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Today I’m sitting at the reference desk in a special section of our main branch, a section that is devoted to Education and Job related information. This is part of an “internal internship” program wherein my employer actively encourages those of us in school for library science to learn about different departments and divisions within our system. While here, I’ve been scanning some etiquette-y books that I found interesting earlier this morning when I was searching the shelves for books that were place on hold. What led me to these books is that one of the books on hold was entitled Look, Speak, & Behave for men. The title captured my imagination, and so I started to peek at some of the other books in that area. Here are a couple I scanned through while at the reference desk:
Look, Speak, & Behave for women: expert advice on Image, Etiquette, and Effective Communication for the Professional by Jamie Yasko-Mangum
This is somewhat prescriptive and didactic in tone, as one would expect from the title. It’s worth about as much time as I was able to give it – about five minutes.
Things You Need to Be Told: a handbook for Polite Behavior in a tacky, rude world! by the Etiquette grrls (There is actually an exclamation mark at the end of the title!!!)
Um. Yeah. Lots of Gratuitous Capitalization and tedious Advice.
Well, you can’t say you haven’t been warned. When a blogger starts a post with capitalization run amuck and flings about words like “end” and “era” the reader should be aware that some sentimentality might be creeping around the corner.
This past Saturday was indeed the end of an era for the library at which I work, as it was the last day we were open to the public before undergoing renovation, which is slated to last at least two years.
Two years! For the kids who have made our library part of their after school ritual on a near-daily basis, two years is an unimaginably long time. T., who is seven and just in second grade now, will be nine and in fourth! Nine! When we talked about it, I could see in his eyes, he had no sense of what it means to be nine… It seemed to be an eon away. The Holy Terror, who is a youngish 13 right now and at the top of the middle school pyrimad, will be well into adolescence and the press of high school life. Twelve year old V. admitted that she was going to be very very sad to miss all of her friends who congregate at the library.
More to the point, where will these kids go?
Today went by quick at the library, as Saturdays are wont to do. Patrons kept me busy busy busy requesting GRE test prep information, holding/requesting specific romance novels by Brenda Novak, Geronimo Stilton books, inquiring how to obtain some very specific sounding government healthcare documents, and of course downloading tax forms, tax forms, tax forms, and, and, and…. Not to mention the myriad computer and printer assistance requests.
At the end of it all, at a quarter to five, things slowed down a bit. I started wandering around the floor, letting folks know that computers were shutting down, that the library was about to close, that they should bring their books to the front for checkout, and oh, by the way, could I help them find something if they weren’t finding what they wanted?
Amidst all this end-of-day wrapping up, Read the rest of this entry »
picture an almost-two year old. When quiet and watchful, her wan February face is so pale and serious.But now picture her all in pink. Various shades and permutations. Her top is pink. Her pants verge on magenta, but still firmly pink. She has a stand-out little skirt on too. Pink, of course. Her sneakers are, though white, graced here and there with touches of pink and silver.and what she does is jump.
up.
and down.
and up and down and up and down and up and down. and looks across the library at the marveling bookish woman. and lets out a chortle full of glee. and jumps. again and again. with both feet, each time. up.
and down.her mother and the bookish woman share a smile.
up.
and down.
and up and down and up and down and up and down. and looks across the library at the marveling bookish woman. and lets out a chortle full of glee. and jumps. again and again. with both feet, each time. up.
and down.her mother and the bookish woman share a smile.
this is how we celebrate leap day at the library.
Right now I’m hard at work on a project for one of my library school classes: designing a website. One of the things that is highly absorbing and yet frustrating is picking colors for the site. I have been spending quite a bit of time on the w3schools website, looking at their html color names page… It’s a bit like being in an ice cream shop and being torn between many wildly different and yet equally tantalizing flavors. Sure there’s the flavors you know right away that you don’t want, but what about the others? What if you initially decide to go with something fruity (subtle, like strawberry, or Pow! like raspberry sherbet? ) but then your friend nudges you and you spy the coffee and chocolaty flavors that she’s been eyeing?
Dilemma.
Right now I’m drawn to these colors:
669933
CCCC99
I could go on and on… But I need to choose! And soon!
Today and yesterday several of my colleagues and I spent the whole day making many, many presentations to students at a local high school. We went into many of the English and ESL classes to talk to them about the perks that a library card can give them: everything from online homework help to borrowing books, dvds, and magazines to getting to use the internet at their local library. We signed up 650 students with library cards. Some of these were brand-new enrollees, while others were ones who had “lost the way” (i.e. stopped borrowing due to overdue fines or lost cards.) The selling point that helped these “wayward souls” find their way back to the library was amnesty on fines if they signed up for a new card! :)
The ESL classes were simultaneously the most rewarding and the most energy-sapping for me. Rewarding because these students were genuinely attentive and actually appreciative of the presentation and grateful for the opportunities that the library offers to them. (Not that they need to be, but it’s nice to be talking to polite, kind kids!) The draining part was the fact that, due to the language barrier, what was supposed to be a 15 minute presentation for each class got drawn out into a full-period discussion and explanation–in fact I felt like I was teaching for a full day. The great thing though, is that all those supposedly forgotten teaching skills I learned when I was a teacher came back. The whole waiting for silence before speaking, the asking them to raise hands, the checking for understanding, the pausing, the giving them wait-time to think about the answer to a question before blurting out the correct response… All of that came back. In a way it was fun. But in another way, at the end of the day, I remembered why it was that I wanted to go into librarianship. While I do truly enjoy teaching, what I really revel in is the one-to-one helping. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t be amenable to teaching classes (in or outside of a library setting) in the future. Just that I prefer a more balanced routine, something that allows me to teach and yet also have more of that reference-type interaction also.
Food for thought for the future.
When I was a child, I would get so excited about a visit to the library, that it would at times have a physical effect on me… in the form of having to run to the bathroom. Embarrassing, but true.
So, you can imagine the excitement involved in my first bonafide library job ever. Thank god, though, that I am no longer running to the loo… :) Today is my 11th actual day on the job, which, (along with a myriad school commitments) explains my longish hiatus from blogging.
Am typing this during a break in my day… While I am not officially a “librarian” per se, I basically do the work of one, rather than clerical work. (Although, of course, there is a fair amount of clerical work to be done as well, which is fine by me, as I am one of those learn by doing people.) This involves, among other responsibilities, womanning the reference desk. So far, I have researched or answered questions about (or put on hold) everything from books on cats, the scientific cause of absorption, how to get a patent, Native American tribes of New York State, sapphires, emeralds, Mein Kampf (!), and one very enthusiastic customer who waxed eloquent on Jim Morrisson… In addition to this, I now have several patrons who already know me by name… I hope that’s a good thing!
More soon…
In one of my classes our professor had us read and respond to an opinion piece by Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief of Library Journal, entitled “The Image Thing” about the image of librarians. The following is my response:
On this issue of “librarian image” I find myself wanting to have my cake and eat it too. That is to say, I do want to be taken seriously, I do want not to be stereotyped as a fuddy-duddy boring type. Last weekend I mentioned to an old acquaintance (a professor of South Asian Studies and Culture) that I was enrolled in library school and found myself getting a bit flustered when her reaction was, “You?!? Want to be a liBRARian?” with a slightly disgusted look on her face. I realized that her image of a librarian was that of someone dry and dull and with no social life, someone mousy. I reassured her (and myself) that becoming a librarian would not relegate me to such a fate. Read the rest of this entry »
In one of my classes we are reading about copyright law. Little did I think before I started library school that librarians would need to be cognizant of (or concerned about) the law. I went looking for websites that would be of use to librarians (or library school students) who were interested in reading more about the topic…
Here are some interesting sites I found:
Mary Minow runs the Library Law site, which focuses on issues of legal interest to libraries. She has an MLS from University of Michigan and a J.D. from Stanford:
Library Law blog:
Family Friendly Libraries has a page called “Laws affecting libraries” which while on the surface seems library friendly, is actually pro-censorship:
http://fflibraries.org/laws_Overview2.html
scary.
I discovered an intriguing video dubbed Information R/evolution via the Library Student Journal Blog. In fact, I’m linking to it via their blog, which is itself a great new discovery (for me) and which I’ll be adding to my blogroll.
Information R/evolution was made by Michael Wesch, who is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. What I discovered from reading about him on KSU’s website is that he also created Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us in January of 2007, which became an instant YouTube hit, which has now been seen over 3 million times.
I feel like I’m in a whirlwind of information flying at me and by me as I view these videos. I find them exciting, stimulating, but also a bit overwhelming… There is just so much information out there to absorb. No wonder the phrase information overload has become ubiquitous. But, what to do? I’m simultaneously excited to learn all this and overwhelmed by all this…
Enjoy.
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