Wednesdays, Chairs, and More

          I worked in the tech department a lot today. They needed some covering and stickering done. I think 13 boxes came in from their orders. So I did a lot of that. One thing I love when I'm there though is that I get to see so many books and sometimes books that have just come out. It's great to see all the titles. I found one called "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth" interesting. Others made me laugh, like silly ones about the troubles of the 5th grade, and I remember there was one in which I enjoyed the pun ("Only the Good Spy Young"). Sitara was here again today so I showed her some more stuff. Basically, I taught her how to cover and we did some shelving together. She catches on quickly so a lot of the time she knew where things went already but I did help her with some books. Everything gets done even faster now that she's started working here. It's good for the library. Oh! And I just had to mention that the two tech librarians got new chairs today. They were really cool and looked extremely comfortable. It was funny because they put them together and the directions even said at the end, "BEHOLD! Your chair is finished." I mentally applauded the direction-makers for their sense of humor (intentional or not).

And Another Tuesday...

          I got to learn more about the SIRSI system today. That was interesting. I did the global edit again and now I did it by myself. I knew where to go in the program and what to click. Then, I learned a new task in which I checked the circulation of the book. I would scan the book's barcode and I could look up how many times the book was checked out. Some libraries give out receipts when checking out books but we strictly use the "date due" slips so sometimes the number of stamps on the slips (every time the book is checked out the date gets stamped on the slip) didn't match up. Since the librarians would often look at how many stamps were on the "date due" slip as a reference to see how often the book was checked out, I had to put more stamps on the slips if they didn't have as many as they were supposed to. I also helped Marianne, the teen librarian, weed out (take out older books) young adult books from the "new young adult" section.

Gleeful Monday

          Today was a new tech thing: CDs (more accurately, audiobooks on CD). A lot of work goes into making audio books presentable... maybe even more than with books. We get the orders and we have to open them and write Pequot Library on every CD with Sharpie. Sometimes there can be as many as 21 CDs for really long books so occasionally it takes a while. There used to be stickers that went on the CDs, but sometimes they got caught when people went to play them so now we just write with permanent marker. I have to place a label lock (a clear sticker) over the spine label (sticker that describes the book in a way such as giving the first 3 letters of the author's name). Then I have to cut up the box the audiobook comes in and place the front, back, and side into our CD containers. Finally, I place all the CDs in CD sleeves and put them inside the container. And voila! An audiobook is done.

          In other news, I heard a story about a patron who came in today and started spraying bug spray all over. Apparently, he declared that the library had a bug infestation and he couldn't handle it. I have no idea what I would have done in that situation. Dealing with people upstairs can sometimes be such a hassle. While annoying, it wouldn't have been so bad but you can't just do that. If you have a problem, tell the librarians or go to another library. It was especially disturbing because some of the things he sprayed were restored - such as leather chairs and wooden tables - so the spray could have damaged them.

          On a happier note though, we have a new part-time staff member. She is Leslie's daughter, Sitara. She was very nice and a great help. I was "training" her in a sense, although it was a little funny because she's older than me (same age, but already finished her freshman year in college). However, we even know someone in common - my friend from Amity who's in Sitara's year at Vassar.

Fridays and Nancy Drew

          I'll be honest. Friday was A LOT of shelving work. I don't understand how there can always be so many books to put away. I get done with one cart and there's a new one waiting. I guess it's mostly because it's a small library. There's not always a person just to do shelving so sometimes it gets backed up. I'm glad I can help out with it though. They really need that done so it's nice to know that it's vital to the running of the library. I know where pretty much everything is located now, so it's good I learned that. Shelving itself isn't too hard though.

          On a different point, something pretty cool happened today. At least, I thought it was cool. Vicki, one of the tech librarians, found an original Nancy Drew book. Apparently it's very different from the ones the library has. For example, the same book had completely different chapter titles and some different text. I just thought it was interesting. Old books can be very intriguing. The library has a whole collection of them, which I hope to learn more about sometime.

Thursday - Global Edit

          Today was pretty good. I helped out in the children's section again. It's amazing how messy it can get. Not surprising though - they're kids. There was more reorganizing today with labels. I had to change old summer reading list books to regular books. This entailed taking off some stickers, doing a global edit (more about that in a second), and reshelving them in their regular places. Now, the global edit was something new. It wasn't very complicated, but it was quite helpful. Basically, I used the computer to change all the old summer reading books to regular books located in the children's section. I used the library's system (SIRSI, I think it's called), went to cataloguing, and found "global edit". I simply commanded the computer to modify the item type - "schoollistp" (summer reading books) to "book" - and the location to "Children's". Then I just had to scan the barcodes and they all changed.

A Wonderful Wednesday

          We were swamped with books today so I helped put them back. The rest of the staff was so grateful... so it's not the most exciting thing in the world but I felt good. Honestly, there's so much to do at a little library to keep it running. For example, I remember how the librarian at the desk, Adair, was checking out books, telling me what to do, and handling a phone call all at the same time. Sometimes there really isn't a spare minute!

          However, I did have an interesting conversation about the library's labelling system. There are so many different categories. There's a room for all new releases (fiction, non-fiction, young adult fiction, etc.) and there's the children's room, which has a ton of categories. They have a holiday section, biography section, graphic novel section, picture book section, and so on. One of the sections is called the "easy reader" section - basically, between the difficulty level of picture books and chapter books. Marianne, the tech and teen librarian, explained to me what the easy readers were and the pros and cons of having so many labels. She recalled how these easy readers were just considered picture books when she was a kid. While she agreed that the labelling made it easier to find the appropriate reading level for a child, she also worried that so many labels "boxed kids in". Instead of looking for topics the children liked, she noted that many parents just asked about reading levels. I agree with her that perhaps there's too much of a focus on labelling and not enough on letting kids explore their interests.

Tuesday

          So today's big lesson was about how the library provides its services. I learned that libraries really need to be up-to-date on books to function well. A primary service of a library is to get new books to patrons as quickly as possible. People count on the library as an alternative to actually buying books, so they want new books. I helped reorganize some books for this very purpose - books older than 6 months were removed from "new" status and put with regular books instead of new releases.