Three things that are raising my blood pressure

1) Have you seen the commercial for Leapfrog, where the frog asks the kid which one he likes better: the nicely illustrated but old-fashioned book, or the plastic Leapfrog thingie that “talks” to you?

2) What do you call the people who walk into your library? We used to call them patrons, but now the director has decided that is too old-fashioned (do you see a trend developing here?) so we now have to call them “members.” She thinks they will feel more of a sense of belonging and responsibility if we call them a member. Ha!

3) I keep seeing these commercials (maybe I’m watching too much TV) in which they say “do you owe the IRS money? If so, we can help you get off with paying way less than you owe.” As someone who paid my share, this makes my blood boil.

The law of the phone.

Here’s the way the phone works at my library:

A) If you are at the desk alone and no one has had a question all day, as soon as someone steps up to the desk with a question, the phone will ring.

B) If the phone hasn’t rung in hours, as soon as you walk to the other side of the library, it will ring.

C) If you are away from the desk and hear a phone ring that you think might be your phone and you run across the library to answer it, it will not be your phone after all.

D) If you are on one line, the circulation staff will repeatedly transfer calls to you.

My plan to take over the world (or just the library.)

I get lots of time to ponder things while I’m pitching horse manure, and one of the things I think about is the future.

I got to thinking that the most interesting questions we get at the reference desk, since the Internet took over most of our job, are about genealogy and/or local history. Hmm, that’s sort of my favorite type of research.

I could go to library school and get the degree and then, one day, perhaps the library will decide to make the genealogy/local history department a separate unit within the library. They might especially move to this setup if they have a candidate handy who has the degree and the special skills. That could be me.

The others can cover all the other questions we get. Maybe they will change the title from “reference librarian” to “entertainment specialist” to more accurately reflect the job.

See what happens when you wait until the last minute?

Somewhere there is a history teacher I’d like to strangle, or at least give her a good shake.

At work today I had a high school kid who brought in the list of books she had to choose from to read over the summer. Of course, they were all checked out. Lesson one: don’t wait until the last minute! The only book that was available was this massive biography of Teddy Roosevelt, and the look on her face when I pulled that one off the shelf was priceless. No, actually it was a pained look: ohmigod, I gotta read that?

I just have to ask that teacher what her goal was with this assignment, because if it was to teach the kids not to procrastinate or else you’ll end up with some godawful chunk of a book, then she gets an A+ from me. But if she ever wants these kids to even remotely appreciate, let alone like history, then that transaction right there was a total failure.

I will say from experience that sometimes the best books are the fattest, and skinny books can be a real bear. But not always. And honestly, if it was me I would probably make the same face this girl did; of course, I wouldn’t have waited until that was the only choice.

To be fair, there was a nice variety of titles on this list. Someone who started earlier in the summer could have his or her pick of a wide variety of historical topics, etc. Especially if you consider the fact that, given enough time, you could actually ILL some of the books that our library doesn’t have at all.

My suggestion would be to put a brief but enticing summary of each book on the list. It wouldn’t take that long and it just might convince the student looking at it that there is an exciting and broad array of history books out there. Show some enthusiasm for your own subject, and maybe the students will pick up on it. And don’t tell me “they should do their own research on the titles to pick one they might be interested in.” This is the real world, and even I’m not that gung ho about typing each of those titles into Amazon to see what they’re about.

And try to pick books that are less than 500 pages.

The ghosts of classrooms past

The funny thing about working in the same area I grew up is that I often see my old teachers. And I mean from my Kindergarten teacher all the way through high school, and even college profs. And grad school professors too.

It makes me feel like I’m taking some sort of test, that they’re checking in to see how I’m doing. See, I really did learn alphabetical order, and I can prove it! When my Kindergarten teacher came in, I realized this lady is the reason I can read and do my job. Wow!

I keep waiting for the day when one of my early grade school teachers pops in at the same time as a college professor. That would be weird. Today I looked up and there are two of my elementary school teachers standing at my desk–my 3rd and 5th grade teachers. Both, strangely enough, named “Mrs. H.” I just wanted to say “hey, get out of here, this is really too weird for me!”

Alphabetical what?

There is this listserv for public librarians that I read for my amusement. I like to check the teapot now and again to see what tempest du jour is brewing. When I go home and tell the husband all about my day at work, I say “you won’t believe what the librarians were riled up about today!”

The latest began when a librarian asked what he was doing wrong that caused the teenagers to give him the blank look when he was trying to explain that the books were in alphabetical order. He asked how they expect to graduate high school without understanding alphabetical order.

You should have seen how fast the librarian wit started to fly. How dare you try to teach the patron? Just give them what they want. Get off your butt and serve the patron. Don’t patronize the patron. etc.

The thing is, I completely sympathize. I often get the blank look too. Don’t they do alphabetical order anymore?
I remember 3rd grade. Every week we got a spelling word list and every week we had to put the list into alphabetical order. I hated it. I already knew how to do alphabetical order, and every week I demonstrated that I had the skill down. Yet every week I had to do it all over again. Sigh.

But when I grew up, I got a job because I knew how to put things in alphabetical order.

Incidentally, that tempest morphed into a heated discussion of the dreaded tax forms and why we don’t tell people what form they need to fill out. One mysterious poster ruffled all the librarian fur by asking some tough questions. Suddenly the discussion trailed off and the librarians all started moaning about how “the list gets all snarky and mean-spirited instead of helpful and nice and we must go back to being nice.” And then they went back to discussing cookies.

Personally, I thought the debate was just starting to be sort of thoughtful and interesting, before it went back to snack foods. But I guess that’s the sort of discussions professional librarians prefer, along with their tea.

So, when is that vacation?

I need a vacation so badly. Even dropping back to 20 hours a week is going to help when it starts next week. Is it next week yet?

You know how it is when you get so sick of your coworkers and you see them every day and you just want to not see them? Sigh. Maybe I shouldn’t be so irked when she makes a 15 minute break into a 25 minute one!

I’m on my supper break right now. I actually spilled my water down the front of my shirt; I hope it dries in the next ten minutes. You know it’s bad when you can’t hit your own mouth with a glass of water!