was told about a problem with our self-checkout system, worked out what to do next
Printed out source lists for our local history files, up to "m" (volunteer project from this morning)
Did desk schedules for tomorrow (its my night so I'm not in until noon)
tried to figure out how to set up a blog!

there was more, but I didn't think to use Google Docs so I could access and write what I was doing from any desk until I'd forgotten more than what I did!