What are you doing?

Hey! It's Freedom to Read Week! Here's what I did (documents here; previous display pics here).

What are you doing? Tell me in the comments.....

5 most challenging things about my job

If you read closely, you will notice that these 5 are more or less each the flip side of their companion number from the previous post.

1. Isolation
: So, here's the thing. In a community branch, or anywhere where you work alone-ish, it can be fun for awhile but it will get lonely pretty quickly. I was really fortunate to realise this before I even moved to Ottawa. A mentor of mine, from my pre-Ottawa life, observed that I would have to work to make sure I don't get isolated in my new job, and she was right. The best antidotes I can find are to stay connected to colleagues in other physical locations but in the same system (sit on local committees, attend library board meetings, visit other branches on the weekend, chat during breaks at meetings), get involved in library associations (local, regional, and/or national), and actively seek out professional development opportunities, even if you have to do them on your own time and with your own money. The investment will be well worth it in many, many ways, some of which you probably can't even imagine at first, and, as a bonus, you won't feel so alone.
   
2. De-professionalisation
: Big word about feeling "little." When it sometimes feels like you spend your day fixing printer jams, it can be hard to remember that you're a librarian. As a community librarian, you probably will spend a lot of time “on the floor” at your branch; that helps make you that trustworthy community contact, but it also helps continue to confuse the public about what a librarian does (everything? Anything?). Spending all this time on non-professional tasks is also an Express lane straight to burn-out. I don't have any easy answers here, kids: the most I can suggest is that anyone in this position use every opportunity to promote the library's services and collections like the professional they are. Every request for help is an invitation to have a more meaningful interaction with someone visiting the library. That being said, it can be tough. I sometimes spend a few seconds explaining what a librarian is, in certain situations (eg. "Anyone sitting at this desk can help you with homework questions, research, or recommend a good book. Over there is where you can check out the stuff you want to borrow, and they can also check your account for you.") It all depends on the patron, and the situation, and you have to use your judgment about that. If you find you are getting frustrated, or under-stimulated, on the floor, look at everything from schedules (can you break up your Reference desk time?) to architecture (can the printer be moved any further away from your desk, to cut down on the crazy traffic and incessant questions?) to staffing. This is also a great time to take on a special project that will stimulate you, and revive your passion for public librarianship, in all its shapes and forms.
   
3. Lack of resources
: In a big system, like the one in which I work, you have a lot available to help you (colleagues, best practices, policies, tools, reference material, and even a shared collection of puppets!), but you can also get cut off from central departments if you are working in a branch. Sometimes, in any large organisation, it's easy to feel like one octopus leg, and every leg seems to be acting independently... Why are you re-inventing the wheel, only to find out that last month Librarian X at a neighbouring branch is piloting a Wheel Study? Similarly, if you are the only librarian somewhere (anywhere!), you might find that the person who had your position previously wasn’t great at succession planning, leaving you to wonder what on earth he/she did with their time and what you should be doing. The best piece of advice I can give about dealing with this is: if you don’t speak up, you can get lost. The more you share about what's going on chez toi, the more you will hear about what's going on alentours (especially if you, um, ask). Make friends: stay in touch with them, if even just to say, "Is anyone having problems with..." or "Has anyone created a guide to..." There's "working from the ground up," and then there's Sisyphean labour.
   

4. Feeling overwhelmed: with the diversity of experiences/opportunities/tasks on your plate, you might find yourself spending a lot of time “putting out fires." It's easy (ha! Relatively speaking, that is) to move from crisis to crisis; harder to take a step back and analyse the direction in which you and/or your library should be heading. Essentially, you need to stay calm, and be organised: you might even want to set aside time (monthly? Quarterly?) for looking at and thinking about higher-level issues, if your institution doesn't have any regular set of checks and balances in place.
 You might find that you need to work in an environment that has goals for the year that are measurable and are followed up on, or else you might want to spend time doing this yourself. In my experience, neglecting this neglects your own professional development, and affects the contribution you are able to make to your institution.
   
5. Balance: With everyone clamouring for your attention, and all the responsibilities you face, it can be difficult even to prioritise the needs of each group. You have to judge pretty quickly what can wait until later, what should be a priority this year, next year, this month, this week, depending on your responsibilities to each group you interact with. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you have enough responsibility at the moment, and you have to refer to your friends "No" (he and I aren't that close these days...) and "Can I delegate this?" You just can't do everything, or, at least, you can't do everything well.
   

5 best things about my job

I recently gave a talk to students in the University of Ottawa's School of Information Studies about being a public librarian. They were a pleasure to talk to, and I only wish I had more time to stay for additional questions and discussion. They did have some wonderful ideas, questions and comments.

I thought I would share some of the thoughts I prepared for them. After giving them a bit of background (Rideau Branch statistics, OPL statistics, my career path), I decided to structure my talk as:

• The 5 best things about my job
• The 5 most challenging things about my job
• The 5 qualities someone interested in my job should have
  

I'll be blogging these in the next few days, starting with the 5 best things about my job today.

1. Autonomy
: My job has a certain degree of autonomy by virtue of the fact that I am the most senior person in the building at most times. Another degree of autonomy comes from specifics of my own circumstances: I have a great manager, who works with me to give me the freedom to pursue or create projects that I am passionate about. All this autonomy results in great conference presentations, a shelf-talkers pilot, outreach
 initiatives, and fun programs. Furthermore, as senior person at the branch, I get to "set the tone" of the branch in some ways: decide what's going to happen and how they are going to work.
   
2. Bond of trust with the community
: In any community branch, the branch librarian is fortunate to get to know regular patrons, community groups, program partners, local book clubs, and other kindred spirits. Building and maintaining these relationships, often over the course of several years, is incredibly fulfilling for me. On a more subtle level, simply being seen working (well, I hope) in the community on a daily basis fosters a certain sense of trust for some more reticent members of the community, and gives me "social capital" in the community, which can sometimes prove (in the short or long term) to be pretty valuable.
   
3. Working from the ground up:
 In a community library, the world can be your oyster sometimes: you may implement new initiatives, new programs, new partnerships: so many things haven't been done before in many cases that you have a lot of fertile ground to work with.
   
4. Variety / diversity of experiences/opportunities/tasks:
 I can unequivocally say that in the past week I have answered both reference and readers’ advisory questions, as well as questions about homework help, and computer/Internet training (today, a woman argued with me about why she couldn't type in www.goo to get to Google. "Are you sure?" she asked...). It's also possible that I prepared children's programs, acted as a part social worker, broke up an altercation or two, set up a display, helped at the circulation desk, picked up garbage on the floor, removed expired posters from the community bulletin board, and yes, to cite the cliché, dealt with something sketchy in the washroom (or, frankly, elsewhere). No two days are the same!
   
5. Responsibility:
 A community librarian might supervise staff
, either directly (as I do) or indirectly, and be responsible for training, guiding and overseeing their work, as well as offering feedback on their performance. Of course, I also interact with many other groups, from building and city maintenance staff to library senior managers, from the library board to the general public, and from colleagues at OPL to librarians across Canada. I have the privilege of watching people I have trained learn and grow
; I have had the privilege to represent Rideau Branch or OPL or professional librarians as a whole within the community. The responsibilities of a community librarian are all interwoven, in a weird and wonderful way.
   

Monthly report: December 2010

I like December, because it's generally quieter, and especially over the holidays, it's a good catch-up period. Plus, mostly patrons are in good moods when they come in; whether it's their holiday season or not, most wish us a Merry Christmas.

While I was off being moulded like clay at NELI, my colleague was hosting a Lightfest storytelling event with Reb Arie. The event was a multifaith children’s storytelling circle celebrating Chanuka; Reb Arie explained, with much enthusiasm, the story of Hanukah to a group of local schoolchildren. The children also sang songs and played games with dreidels, and were ecstatic when Reb Arie told them that they could keep the dreidels!

A library school student shadowed me for an entire shift, during which time I taught her about reference, readers' advisory, programs and outreach. I crossed my fingers, and luckily nothing really scary/weird happened while she was here. We definitely notice changes in behaviour patterns and traffic in the branch during the cold weather; so far, I know most of our regulars on a first-name basis, and try to stay as positive as I can and greet everyone with a smile and eye contact. Respect goes a long way.

On my holiday to-do list was: updating the branch PowerPoint show to reflect Winter/Spring 2011 program information, weeding the Express collection, and writing new shelftalkers.

As usual, the Rideau staff pulled together in thick and thin, dealing with grey bins and shelving. We lost an employee we had "borrowed" from another location, but we're keeping on top of things for now. We also pitched in and helped at another nearby branch that has a staffing shortage on four different days (the holidays are tough for scheduling!).

More Writers' Fest reports

I devoted my energies this aft to writing up my notes from the Andrea Levy talk I attended on Wednesday. Alas, dear readers, they went up on the OPL blog. Sorry; you got shafted this time.

Clearly I need to clone myself to get enough blogging done....

Between that, and filling the holes in the Rockcliffe Library schedule, listening to the Divas this morning (amazing, as always) and, oh yeah, serving the public, it was a crazy day. One patron called me "his favourite person," another told me in no uncertain terms that I was "unhelpful," (I told him he could come back when he calmed down) and one patron, um, emitted gas in front of me... But hey, the windows are finished, and this weekend our furniture and carpets are getting cleaned!

Looking forward to resting over the weekend. Oh wait. I have 46 midterms to grade. Crap.

Defenestration

I think I can only get away with that title if I explain that we threw our old windows out the window... (what did you think I was talking about? the election!?!)

+ thanks to C for taking pictures!

We're almost done, thank goodness.

Monthly report: September 2010

OH MY GOD, IT'S OCTOBER. What the hell?

Sigh.

I thought I would share some excerpts from our September monthly report at the Rideau Library. We get a lot done with our two full-time Information staff (one librarian, one Children's programming and public services supervisor) and 3 full-time Borrower services staff (and a team of fabulous pages and volunteers!)

(By the way, did you know that OPL as a whole had the busiest August on record? Specific #s are here).

• We promoted our Sept. and Oct. programs via e-mail list to community partners with whom we have a relationship (from previous outreach, programs, class vists, group tours, etc.). One of our volunteers also dropped off flyers at several local institutions and businesses.
• Our “Coffee with a police officer” event was a success and we are planning to schedule this as a regular event, approx. every 4 months.
• We have had unprecedented enthusiasm for class visits! We are fully booked for classes throughout October and November. We have 14 groups visiting in October alone.
• We have begun a partnership with a writers’ group.
• We were involved in 4 outreach visits to local schools, daycares and community groups.
• I met or corresponded with with a local BIA, someone from the Mission, the Youth Services Bureau, and a few other groups to discuss future partnerships at Rideau Library.
• We confirmed several free workshops for Winter 2010 with Community Legal Services (Ottawa-Centre), the University of Ottawa Student Legal Aid and the Clinique juridique at the Centre des services communautaires Vanier. The tentative schedule is:

• 26 Jan.: Tenants’ rights
• 2 fév..: Droit des locataires
• 16 Feb.: Workers’ rights
• 23 March: Income maintenance for the elderly
• 6 avril: Successions & testaments
• 18 May: Human rights
  

• I'm still supervising Rockcliffe Park Branch, at least until Nov. 20. That means planning group visits, as well as two author visits, for the branch, and maintaining their schedule.
• Our branch cleared our backlog of material shipped from other branches (we had 30-50 bins) with the help of extra hours for staff. We are also tackling extra-long lists of requests each day; we brought these down from 320-400 to 180-250 requests a day.
• We built displays of staff picks, ESL recommendations, items from the new Good Reads collection, les auteurs Franco-Ont. pour le jour des Franco-Ontariens et des Franco-Ontariennes, back-to-school books, Seuss books (to celebrate the new The Cat in the Hat TV show), and Diary of a Wimpy Kid read-alikes (5th book in series out).
• Our staff attended 4 meetings + 1 training workshop!
• We also trained 2 volunteers + 1 new page!

Whew!

The view from Thursday

To-do list (not all completed tonight, although one can always dream... I was on the desk all evening; but it was pretty quiet)

• Talk to manager re. various things
• E-mail potential library school applicant re. advice
  
• Reserve what feels like 1 million books for our Communication Jeunesse book club
• Prep booktalk for Monday: Grades 5-6. I'm thinking some cool new titles + some mysteries.
  
• Invite classes to 2 author visits: one at Rockcliffe Park Library and one at Rideau Library
• Reserve books by authors doing the two author visits!
• Submit something to the community paper about the library
• Find vampire books appropriate for a Grade 2-3 class
• Plan classes in October that I am doing
• Contact teacher re. participation in our Communication Jeunesse book club
• Edit part 1 of the OPLA RA core competencies toolkit; begin my section of part 2.
  
• Staffing issues: coaching someone.....
• Outreach plans: connect with two new groups, minimum, this month.
• Scheduling for both Rideau and Rockcliffe (I'd rather poke myself in the eye, but...)
  

Just another Tuesday

Yesterday was nuts! But in a good way. I thought I would indulge myself and tell you about it...

Unofficially, my day started at 6 with a run around Parliament Hill and along Sparks St. It was raining cats and dogs, so I got home drenched (the bus that splashed me at Wellington and Lyon didn't help, but, really, I was soaking already).... I planned it so I would run into the husband as he was leaving the house, so we had a "drive by" greeting on the street a few blocks from home (well, a walk and run-by, really).

This morning we had our family storytime at 10:30, which meant the usual crowd was around; we had lots of fun singing our stories today - all the stories I picked were songs, too! I'm pleased we have a good core group of 7-10 kids this "semester;" it can be hard to get regular #s here, since most kids are in daycare, but we're doing really well right now. It's nice not to sing ALONE.

I also spent some time before we opened setting up storytime, wading through e-mail, tidying the branch, calling a community partner re. a possible program, and various other things I have actually already forgotten. Sigh.

I was pretty nervous because Tuesday was the day of my special program, Coffee with a police officer. This is my brainchild (confession: stolen from Toronto Public Library!) and it was the first time we were trying it, so I was anxious about how it was going to go. I had visions of our friendly community policeman - Constable Marc - sitting around twiddling his thumbs. My plan was for it to be informal: not a "safety talk with a police officer," in other words, with him standing at the front of the room and an actual audience. My manager had the great idea to actually bring the coffee and the officer upstairs, into the branch, rather than the program room.. and that worked really well.

Most of the families who had attended storytime came up to say hello (the kids were really having fun examining the walkie-talkie), and many people dropped by for coffee and a quick word. We ended up with a core group of 10 people or so staying for a longer conversation; once or twice I intervened when I could see Constable Marc was being, well, monopolised.... I sat for a few minutes, but I was technically covering the Info desk, so I ended up back there. The good thing about doing this event upstairs was that I could see everything (and hear some of it) from Info. I heard the group talking about prostitution, vandalism, drug use, the concentration of social services in our neighbourhood, and road safety... So I think it went well!

By the time Constable Marc was ready to leave, I also had to go for lunch, since my colleague had arrived for her shift, starting at 12:30. I had 30 mins to scarf my salad (which is a salad I have sadly been picking at since Saturday-of-the-15-minute-lunch-break; I'm sure you're relieved to hear I actually finished it) before a Grade 3-4 class was arriving for their first visit of the year.

I missed my classes. I missed their incessant questions (one kid was poking me while I was helping another kid), I missed their funny answers to my "prompting" questions during booktalks... I booktalked and read to them for about 40 minutes, and then they went upstairs to choose books and check things out. In case you are interested, my booktalk is below; in smaller text are the phrases I use for discussion / prompting. I also read aloud My Dog Is as Smelly as Dirty Socks, which is a fun book about collage art and families, and a good beginning of the year icebreaker.

After they left, I took the second half of my lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon on the Info desk so my colleague could prepare her booktalk for next week. I answered some reference questions, dealt with printer issues, and I also had to explain to an adult patron why calling me a b***ard was not "a joke" ("But that's how I joke with my friends!").

My two favourite questions of the day were about psychedelic poetry and books about mushrooms. And yes, that would be two separate questions; the latter was along the lines of "I ate some mushrooms yesterday, and boy did they make me sick...."

Good times.

On the way out we had a security issue and I had to call the police. Hey, didn't I just see one of them this morning? By then, it sort of felt like years ago!

____________________________________

Booktalk: Grades 3-4

Alvin Ho: allergic to girls, school, and other scary things
This is the first book in the Alvin Ho series

What are you afraid of? [Spiders? The dark?]

The boy in this book is afraid of a lot of things, including:

• trains,
  
• bridges,
  
• substitute teachers,
  
• girls, and
  
• school... especially talking at school!

In fact, Alvin has never once said a single thing in class, and he’s in Grade 2.

Who here likes the Wimpy Kid books? Alvin reminds me a bit of Greg, because he’s funny and a little weird. He loves superheroes and he has:

• a brother named Calvin,
  
• a sister named Anibelly,
  
• a dog named Lucy,
  
• and a best friend named Flea.

Flea, who is a girl, is also his desk buddy in school. Also, like the Wimpy Kid books, the Alvin Ho books have illustrations in them and are really funny.

Read from pp. 36-45 ...

Now, there are lots of other stories about Alvin’s adventures in this book. He:

• borrows his dad’s favourite toy and brings it to school for Show and Tell [do any of your parents have special toys from their childhood?]
  
• visits Miss Emily’s house [show pic. p. 98]
  
• Considers a dare [show p. 138]
  

Julian Rodriguez Episode One: Trash Crisis on Earth
First book in the Julian Rodriguez series

Do you have to do chores at home? What are they? [Washing the dishes?] What happens if you don’t do them?

8 year old Julian’s chore is to take out the garbage, and when he doesn’t, his mum sends him to his room…. To escape from his punishment, he pretends he is a space warrior being tortured by Earthlings, especially his Parental Units. The book is set up as if it is a report being sent back to Julian's “mother ship”

• the sections Julian writes are in computer type on white pages,
  
• the responses from the Mother Ship are in green computer type on black pages
  
• flashbacks presented in horizontal comic-strip style.
  

Let’s see how Julian describes his day…. Read from pp. 22-33.

Miss Laney is zany!
Newest book (#8) in the My weird school daze series

Ella Mentry School is running out of money. You know how the students know?

• The math teacher’s desk is gone!
  
• Their new art project is to make postage stamps since there is one sheet of construction paper for the whole art class!
  
• The new teacher, Miss Laney, has her office in the bathroom!
  

The students decide that they have to raise the $1 million needed to keep their school open. [prompt: Do you have any ideas for them?]

The students decide to put on a play… With Miss Laney’s help…!

Egyptian slam-dunk
#6 in the Looney Bay All-Stars series

[What’s your favourite sport?]

The Looney Bay All-Stars are a sports team in Newfoundland. They play basektball in this book, but you might also find them playing hockey, lacrosse, soccer…. Reese McSkittles is the main character in the All-Stars books. He is working on a social studies project and he has made a sarcophagus….

That's how I knew this story would break my heart*

As some of you know, I serve a community that includes a significant marginalised population. Some are drug users; some are trying to get their lives on track and have simply suffered setbacks: I can count at least one former Nortel employee, for instance. Some live in subsidised housing; some live alone; some live at various missions and halfway houses that are in my neighbourhood. Each of these library visitors is an individual, and I do my best to help them as individuals; I hear many of their stories, or I can guess at their stories, and they vary as much as my story varies from yours. Today, I thought I would share two stories I heard recently.

One of our regular patrons is a gentleman who lives in one of the Ottawa Housing buildings near us. He is in almost every day; he knows all the staff members at Rideau by name and chats with us often. He is very interested in Africa: political issues, poverty, social justice, and the genocide in Rwanda; he reads book reviews and often orders books about politics and social policy. I generally avoid talking to patrons for any length of time (more on this later, but the short reason is it's bad customer service, obvs) but somehow, one day, this patron told me that he had a correspondence going with Irwin Cotler.

This week, he came in, bearing several well-worn letters, almost disintegrating at the seams. "Do you remember I told you I wrote to Irwin Cotler? I brought his letters to show you." Sure enough, he had Cotler's responses to his letters, dating back to 2001. The letters signed by Cotler and referring directly to their phone conversations. "You know, one time, I got a little excited on the phone with him, and he said, 'Settle down!'" (he laughs). "I was in Cotler's class, you know," he told me, "at McGill. I had to drop out because of..." (here he makes a vague gesture) "you know, financial difficulties." He reminded Cotler of that on the phone once: "he said I should have spoken with him; he probably could have 'worked something out' for me. Would have been different, eh? I would have been a lawyer!"

Meanwhile, the same day, the husband was doing his regular shift volunteering at the Mission. One of the gentlemen he has struck up an acquaintance with there is also a library patron, so usually we will compare notes; I find him a bit hard to handle, because he's very chatty about his personal life and now that he knows that the guy he's befriended at the Mission is my husband (because the lovely husband picks me up from work when I work evenings!), he wants to ask personal questions, too! Anyway, the long-suffering husband was having another convo with this gentleman when the gentleman inquired, "Hey, are you on Facebook?" (The husband abhors THE FACEBOOK). "Because, you know, it would be good to have you as a contact, you know, via Facebook or something else. Do you have e-mail?" Later in the conversation, this heart-breaking statement: "Well, because, you know me now, but I want you to know me later, too, when things are better."

My mum hates the expression, "There but for the grace of God go I," because it implies that the person being referred to in that observation is lacking God's grace. She's right, it's a self-righteous condescension, but for lack of a better analogy, these little peeks into people's lives remind me, in the midst of to-do lists, monthly reports, inboxes, overloaded book trucks, and storytime, I serve people. And there but for SOMETHING go all of us.

Sometimes people come to the Info desk without a question; sometimes, not having a question is OK. Sometimes my job falls somewhere between my profession and my mother's; sometimes that is OK, too. Sometimes you just have to be still, and listen, for two seconds.

These moments are one of the reasons I stay at Rideau Library, even though I know that they are one of the reasons many people never come to Rideau Library.

*Title above from the Aimee Mann song of the same name. I love this song desperately, and played it on repeat incessantly in the Reference office in the last month before I left Westmount Library, but that's another story.

Maybe SRC does reach the kids it is supposed to reach...

I signed up three more kids for SRC yesterday. I am in the habit of asking them now if they have read any books so far this summer, to get them started with a base number for stats and to show them how the tokens and prizes work here at Rideau Branch.

Yesterday, responses included:
(from a parent) "No, you've all been playing video games all summer! You haven't read anything! That's why I brought you here!"
(from a 7 year old) "No, not really, but I'm going to start now!" (waves her SRC poster in the air).

Urban jungles with the Ottawa Art Gallery

Today's SRC activity was a partnership with the Ottawa Art Gallery, and the theme was "Urban jungles."

Books displayed included:

The Trek by Ann Jonas: Wild animals hide in everyday objects as a girl walks to school.
Jumanji by Chris van Allsburg: A jungle adventure board game becomes real....
I, Crocodile by Fred Marcellino: A crocodile is taken from his native home along the Nile and brought to Paris by (who else) the Emperor Napoleon, and must scrounge for food... and avoid being eaten himself. His presence (and his snappy jaws and long-reaching arms) confound the proper ladies of Paris.
Actual Size by Steve Jenkins: Um, ew. That's all. And also, cool.
À la recherche du fabuleux diamant par Rémy Simard: Jim Moutarde se retrouve dans la jungle, perdu, en cherchant le diament de la reine Zaza....


And here are some of the urban jungles created by the kids:



This one is a fair, with a roller coaster and one of those spinny rides that made me throw up at Ormstown Fair:





An underwater urban jungle:

Fantasy-land (I highly recommend zooming in for the worms):

Time-wasting Tuesday link

Desk
Originally uploaded by alexandrayarrow

Have you ever checked out this pool on Flickr: Librarians' desks?

If not, do! It's fun to see how messy other people are (ha ha) and also, to see what piles you have in common.

I took a new desk photo today when I was outside taking garden photos for our PowerPoint. Click on the notes for the truly voyeuristic experience.

Library day in the life word cloud

Library day in the life ... day 5

"I venture to say that Ottawa will become in the course of ages the Florence of Canada, if not of America [...]. Old Vasari said that there was a certain 'air' in Florence which possessed a magical potency in exciting intellectual and imaginative energy [...]. I have noticed the same thing about Ottawa. Perched upon its crown of rock, a certain atmosphere flows about its walls, borne upon the breath of the prevailing north-west wind, an intellectual elixir, and oxygenic essence thrown off by immeasurable tracts of pine-clad mountain and crystal lake."

Archibald Lampman, "At the Mermaid Inn,"
Toronto Globe, February 1893, as quoted here.

Friday! Hey, guys - I did the whole week of Library day in the life!

Another friend's birthday (he actually got *a phone call* - and you know I hate talking on the phone).

How do I know it's Friday? I start at 10, and I can tell it's Friday because there are no drunks passed out in front of the LCBO waiting for it to open (it's already open by the time I go by on Fridays).

Got to work and saw a construction belt and tools all over the floor. One of the random security-related things that happened this week was that a glass shelf at the circ desk fell and scared the crap out of a lovely young girl. So someone came to repair that this morning. Then the IT guy came back with the CD/DVD drive he had to pick up for me from Constellation.... Hey, it's repair guy Friday! I've never been in the library with only *two men* before. Our estrogen levels in the building dipped dangerously low.

On Fridays, most branches (except for Main and a few others) open from 1-6, so Friday mornings (when I work them, every 2nd week) are precious quiet time.

Some great stuff came in on hold for me today, including This is a soul (for Kris, actually) and The very thought of you... Yay. Must remember to bring home more books this weekend. This is the way the books go: they get checked in, pop up on hold for me, go to my holds shelf in the staff workroom, I check them out and put them on my desk, and then my desk becomes my own personal library - I grab one when I finish something else and bring it home for a few days. Aaaah. The true joy of working in a library. Right now there are 16 on my desk (I cull four and take 2 home tonight) and I have suspended my holds for a month to deal with that pile.

Employee calls in late; stupid buses. Other employee bangs on door to be let in; we go over tasks for the day. I am thrilled to report that due to lots of extra staffing this month, we are all caught up, circ-wise: we've had serious backlogs of grey bins and trucks to shelve, but we now have a clean slate after doubling up page shifts for weeks. I develop a few special projects for the pages to do today, including pulling more Shared collections and shifting the Language collection (implementing that idea from 4:30 am the other day).

Two other employees arrive; go over same tasks. Approve some leave for an employee. Read our City librarian's interview in Metro news...

Then I get 45 minutes blissfully uninterrupted time to work on an article I am writing about the history of public libraries in Ottawa. A page passes by with the mail and says "Nothing for you today, Ma'am!"

I am deep in the Lampham quote above when I realise it's 11:20 and I have to meet someone for lunch to discuss the course we are both teaching (me = morning full-time kids; her = evening part-time kids) at Algonquin in the fall at 11:30 at my favourite place.

1-6:

1. Looking for the 600s?
2. Where did you get your library degree?
3. Can you authorise a renewal of this book even though there is a waiting list? [yes because we have other copies checked in at other branches; this is the kind of question that comes to me for evaluation from circ].
4. What happened with that weird book last week I couldn't put on hold? [I e-mailed Collection Management and we fixed the record and placed your hold]
5. How do ILLs work?
6. Question about our city art in the building; specifically, the Gollner Morse code pieces (see right).
7. Can I check out my wife's hold without her card? [No, sorry].
   
8. Requêtes pour livres en français: including this.
9. Wicca, pantheism, paganism....
10. [WORST PERFUME SMELL EVER] Seriously, I think I would rather body odour. Must turn on fans....
    
11. Can I have the hours of every branch?
12. Wow, you changed a lot here in the renovations....
13. There's another library in Ottawa, right? Downtown? [33 in fact! And yes, Main is downtown. Directions....]
14. More concerns about not enough French novels at Rideau. We did significant weeding over the past four years, in part because of space, and mostly because of circulation. This community has changed a lot; while it is still very, very Francophone in some areas, it is also largely multilingual and there are many new Canadians. Our French novels circulate well at Cumberland and other suburban branches, less so here. It was a tough choice to make, but I think we did the right thing in tightening up the collection. It's just harder for older patrons who prefer browsing to ordering (with my help).
15. Call to Nepean Centrepointe re. reference question for a friend...
16. The Express copy of this book was due yesterday... is it back? [No; someone still has it out... it's late] "Well, that's rude!"
17. Dude on cell phone in lobby but facing the library upstairs so we can still hear you.....!!!!
18. Fill displays in various places
19. Change signage to reflect move of Lang. collection.
20. Inform staff via e-mail of move of Lang. collection.
21. I like watching people look up when they enter the branch; I love the wooden beams, too.
22. Question about requirements for entering an undergraduate program.
23. J'etais au chalet et j'ai manqué mes requêtes... Pourriez-vous les re-commander?
24. Where are books on CD?
25. Washroom?
26. Water fountain?
27. If I return this to another library in Ottawa, is that OK?
28. I did some work relating to RA in a day 2010. The event will be hosted at the new Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library. The planned sessions include a session by Rachel van Riel of the British program, ‘Opening the Book,’ focusing on a reader-centred approach in libraries, Dr. Raymond Mar presenting research on the power of reading and the effect of reading on the brain, a session about book trailers (which I am leading). The invited author is Andrew Pyper.
29. Sir, please put the privacy screen back up on the computer..... (why do we have privacy screens? Read this).
30. Is there a public printer here? Can I connect via my laptop?
31. Do I need to sign in to use a computer? [Full computer orientation given]
32. I can't find this book on the shelf.... [I found it in the place it should have been. This totally happens all the time and I have mastered the whole "not insulting the patron's intelligence" thing. "Oh, I've totally done the same thing" or "It's easy to miss! We have many books here, you know!" usually works].
33. Art gallery and museum passes reservation en français....
34. I have my card today! [Does this happen to you? Patrons come in continuing a convo they had with you a week ago... In my case, I usually struggle to figure out what they mean. In this case it was a hold, actually an ILL - I had to re-explain ILL procedures].
35. Time to shake the printer toner to see if I can get some more out of it....
36. Signed up 2 more kids for SRC; they are new Canadians and I spent a lot of time with them explaining SRC and other library stuff.
    
37. Where are my holds? [new Canadians again, so spent some time with them giving general library instructions]
38. Where are my holds? This was a scavenger hunt: one on the shelf in the right place but squished; one on the truck behind circ not yet put away; one in the wrong place alphabetically.... Argh!
39. I'd like to use a computer...
40. I'd like to reserve a book....
41. Joke books [in a wheelchair, so I fetched].
42. Made some final photocopies from the last book I ordered about the history of the city and Carnegie libraries in Ontario (for article I am working on); returned books and saved draft article.
43. Help getting started on e-mail and chat.
44. Long elaborate help on another computer with opening a Word doc in Hotmail, complicated by new Hotmail system (???) and security restrictions on our PCs. Gah!
45. E-mail to Saturday staff with tasks...
46. Confusion over where a health CD-ROM is shelved (who uses CD-ROMs anymore?)
47. Patron: "My book has arrived already!" Inside Alex's head: "???" Outside of Alex's mouth: "Wonderful! If you look on these shelves, under your family name...."
48. Patron thanks me for my patience. Well, that's appreciated! Esp. last thing on a Friday.
49. Hey it's 5:55 and there are only, oh, 16 people in here... Let's go!
50. I passive-aggressively turn out some lights.
51. Convo with a regular about next week's Art Gallery program for kids...

Done, baby, done!

Library day in the life ... day 4

Oh, I do love you all, but I am getting kind of sick of this.

OK. Here we go.

5:30: 9k run with husband. I think I woke up around the 5k mark.

8:55: Morning catch-up with facilities operator.

9: I can tell the theme of this day just might be collection maintenance. I think I have to check all the Express items (branch librarians and Info desk staff responsible for changing them to regular collections when appropriate) - they just have that "we're not popular" look to them, and it's been awhile since I checked them.

There are two trucks beside my desk (I really, really hate trucks at the Info desk - it's a service point, not a storage area): one is adult graphica I have to look at (hasn't circ'd in one year). I will have to be hard-hearted: I hate weeding that collection, because I know a lot of use is in-house, and I have some favourites in there myself. The other truck is overflow of large print and paperbacks, so I will have to do some selecting of what to send through Shared.

Good news: I have a casual staff member coming in this evening who can process the Shared stuff for me; bad news: she only starts at 5, so I am alone all day today.

I read through e-mail and news feeds at home, mostly, but still plowed through the new stuff since 7:30 am, including an update about BiblioCommons (our public catalogue; public version of note about changes here) and some other fun things. I fill the displays and put up a notice on the library bulletin board about job and career workshops.

Man, I am exhausted today.... I don't know if it's the run, or mid-week slump, or the fact that I know I can afford to be tired today because I don't have any children's programs....

9:55: Facilities operator and I discuss some art I want to hang in the program room.

10-1:45: Wheeeee!

1. Follow-up discussion with regular patron re. her requests and a question from yesterday about Express DVDs
2. Avez-vous des tapes de National Geographic? (ah, Franglish....)
3. The sound of ripping paper always fills me with a certain paralysing panic. Ah, it's just someone taking the labels off their holds.
4. Can I use the computer with this card? (turned into long orientation about booking computers, which ones, where, how, etc.)
5. [Realise there is no procedure yet written out for how to change items out of Express. I will write up something for my staff.]
6. Patron has a problem finding new DVDs in the catalogue - seems like there is a sorting problem. Time to e-mail Digital Services!
7. Est-ce que je suis toujours sur la liste d'attente pour.... euh.... je ne me souviens pas du titre... (turns out it is Mon Père de Cœur, L'Abbé Pierre, and she has no voicemail or e-mail so the item arrived, she never picked it up, and it was returned to its home branch. Re-requested).
8. Stalked a family of three to join SRC
9. Hold I missed picking up - can I re-order? Turns out it's here. We go get it.
10. While grabbing it off the shelf, notice Fic is very tight. Must do some collection management there... not today! Ack!
11. Decide to make a poster about the new Wimpy Kid book + maybe do a "while you're waiting..." display. Ugh - won't be forgetting that release date anytime soon....
12. Patron having issues with her browser displaying our catalogue and with logging in. Solved the latter problem; talked her through some solutions for the former after talking to Digital Services. Joked "one down, one to go!" and she replied "Good, because that's my lifeline!" Warms a librarian's heart.
    
13. Dude needs help with the photocopier.
14. Looking for the little mermaid. Gave her the Zwerger-illustrated one. Love Zwerger. Tried to con her into SRC, too.
15. Where's your nonfic? [show her then ask if she is looking for something in particular. No, but this is a new library for her. I welcome her...]
16. [Notable from Express weeding: The little stranger and The Children's book have both ended their runs....]
    
17. Started making notes for August's monthly report (Is that insane? Well, too bad. I try to crack away at it in little bits and not leave it to the last minute. Besides, it's not like I don't already know we are going to have a SRC closing party.
18. [Finished the Express checking and status changes at 11:55; moved on to the graphica weeding. Some are new-ish, so I am going to check overall circ and what other branches have them before deciding what to do...]
19. Washrooms...
20. Made final decisions about graphica; reshelved a few and put a few on display to give them one last chance. Straightened up that whole section and pulled some damaged items.
    
21. Hooray! New books have arrived. I always look at them before they go out on the shelves; sometimes I put them on display (we have dedicated units for new adult books, but haven't had much interest in our children's new books in a separate section, so we ditched that shelf during the renos). For once I finished my display when I was, um, finished, instead of having to stop and start in between patrons.
    
22. Hooray! Time sheets! (not really).
23. Request: Fern Michael's The Sisterhood series...
    
24. Dealt with some random items in the collection that circ had brought me (catalogued wrong, mis-scans, etc).
25. Monthly statistics time! I don't mind doing this, actually... I really like looking at the results, but inputting the info while on the desk can get hairy, so I have come to not really like doing them.
26. Which libraries are selling the community bus passes? [this is a pilot]
27. [phone call] Do you have computers? Turns out the patron goes to Main, but lives closer to us, but didn't realise there was a library here. Sigh. Says we look like a church. And that Loblaws is in the way. Oh well, at least he knows now!
28. Worked on publicity for Fall children's events (you can have a look here).
29. Reported a problem with our list that runs to tell us which holds have expired to Digital services.

1:45 2:20 - Lunch! I can - and should - take my hour, but when there's no one to replace me, I feel badly. I sat on the bench in the garden again, with an older couple.

2:20-5:

1. Strategised about work priorities with a page.
2. E-mail.....
3. Transferred notes written on my hand to the Post-it I wrote in bed last night - to do this aft!
4. Placed some holds on my program card for fall programs
5. Complicated RA question in French from a regular patron who likes family sagas in French.
6. Took a patron to 616s
7. RA Q came back... She is also slightly cranky about the amount of French fic at our branch. We've had this convo before. I went over ordering, popularity of the collection, the ability to request items not here, and she still sort of darkly threatened to go over my head. I re-iterated
8. Another complicated RA q in French about similar type of books. These books are all in series, sometimes series that overlap or generate spin-offs, and it's all very confusing (for them and for me!)
9. SRC reading reported by a very enthusiastic young boy...
10. Woman needs computer ASAP to print for a job interview....
11. Lonely regular patron wants a chat.
12. 3:08 - automated system shutdown in 5 minutes. This happens from time to time. $_#(*&#($&!
13. Regular introduces himself as local businessman I have been corresponding with re. library stuff via e-mail. Ha! Funny!
    
14. Can I get a library card? Of course you can, young man! [walk him over to circ]
15. Colleague asks, did you take a lunch today? Yes, but you may have missed it!
16. Excuse me, Naked brunch. You are mis-labelled in the computer as non-fiction. Come over here and I will fix that....
17. [I have a headache]
18. 3:33 - finished July statistics. We did 11 programs this month, seeing 15 toddlers, 93 pre-schoolers, 25 kids, 3 teens and 101 adults (that's my outreach to the women's drop in centre and Aboriginal centre - yay!) for a total of 237 peeps this month. That's lower than usual, but it's July. Glad I squeezed the outreach in a quieter month. Oh, and there are also the 100+ people I reached at the pool program!
19. Colleague tells me there is another oil leak - wtf?
20. Australian guy needs help saving a webpage on his laptop to view later.
21. Staff member calls re. being a little late.
22. Finished my Wimpy kid read-alikes bookmark (here if you care). Will build display tomorrow or next week.
23. [5 min fruit break while sorting damaged items in the back workroom for mending, re-surfacing of DVDs, or withdrawal]
24. I had a call for a hold yesterday and then again today...? Man, our phone system has been spazzing.
25. Did my own mending (I sometimes do this - takes me back, you know - but rarely. In this case, it was a new book that just needed some solid Scotch Book Tape).
26. Checked out my own holds! Program books include Shark vs. train ("Who would win? Well, that depends on if they're in the ocean or on the railroad tracks!" BUT this books gets -5 points for a negative librarian stereotype); real-life books include Wish her safe at home....
    
27. Interesting older gentleman who wanted to talk about electronics, inventions, and how digital books will save us a lot of space.
28. Damn Shared collections... Forgot about one bunch I was planning to do today...
29. Checked in with our Art Gallery rep for next week's SRC program. Outlined details, our location, etc. Wanted to check how they felt about siblings, since we have many families who come together and the program has an age restriction....
30. Did YOU join the SRC? Damn, I'm striking out this week.
31. Janet Evanovich on hold, pls.
32. Final attempt to clear out some e-mail; casual working arrives 10 mins early, bless her - she is updated on what to do tonight.
33. Convo about the budget. Sigh.
    

And home to take some Advil. But first, a stop in the basement for shredding of confidential docs (I LOVE SHREDDING), LANCR business, and a quick reply to a colleague's question.

Happy comment from yesterday I forgot to report: “Summer reading club just wasn’t the same without you last summer!”

Library day in the life ... day 3

First of all, I remembered a few things I forgot from previous days: I woke up the other day at 4:30 am with an idea to shift around some collections, grouping together (hopefully) languages and ESL / literacy, which I think makes a lot more sense. With some recent weeding and shifting, I think this might be possible. I also had a convo about a security issue with every full-time staff member on Monday.

And we're off again!

9-10: As usual, 7 million things before opening. Um, ok. I am writing these notes at 9:25 and I already forget what happened. Oh yeah - I found a guy lurking in the bushes. It was the IT guy who was coming to replace a broken CD drive on a public PC. He was looking for our facilities operator, who is always in early and whose window is beside the bushes. I let him in. Before I even got my bag upstairs and my lunch in the fridge, I had a strategy convo with an employee about security (I wish I could say, but I totally can't, for security reasons...). Then I started pulling some books to fill a display and got into a convo with our facilities operator: he is going on an emergency trip to Bolivia to be with a sick family member and will be gone for a month and a half. I am bereft. We discussed procedures for handling things while he is gone. Ack. Then another employee and I discussed ensuring there is someone in the building in the evenings this week who has an alarm code (with two people off, and some mix-ups with people being sick, we wanted to check everything). Then the IT guy left, explaining he needs to come back with another CD drive because the power on this one is on the opposite side and it won't connect properly. Sigh. I checked who would be in on Friday to let him in the door, and realised OH CRAP I changed my own schedule on Friday and forgot about it (I would normally work Sat.) So I assured the IT guy I would let him in and then re-arranged my plans for Friday (having assumed I would be off - why am I such a loser? AAAH!). THEN I finally finished that display, and we all had a loud voices convo about another branch that is having some staffing issues. Since we are closed between 9-10, it's a good time to yell over to your colleagues at the circ desk - ha ha. Actually, it is kind of fun - team spirit! We also debated about who would win in a fight between a library staff member and a city employee who is kind of a jerk (our money's on our staff member: she's tiny but craftier). Then the boss came by and we talked more security and other stuff (By now, I have clicked snooze on my morning Outlook reminder like 5 times, I still have 89 items in my newsreader, and the new books have to be looked at before we open and it's 9:45). Mad dash to do everything before we open.... also, I notice we are up to 170 kids signed up for SRC - yay! Left message for patron regarding a comment card submitted right under the wire at 9:59 am (like to have these convos before we open...).

10-12:30:

1. Employee calling re. being late tomorrow morning
2. Where's my hold? I can't find it...
3. Why is the computer still booting up?
4. I was able to place a hold on a new DVD. Aren't new DVDs non-requestible?
5. I tried to reserve a computer this morning and the system wouldn't accept my barcode 5 times!
6. Y a t'il des groupes de jeu à la bibliothèque?
7. Looked into a record for a book that seems to have some errors in it (brought to me by staff) - sent back to cataloguing.
   
8. Can you show me how to unsuspend a hold?
9. What formats are your digital audiobooks available in?
10. Peeled the post-it notes made at home last night off my list of things to do. Starting knocking those suckers off, including checking the work of a casual librarian working last night, and submitting revisions to Preview.
11. RA for a young girl (8ish?) and her brother (11ish): he likes Harry Potter and she likes Mercy Watson. The boy is reading definitely at a teen level, so we talked about Terry Pratchett and James Patterson's Maximum ride, and other titles. I talked up Medusa Jones and Ruby Lu to the little girl, especially after hearing she has traveled and lived abroad in Russia. I also showed her the Peter Sis books since she definitely wanted things with lots of pictures. P.S. I like it when parents (or in this case, grandparents) say, "You can take as many books as you like!" Damn straight.
    
12. Confessions of a shoe addict? Turns out it was published in Canada under Secrets of a shoe addict.
13. Do you work here? Can you check out my books?
14. Do you have parking (I am working on getting us signage for our totally hidden lot)
15. I got an e-mail about a hold that is here for me but I don't see it....
16. [10:45: momentary lull.... Read a few news items... I have to decide if I am going to participate in the Professional Partnering program at McGill next year.... And then there's Northern Exposures to Leadership... hmmmm]
17. Boy from earlier needs more picks. Charlie Bone and Kenneth Oppel are called to duty.
18. Time to bust a lady on her cell phone - if I can hear you, it's too loud!
19. Our automated phone system that notifies people about their holds is not working again. I notify our Digital services department.
20. Est-ce que je peut utiliser cet ordinateur?
21. [still writing e-mail about Preview edits. Realise I have to call a colleague to go over a joint submission so file as draft until she calls me back]
22. Long distance phone call re. patron having problems with her record.
23. Official motorcycle guide? NOS - found on truck in basement
24. Apparently a whole whack of boxes of stuff came in the mail for me
25. Sorted tokens for the prize draw this afternoon.
26. Troubled patron who believes people are harassing him. We have helped him before by getting community housing info and mental health info for him, but this time he just wanted to rant a bit. I told him if he is harassed in here to come and get me and I will deal with it. Discussion with staff about dealing with this gentleman.
    
27. Wrong job code on a timesheet - have to correct it.
28. Do you have a water fountain?
29. [finally finished Preview reviews at 11:30, even after bringing them home last night; still saved as draft]
30. Go through org chart to figure out who to e-mail about something
31. Go through boxes - sweet, it's the 123 Read with me stuff I ordered...
32. Put swank posters on bulletin board (I know I am overqualified for this task, and many others, but I try to have a look at the board every few days - just to check in....)
33. Figure out the person to e-mail about something is the person I thought it was. Well, clicking on those arrows in the org chart is always fun....
34. La part manquante de Christiane Bobin and others by him. Which ones are at Main? Can you print the list? Can I pick up La part Manquante at another branch?
35. [I have had to go to the bathroom for an hour]
    
36. Composed whole e-mail (see #22 and #30 above) and realised I no longer had the patron's barcode. Thank God for the "Undo" button - I had copied it but not yet pasted, and got interrupted. Story. Of. My. Life.
37. Livres sur le peintre David Roberts (Too many David Roberts... Is he Scottish? DOB 1796? Yes, he is...) et livres par Eric Butterworth. Former n/a, latter reserved. Offered to check databases for Roberts but patron not interested.
    
38. True crime section? (I would have gone with him but he didn't want to wait for me to finish #37)
    
39. Invitation to dinner because I am a lucky girl with nice friends.
40. [I am going to the bathroom now. Just try and stop me]
41. Reserved Grosse Pointe Girl for myself because it looks good.
42. Reserved a few children's PBs from series I really like so I can booktalk them / recommend to patrons coming in....
43. Beat newsreader into submission; reserved Emma Donoghue book (did I forget about it? Who knows... Oh, wait, it's because it's about "a five-year-old boy who has never left the room where he was born." Well, we'll see). Whoa - I forgot this weekend is the Rideau Canal Festival.
    
44. Filled SRC Jungle display
45. Ordered new library pamphlets of various sizes and languages.... We are low on library pamphlets in Punjabi, Urdu, Vietnamese and Hindi.
46. Finally finished the instructions for casual and part-time staff re. sending out shared material. Drum roll, please! That only took 28 hours.... Saved draft e-mail about it for our circ sup.
47. Screw thinking! I am replacing the Midsummer display with "Staff picks" - everyone can throw up their choices.
48. Went over to help at circ but only served a few people before someone wanted to pay a fine by Interac. Then Interac machine and I are not friends, so I left her in someone else's care.
49. Outlined duties to staff taking over
    

1:00-1:40: Lunch! Interrupted by phone call with colleague re. #21.

1:40-2: Chocolate break while checking e-mail and news. Finish set up for monkey program.

2-3:30: Monkeys! Not too many kids today, which is a pity, but I did get to spend some quality time with the ones who were there. Someone pointed out when we sang "5 little monkeys" that we had five kids for the program, which was kind of funny.

One of the mums asked me about what education is needed to be a librarian (she was surprised). She is going for her ECE.

Here are the monkeys we made:



3:30-4: Monkey clean-up! Brief meeting with boss!

4-5:

1. P.C. Cast books in either French or English (placed STP for French vols 2 and 3) - regular patron who I was happy to see. Young boy who I have watched grow up over the past few years...
2. Ou sont les magazines?
3. You know what I love? When people waiting for the Express PCs grind their popcorn bits into the carpet (I only saw this when I came back upstairs)
4. Books reported from SRC....
5. HR assistance for boss.....
6. Running around looking for boxes because we are out of grey bins we ship material to other branches with.....
7. Back downstairs to talk to boss
8. Hold request for The Lost Symbol
9. Name of composer, and score or lyrics for "It's now or never" (Presley!)
10. How many DVDs can you check out?
11. Washroom....
12. Carl Jung
13. Help downloading antivirus software... on our PCs.... um, no.....

5:05 pm: Dashed off to the basement to make up my to-do list for the rest of the week and send some last e-mails I didn't have time or concentration for.

P.S. Happy birthday to a dear friend from high school!

Library day in the life ... day 2

5:30: Get up and go for a 6k run with the husband.

7:30: Read news of the day while eating grilled cheese on French toast (there is extra time for fancy breakfast when I get up early):

• "Before Stieg [Larsson...], there was one singular team of common-law-married journalists who shaped that very crime wave with a 10-book arc—and also changed the world of crime fiction forever."
• Do you miss All Creatures Great and Small? I do! Well, the Beeb is making a three-part drama about James Herriot's early life and training in Glasgow, called Young James. Doesn't that just make you want to watch the title sequence all over again? Ah, Christopher Timothy, where ya been?
• Another reason to be depressed and angry about terrorism: attempts to combat it have left Mauritania with no time for heritage. Precious Arabic manuscripts from the 15th century lie forgotten in a dried-up tourist town (tourism is on the decline since the 2007 murder of French tourists by Al-Qaeda), and desert libraries are in disrepair.
  

8:45: Arrive at work. Make coffee. Cream in the fridge expired on June 15. Ick.

9:00 - 9:45:

• Edit Shared collections document: Rideau has a significant overflow of some Shared collections; staff here re-distribute these collections according to procedures... I updated the doc I keep in our Info desk binder for casual staff, clarifying some recent misunderstandings about what gets sent, what goes where, and whose job it is to evaluate what goes and what doesn't. 'Nuff said.
  
• Put up a flyer about a local author's new book on the community bulletin board. Remove non-community info from the board, as well as expired flyers. Remove garbage inserted in plastic slatwall for pamphlets. Ew.
• Employee at circ called in sick. One person already here offers to stay later this afternoon; other person calls the list to see if someone else can come in this evening. We decide if no one can, I will agree to have her do overtime.

9:45 - 10:00: Preparation for Contes

10:00 - 10:30: Contes for a local preschool. This was fun, of course, with the added bonus that they haven't visited in awhile (loooong story!) and I signed the kids up for SRC. Évidemment, I did a jungle-themed contes. We read La grenouille qui avait une grande bouche, Voilà la pluie!, and Le grand plouf. I had some jungle (and non-jungle) stuffed animals around the room that we related to the books; we also talked about what happens before it rains (les éclairs, la tonnerre grande, les nuages gris....). I also had a snake song on CD I forgot to play (duh) and 5 little monkeys in French that I didn't feel like using (the class was rowdy enough already, and I wasn't in a singing mood).

Songs we did sing: "Si tu aimes le soleil", "Tête, épaules genoux, orteils"
Fingerplays and rhymes we did together: "Claque, claque tes mains", "La petite araignée" (with the help of Alice the spider puppet), and "Coucou" (couldn't find this online; text below)

Coucou Je cache mes yeux !
Je montre mes yeux !
Je mets mes mains en l’air !
Je mets mes mains derrière !

… Je cache mon nez !
… Je cache mes oreilles !
… Je cache ma bouche !

10:30-10:50: A slew of questions (I guess people missed me?):

• Can I reserve the latest Sandra Brown / Ken Follett?
• Did I already reserve the latest Michael Connelly?
• Can I reserve Turmoil and Triumph by that Shultz guy who was Secretary of State?
• Where are your nature books?
• Where are your computer games?
• Do you have spare headphones?
  
• A regular patron, a lovely older gentleman from the senior's home next door, asked about a musical group I've already forgotten. He is really into classical music and opera, so I told him that I had recently seen Kathleen Battle; I told him about her amazing encore, a kickass rendition (with scat) of the hymn, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" He was happy to chat about it; I'm rarely a chatter at the desk, but I do have a soft spot for this gentleman. He recently fell, and is recovering slowly (I am anxious that he is moving a lot slower these days)
  
• The class I did Contes for came upstairs; the teacher asked me for a copy of the songs I use.

Random thought: Sometimes I think I could spend all day pushing in the unoccupied chairs at the public computers. Does no one push in their own chair anymore? Not cool.

10:55 - 1: More questions and random stuff:

• How do I reserve a computer?
• [interim: helped at circ because there was a line up]
  
• [same patron, when it appeared there were no computers free here until noon] How do I get to Main Library? Can you print me out a map? What bus can I take?
  
• Do you have books about angels?
• Consult with circ. re making a new card for a patron who legally changed her name but had ID with her previous name only.
• Strategising with boss re. author visit in the fall.
• Lost sunglasses found.
• PIN number problems for computer login.
• Is it OK if I bring my laptop and [mumble mumble] - turns out he wanted wireless access. Yes, of course!
• I'd like to use a computer...
• Alex replies to some old e-mail ....
• There's a message on the phone and I only noticed now. Crap.
• RA en français pour un jeune fille: romans d'amour. I showed her the obvious (Nora Roberts, Isabel Wolff, Sophie Kinsella) and also tried to suggest some "stretches:" Sarah Dunant, for instance. She left with her Nora Roberts and a book from the J'ai lu collection.
• Do you have books on knitting?
• Where is my book on hold?
• Pest control monthly report handed in to me.
• Donated copy of Munsch's Smelly socks scored for a SRC prize. I love it when circ brings me the good donations.
  
• How many people are waiting for the museum pass for the Science and technology museum? (You don't want to know). Follow-up Q: Opening hours, costs and directions to Science Tech Museum and the Agriculture Museum (visiting grandkids). Patron tells me her grandfather convinced her as a kid that brown cows gave chocolate milk. Hee hee! I encouraged her to bring her grandkids to library programs (here or elsewhere).
• Washroom?
• Called a taxi for a patron who is blind.
• Two colleagues showed up at once to say "hi!" - one from Main Reference, one from St Laurent.
  
• Request for L'énigme du retour par Dany Laferrière.
• Finally go upstairs for the rest of the coffee I made (at 8:45) around 12:30. Bust a dude on a cellphone on the way back to the desk.
• Have you seen today's Globe and Mail? (ongoing saga)
  
• Hey, kid, did YOU join SRC?
• Where are the physical fitness books?
• Task preparation for the librarian working this afternoon so I can have more off-desk time.
• Whoops and she's here already! I love people who are early. She debriefed me on last night (tons of RA questions from kids and teens: we discussed read-alikes for Twilight and Hush, hush, for future reference, including the lovely Gemma Doyle series by Libba Bray). I outlined her tasks for the afternoon/evening.
  
• Quick trip to my desk in the basement to drop stuff off and make a few notes for this aft.
• Trip back up to Info for a technical question from staff.
  

1:15-2:15 - Lunch! Hooray! I ate outside on the bench in the garden. I used to do this a lot, then I stopped because too many patrons came up and asked elaborate questions (plus the bench is a popular spot for smokers from the businesses nearby). I'm tentatively trying it again; so far, regular patrons have waved but kept walking, which is good. I also popped into the post office to get a bubble envelope for some stuff I am mailing to Miss Z and Miss K in Cape Town. I miss them a lot.

2:15-3:50: Off-desk.

• E-mails beaten into submission (for now).
• Quick scan of news feed (Cape Town book fair! Streets in Ottawa named after fictional characters!).
• Chose monkey books for tomorrow's program and began set up in the program room.
  
• E-mail again: Yikes! The class I am teaching at Algonquin in the fall might be from 8-10 on Monday mornings....
• Printed up fall program info in draft form to proofread: my Outlook calendar, Preview magazine, and in-house posters and bookmarks must all be the same! I know, I killed some trees, but proofreading is not one of my talents and I need the paper format (both for myself and so I can find a willing victim to check my work). I am also going to try to throw myself on the mercy of the Preview elves and ask them to toss in a program I am submitting late (It's not my fault! I swear!): coffee with a community police officer, which is an idea I stole from TPL, and I hopw will attract people of all ages and walks of life (including newcomers and some of our transient population), to discuss community safety and also just get to know the local officers / build community goodwill in a safe setting.
• Chit-chat about various work things with boss!
• N.B. my old job at St Laurent is posted on the city website, if you are interested!
• Fielded questions from the page working today about items not found....
• Good God, the e-mails.... I kind of ignored some yesterday, and they totally came back and bit me in the ass today.

3:53: Went up to Info early because, um, I had to pee for the past 1/2 hour and kept putting it off.....

4:00-5:00: Info desk again! A flurry of 5 Internet questions all at once, including a headphone replacement for one computer. The computers are super busy; when I came upstairs, 3 people were waiting for our 2 Express stations. Over the next hour, I also:

• Got the hairy eyeball (when walking by me, in both directions - petty, much?) from a regular who is mad at me because I wouldn't proofread his 2 pg document last week. Seriously, dude, we are not editors; we are librarians. It's a pet peeve of mine.
• Put some NOS items in missing
• More e-mail - AAAHHH!
• Strategising with pages re. duties (it's like the shelves vomited everywhere today; massive pick-up. Plus we started the day with 0 book trucks and ended with 5 - wtf? Pick up makes me crazy and sometimes I do it myself - shhh don't tell! but I want the place to look nice... and I need to fill displays anyway....- but today I had to turn a blind eye....)
• Long drawn-out convo with dude who glared at me earlier, this time about his holds. We have the same convo frequently; it's like the "Who's on first" skit. Most of it revolves around the question, "But when will the book arrive for me?"
• I may have had too much coffee; my hands are shaky. Wheeeee!
• What was I doing? Oh yeah, grabbing the Curious George books to add to the monkey stuff, filling the Preview stack in the program room, checking out my own holds, sending some inter-office mail, and e-mailing again....
• I have to log out and log back in to do a renewal, because Symphony's Info module doesn't have that option (only if you login as circ). Damn you, Sirsi!
• Fielded a response to a comment card.
• Phone call answered after dashing back out from workroom (sorting timesheets and pay stubs): Avez-vous des nouveaux livres de Barbara Taylor Bradford? En livre de poche? Ah, et alors, de Danielle Steel? Et est ce que ce sont des livres de poche? Et le premier titre, de Bradford, est-ce que celui est sortie en traduction français déjà? etc. (regular patron; TV blaring in the background; accent very hard to decipher, even on a good day, and this was not really a good day!)
• Circ staff has excellent display suggestion for the DVDs. Implemented!
  
• Lillian Brown? (= Lillian Jackson Braun)
• Today I sent 23 e-mails and rec'd God knows how many. Kill me now?
  

And, holy crap, it's 5 pm again. On the way out, flagged down a page to ask her about a shift next week someone cancelled, and got caught talking to another page about the backlog of trucks to put away.

Got home and learned via FB that my friend Tara is now coordinator of her department at OPL - three cheers for Tara! Congratulations!

Library day in the life ... (Rideau style) day 1

I put "day 1" up there, thinking positively, but I make no promises that I am going to do this all week. I can promise today, and I can promise today will be thorough. Beyond that, we'll see!

It's kind of neat that last time I did this I was at St Laurent - fun to compare and contrast.... It was also summertime. Somehow I missed round 4. Anyway.

For the new arrivals to this blog, welcome! Here you will find the ramblings of a public librarian in a small urban community branch (serving a population of approximately 24, 000, seeing 2000 patrons a week). My CV is here. My passions include readers' advisory, outreach, services to children and teens, and social justice. I have also been known to get riled up about collection management (i.e. weeding!), library architecture, and censorship, .... and to get excited about literary awards, library conferences, and excellent customer service.

Today is not entirely typical, in that it is summertime and quieter, in general. Also, two of my colleagues are away: one is my Children's programming and public service assistant, and the other is the branch's supervisor of circulation. On the bright side, I replaced myself off the Info desk from 1 pm onwards today (and most of this week), so I do have some off-desk time, which is rare. The theme of last week was meetings (various OPL committees, plus a visit by the City Librarian and four new senior managers last Friday), so it was nice to know I would be in the branch all of this week.

9 - 10 am: I began my day with the usual e-mail and blogroll reading. I actually almost unplugged entirely this weekend, firing up the computer only once to log a run, post a link to FB, and check brunch plans. So my blogroll was clogged (I clear-cutted 280 news items Sunday evening, and another 130 this morning: skimming, skimming, skimming). Some things I did pause to read included:

• "Public Libraries Nourishing the Mind" by PC World's Phil Shapiro: OK, I likes the food as much as anyone else, but seriously, culinary arts in the library? This may be going too far....!
• A lovely review of Folly, which reminded me to reserve it.
• Annoyed Librarian's rant about the Dominican study of summer reading club programs: I confess I hadn't had time yet to read the Dominican study, and when I read excerpted text from it in her post ("While not definitive in addressing the additive effect of summer library reading programs, this study has been helpful in demonstrating the need for more rigorously controlled research studies") I was a little dismayed, too. She is kind of right that "the kids participating were self-selected from the group of children who already read more and had more money and access to books, so of course they have higher reading scores. They participated in summer reading programs because they like to read already. [The study] does NOT show that the students who most need summer reading programs are the ones participating in them. On the contrary, it suggests that the ones who need them least are the ones who participate the most." That's why there are no SRC studies out there: it's really hard to show that the students who really need SRC programs are the ones benefiting the most.
• My cousin's blog post of a few of his poems, "Selections from Flying on the Lucid Fringe." Librarians, take note: Sim writes in the notes for his book that he thinks poetry should be shelved "in the reference section. Right there, next to the Cape Town map [...] and the dictionary and the what to do in an emergency type book. Where you can pull it out and intuitively (with a little help from the angels) turn to the right page to: inspire your dreams with a poem before bed or your day with a poem after bed, hit a deeper note with your dinner guests, share some words for your spouse's birthday or for your granny to dance to, take you beyond the daily playback routine while waiting for that train, find the real news that you won't find on CNN or even Facebook."

My boss stopped by the Info desk as I was reading and drinking my coffee, and we had a little convo about the vending machine article that came out in our local paper over the weekend. Specifically, he said, "hey, so your Facebook friends don't like our vending machine, eh?" and we laughed ruefully. Alas, my friends are not the only ones. The vending machine makes people panic because I think they believe it is intended to replace a library branch, which it is not; the idea is that it allows communities in which there is no library (at least, currently, but vending machine stats would be a good argument for building one, wouldn't they?) to have some service for pick-up and drop off of materials. Rudimentary, granted, but again, better than nothing! Also, what if the vending machine, placed currently in a community centre, generates interest about the library from non-users (I'm thinking thick-headed sports fans) - wouldn't that be cool?

Before we opened I also looked into some items I want us to buy (I placed some suggestions to purchase like the rest of you plebs), checked in my own holds (including this, which I'm excited about, and this, which did not impress me, honestly), and did a headcount of SRC supplies (sent surplus back to Main to be re-distributed).

10-10:35: Swear to God, I did not make this up. These are questions I received in the first 35 minutes after opening at 10 am:

1. Where is the washroom?
2. Phone call: can I reserve this book? I can't remember my PIN.
3. I heard about this book on the radio - do you have it?
4. Login dispute over 15 minute express computers (which was kind of funny, as we had been open 10 minutes...)
5. Are there any computers on another floor? (Honey, we don't have another floor!)
6. Do you have any maps?
7. Can you help me? I think I cancelled my computer booking...
8. Do you carry Architectural Digest here?
9. Do you remember that book you reserved for me? (Suuuuure I do.....) Is it here yet? (Turns out our copy says on shelf but is not, so I marked it missing)
   
10. Where are children's DVDs?
11. Request: Michel David's new book
12. Request: Elizabeth George's new book
13. You told me last week about an online dictionary website - what is the url again?
14. Staff q: where are the extra rolls of masking tape?
15. Copy-specific hold (patrons can't do this themselves yet in many cases, so for items with multiple volumes - eg. Great Courses - they have to come to us)
16. I can't find this book.... (turns out it was in our PB section, which both Philip and I wanted to get rid of, but had to keep because of shelf space available).
17. I can't find my hold....
18. Where is the public printer?
19. Do you have a public telephone?
    

So, do you think I saw the vast majority of those 2000 patrons a week this morning? 'Cause it kind of felt like that.

In between the madness, I also tried to get two kids to join SRC (they turned me down) and checked if a newborn had received his 123 Read with me book (he had; I gave his dad info about family storytime in the fall @ Rideau instead) . Gertrude from A Company of Fools came by to pick up her Midsummer display ('bye, donkey!), so I helped her a bit and cleared up the books on the display after she left. Crap. Had to fill that space, so put up a "books made into movies" display (DVDs and books). Filled other displays (new books, etc.) on the way by.

10:35 am - 1 pm: Other random morning questions:

1. Oh, those die-cut animals for SRC are nice. I work for a daycare - can I bring in paper and cut shapes on the die-cut machine? (Um, no).
2. Tracking packages in the U.S. mailed from here (this fell between "rant" and "reference question" - sorry your package is lost, lady!)
   
3. A woman dressed in full-on Mad Men-era clothing (right down to Betty Page hair and bright red lipstick painted over the edges of her lip line) inquired about volunteering.
4. You know what I really hate? Patrons who come up to you and throw down their item (in this case, a package rec'd in the mail) and make demands with no preamble. So this woman tossed her grimy mail on top of the time sheets I was verifying, and said, I want to watch this. I was like, well, good for you (and what is it?)! Also, personal space! No, I was very pleasant to her, but I kind of felt invaded.
5. Can I reserve some museum passes?
6. I want to get my Chamberfest souvenir guide. Is the Chamberfest office open today?
   

Our volunteer who is helping out with SRC came early, and I was still printing out monkey body parts for her (we are doing this craft this week). We decided she would cut out the cardboard and the kids could decorate their own monkeys. I also chose a video to watch during the activity (I really want to watch "Hot hippo," but this week is about monkeys, so no go).

I gave a patron an eviction notice. He left, swearing loudly.

I was overjoyed to see a patron I made a library card for during outreach last week come in. I am terrible with faces, but luckily I remembered he is deaf. Through charades, I figured out he wanted time on a computer, so I logged him into an Express terminal. I need to learn sign language (well, beyond "Twinkle, twinkle, little star"). Five minutes later, another patron from the same outreach came in to use a computer!

I faxed the branch time sheets to our city payroll department (full-time staff do this stuff online but for part-time and casual staff, we still use paper time sheets): this process involves checking the hours worked and making sure everyone got the cost centres (and all other info, including sometimes their own names!) right. Usually our branch circ supervisor looks at these first, and I double-check and sign off, but with her away, it's all on me. Today, there were nine of them. Check, check, sign, sign, fax, fax! While checking, I lent someone masking tape to fix a broken high heel.

I also inputted SRC statistics for last week into the shared Excel sheet. We are up to 151 kids registered at Rideau for SRC 2010, and so far, they have reported 525 books read. In the past week, we signed up 31 new kids for SRC 2010, and kids reported 261 books read.

1:15: A few more quick questions (CD drive on one of the PCs not working, etc.) and then, LUNCH! At long last! I thus shook off the shackles of the Info desk until 4 pm.

My current lunchtime book is Holding still for as long as possible, because it is the next Algonquin Reads pick, but so far it's nothing to write home about. My lunch was interrupted 22 minutes in by a vision from the attic staff room of two women dumping our dying (well, dead) mugo pine beside the dumpster in the parking lot. Hmmmm... Out I went to investigate! Long story short: the lovely peeps at the Horticultural society donated our garden; a volunteer (not ass'd with the Horts) maintains it once a week. Some of the plants suffered damage over the winter (esp. due to salt-filled snowbanks), especially some small pines near the staircase. The two lovely ladies here today were removing the dead pine and replaced it with some pink and white rosebushes they assure me are hardy breeds. Seriously, most of what I know about gardening I have learned from talking to the people from the Horts, our volunteer, and our facilities operator in the past few months.

2:15-4: I made the most of my off-desk time! I managed to:

• E-mail my boss about the garden
• Scan an issue of Public Libraries that came for me via routing (it was May/June 2009, so no news there; we have since decided to no longer route professional journals here at OPL, which I think is a good idea)
• Do some research for Fall programs for adults at Rideau (I know I keep promising you updates on what I have up my sleeve... soon, my pretties!)
  
• Send some e-mails and create a new distribution list for some of my latest outreach contacts to send them info about adult programs at the library
• Spend some time fighting with the laptop so I could preview the Anansi tale with a King Monkey (Anansi and the talking melon) on DVD for Wednesday's program. Every time your network password changes (every few months?) you have to re-connect the laptop to the network to be able to log on. Annoying... Also, the voice of Anansi in this DVD is oddly Brooklyn accent-y (slight nasal tone!) and King Monkey sounds very pukka. Weirdness. Hope I can watch it with a straight face!
  
• While on break, responded to more comments via FB re. the vending machine library. Apparently my friends aren't as scandalised as I thought. Also, positive byproduct: more comments means the story will move to the top of people's FB feeds. Hmm.
• Tried in vain to read "Immigrant Readers: Feeling "at Home" in Library Reading Programs" before going back up to Info but failed and brought it up with me.

4-5: I handled:

• Printing up the weekly bestseller lists (Main Library's Collection Management Department kindly generates these lists of the Globe, New York Times and Librairie du Soleil (local bookstore) lists, with what we own and have on order written in).
• Checking out the several (heavy and oversized) books about Carnegie and his libraries that came in for me (for an article I am writing for a CILIP group).
• Read the new Laura Vaccaro Seeger book, What if?, which is a great pick for dialogic reading in storytimes with younger groups. Even if the basic scene repeats throughout the book, you could have a different child in the group describe it each time, for instance. Lovely art, too.
• Helped a guy on the Internet who had clicked on "sign in with a single-use code" in Hotmail and was totally confused.
• Perused a book about animal crafts for SRC ideas (while walking up the stairs - I am nothing if not a multi-tasker): I found a great Haida raven craft but nothing good for Destination Jungle.
• Looked over a proposal for an event from a committee meeting last week.
• Read I'm the best, the new Lucy Cousins book. Verdict: super cute story about bragging, being a show-off, appreciating your uniqueness, and saying you're sorry, plus great illustrations (as always).
• Handed out a flyer about fall storytimes to a regular patron and her son.
  

Plus the following questions:

• Do you have Jaws 2? (Oddly, no, so I e-mailed our AV selector)
• Do you have books about evolution?
• Where are your materials about learning languages?
• How many times a day can someone use the Express computers?
• Where's my dad? (Located behind stacks in annex)
• Could you reserve Season 1 of Slings and arrows for me?
• Where is your non-fiction section?
• Wouldn't it be great if you had movie viewing stations here? (NO!!!! But film events at the library would be a fun idea - with PPR films, of course.... Added to my adult programming list).
  
• Can I use your desk to sort through these DVDs?
• Où sont les livres sur CD? (Wow, just realised that was my first French q of the day. That's really atypical.... Or did I just translate some of the above ones without realising? I do that. Definitely the Michel David q this am was in French, obvs).
• It says you have a Museum pass for the War museum here.... Where is it? (Looked everywhere. NOS. Filed as missing).

And then I went home! Well, first I went to the basement to my desk to drop some stuff off, make some notes, and approve a sick day for one of my staff. While down there, I got caught by another staff member wanting advice about an ethical dilemma involving computer time on the public PCs. Wheeee.

I never did finish that immigrants and reading programs article.....