TwentySevenLetters / B

There's no business like info business

I have to admit, I love my job. Even when the people make me crazy, I still love my job.

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to Hellish Old Job for an afternoon. I met my friends for lunch and chatted with them in the office for a little bit. I enjoyed the company, but realized just how horribly draining that place was. Approaching the building, I felt a touch of the old familiar dread, the feeling that I was going to a Bad Place and I’d be stuck there for a while. (Luckily, I’d anticipated this, and left my soul at home for the day to avoid losing any pieces of it while inside.)

I do sort of miss having the sort of job where I could surf Salon.com all week and not have to interact with people for days at a time. But: I don’t miss working in a 5’×5’ box. I don’t miss being surrounded by monochromatic, low-contrast beige. I don’t miss the micromanaging, the undermining, or the utter uselessness of what I was doing. (Okay, I was doing page layout of scientific journals, which is sort of useful, but I spent about 10-15 hours a week on it, compared to another 15-20 on Salon, 5-10 on comics, and 5-10 on schoolwork.)

I love having a job where my presence actually matters. I love working with books and information. I love the scavenger hunt, looking for particular titles, obscure subjects, arcane facts. Today someone was looking for books on building rafts. Yesterday I made a five-year-old girl happy by finding FOUR versions of Cinderella. Last week I ordered some books on platypuses. Every day, ever hour, is a new challenge, something else to think about. It’s impossible to do this job on autopilot. I like being kept mentally active.

In my three months here, I’ve created booklists, built a graphic novel section, placed orders, answered a metric boatload of questions, drafted a new computer use policy, kicked kids out of the library, gotten yelled at by patrons, researched all sorts of things from dolphins to icon worship, organized programs, and planned out the Teen Summer Reading activities. And people here (well, except the few who have yelled at me or whom I’ve kicked out) seem to like me, and think I’m doing a good job.

I don’t suck at this. I may never cut it as a ninja, but I am still a librarian. And I love my job.

Jobhunting @ Your Library!

A woman came into the library recently. She looked around the children’s room for a bit, looking mildly perplexed, so I asked if I could help her find something.

“Yes,” she replied uncertainly. “I think so. Do you have any positions available in this library?”

After a long pause, I told her that all the hiring decisions are run through Downtown, in the HR office, and that I don’t really know what’s available here currently. (Which I suppose was a lie; I do know what’s available: nothing.) She asked where that was, so I gave her the intersection. “How do I get there? I live in [town that’s about three miles from here].” I politely tried to explain that I’m not from around here, myself, which started a rather one-sided discussion of the merits of one New England city vs. another.

From there, the one-sided discussion went to how desperately this woman wants to find a library job. She graduated back in ’62 and worked in libraries for a while, and then went on maternity (and it wasn’t like now, with daycare and all those luxuries, she stayed home with her kids until the younger one was 12), and then she went into teaching. She loved teaching; her husband tried it for a little while and “hated it worse’n poison.” He went into sales, he sells .. oh, something, now, on commission only, because what else are you going to get when you’re 70? But she loved it, loved grading the papers and the homework and making lesson plans, oh, how she loved teaching! And she worked in libraries, and loved doing story times and homework help and reading circles. But now nobody will give her a job because they look at her age (which needs to be on some kind of school background check forms, or something), and her teaching credentials are about to lapse and suddenly she needs to take the test every 5 years to stay certified and what’s THAT about.

I told her it’s a very tough job market, especially around here. There are budget cuts all over, branches are being closed, whole library systems are being shut down. There aren’t as many jobs available as anyone anticipated there would be at this point.

But she has 30-some-odd years’ experience working in libraries and teaching and always with kids, always with kids, and now she can’t get anything because of her age, and the Jewish Community Center suggested she try our library, and she wishes she were more religious like some of the folks at the JCC, more active in her temple, but she’s just not. And working in the field—she loves her field and never wants to leave it—for over 30 years doesn’t matter to anybody anymore, they just don’t want her because she’s old.

It’s a tough job market. It takes a lot of people a long time to find a job. It’s hard to get something with too much experience, because they can get a fresh-out to work for cheap. (“But I just want to work; you don’t have to pay me much.”) It’s a really crowded area to be looking; New England is flooded, because we have two of the largest library schools in the country less than 50 miles apart from each other.

“Well, how long did it take you to find a position?” (About 2 years of hunting to find a full-time job.) “I see all these new girls working in libraries now, but I have a special degree in librarianship.” (Yes, most of us do have an MLS; some people have other degrees as well.) “Where did you get your degree?” she asked suspiciously, as if I’d made the whole thing up. (Simmons, I answered.) “oh, Simmons. I went there and I was a French and Spanish major, but I didn’t have a good accent. My teacher said I should go into translation, but I didn’t want to do translation, so I changed to library science and did that. Then after that I went back for education and became a teacher. And now I’m on the sub list at five different schools and nobody calls me because I’m too old. Nobody will hire me; I’m old and dead. I’m moving around, but I’m old and dead and nobody wants to give me a job. Us Simmons girls got to stick together.”

Then a long rant on how Simmons doesn’t do anything to place its graduates, and she went back there and all they did was give some interview tips and restructure her resume and why don’t they make some phone calls? (Um, because it’s a tight job market, and what can they do when there are 50 applicants for 1 position, and 40 of those applicants are from Simmons?) But us Simmons girls got to stick together, you know!

I wish her the best of luck in her job hunt, but I honestly don’t think it’s her age that keeps her from getting a job. I spent a half-hour of my otherwise quiet afternoon listening to her rail on about the injustice of it all. She asked a few more times if we didn’t have any job opportunities (I mentioned that we’re looking for volunteers for homework help, but “nothing” is even less than she’s willing to work for), but didn’t like my answers. Unfortunately for her, this fellow Simmons girl just won’t come through.

New Booklist

A new booklist is up: Humorous Realistic Fiction. Many thanks to the Peanut Gallery; some of your suggestions have been incorporated. Some girl books, some gender-neutral books. Not a whole lot on the boy front, but most boy-friendly literature is more speculative in nature. Those titles will appear on a future list, probably in the next week or two.

In the meantime: thanks, and enjoy!

Appeal to the Hive Mind

One of our Reference librarians has asked me to put together a couple of YA booklists, because teens ask them what they should be reading. This post isn't going to discuss the poor layout of this building that keeps me, the YA librarian, sequestered away upstairs while the adult reference people get slammed with teens wanting to know if the Princess books are better or worse than the Traveling Pants series.

Anyway, booklists. I'm putting together three lists: one sci-fi/fantasy, one humorous realistic fiction, and one dramatic realistic fiction. The SF/F list will be easy, since there's a lot less gender bias in the writing (or at least more equal appeal). Sabriel, Eragon, Ender, Abarat, Z for Zachariah. Easy. Dramatic realistic fiction isn't bad, either--there are plenty of titles for boys as well as girls. Walter Dean Myers, Ellen Wittlinger, Angela Johnson, Jerry Spinelli, Paul Zindel… lots of gender-neutral books.

But I'm having trouble with the humor category for boys. It seems that there's not a lot written with boy appeal that's both funny and realistic. I can think of a mountain of speculative fiction that's hysterical (Terry Pratchett, anyone?), but my list of funny, realistic books right now is very girl-heavy: Louise Rennison's Bridget Jones-esque Angus series, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, any of the Alice books.

So, I appeal to the collective. Can anyone in the audience recommend some good titles for teen boys that are realistic and funny? "Light read" has become synonymous with "chick lit" (which is troubling in its own right), and I’m running into a wall here. Either I don’t know anything (possible) or the current state of publishing for adolescent males sucks eggs (also possible), but either way, I can’t help thinking that teenage boys like to laugh, too. Please groupthink in the forum or by email (brandy at twentysevenletters dot com). Thanks for your help!

The official ALA stance on privacy:

What people read, research or access remains a fundamental matter of privacy. One should be able to access all constitutionally protected information and at the same time feel secure that what one reads, researches or finds through our Nation's libraries is no one's business but their own.

This means that I can’t tell parents what’s on their children’s cards without the children present, what the overdue fines are for, or what books are reserved. (This last one drives my dad nuts, when the library calls and tells him the material he requested is on the hold shelf for him, but they won’t say what it is on the answering machine.) We’re not supposed to check out books on one card that were reserved on another, or allow anyone but the patron to pick up his own materials.

As annoying as it might be for my dad (and others) to not know what materials they’re going to pick up, there are some good reasons for the rules, particularly with non-fiction. If a patron requests some books on escaping from an abusive marriage, the last thing the victim needs is for the abuser to know about it. If a teenager is requesting information on safe sex, abortion, or other sensitive topics, she doesn’t want her parents finding out. By citing privacy concerns, we have a convenient policy to hide behind.

Last night at the grocery store, I was buying coffee, half-and-half, and a box of sugar, because we somehow ran out of all staples at once. The cashier looked at the three items on the belt and said “you know there’s a Starbucks next door, right?” Privacy rights mean I can’t have this sort of interaction—I’m not supposed to comment on anything the patron brings to the counter, because I’m not supposed to notice it. This is all well and good in theory, but in reality, not so much, especially in the children’s room. Little kids really like to talk about the books they’ve chosen—about trains, rabbits, ballerinas, whatever. They want feedback; they want to know they’ve picked a winner. Older kids (and their parents!) want to know “what books do you have that are similar to this one?” If I see a kid come to the desk with some Narnia or Redwall, I want to be able to say, “hey, have you read Earthsea?” And it’s hard for me to contain my happiness every time I see a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth go out the door.

The ALA’s ideas on privacy are great, and I fully support the reasonable expectation of privacy. My objection to it only comes when maintaining that privacy is detrimental to the services we could provide. We bend the official policy on a case-by-case basis—if the patron asks for feedback, if a parent is looking to clean up fines on their toddler’s card, if they’re taking a bunch of books from one particular author and we can think of similar authors.

Yesterday a girl was checking out the second Little House book, and her dad asked "don't you want the first one?" She replied that she did, but it was out. Since they hadn't addressed me and they hadn't said the name of the book, series, or author, the ALA's privacy stance means I should have kept my mouth shut. Instead, I said we had 2 copies in hardcover. Girl and Dad went away happy, and I've officially broken policy. Which makes no sense at all.

How the Grinch Stole Storytime

Due to circumstances beyond our control (specifically, the Rhode Island Grand Jury schedule), we had to cancel both sessions of our Baby Books storytime this morning. We put signs up from Tuesday afternoon (when we found out that we’d have only one person here, not two), hoping to catch most attendees, but no such luck.

At 10:35, I went to the assembled crowd and informed them. They took the news pretty well, though their faces reflected shock, hurt, betrayal. I apologized for the inconvenience and slipped out of the assemblage. Then slowly, softly, I heard singing. Someone started leading the group in the usual storytime songs. And then someone else picked up a book and read it. Another song. Another book. It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes, or bags! This grinch’s heart grew three sizes this morning.

After the impromptu storytime, I overheard one of the latecomers tell another, “the songs were okay, but the stories were just awful, and the reading was so disorganized.”

Old-Fashioned Entertainment

“In a minute [Laura] took one finger cautiously out of an ear, and listened. The hog had stopped squealing. After that, Butchering Time was great fun.

[…]

“[Pa] was blowing up the bladder. It made a little white balloon, and he tied the end tight with a string and gave it to Mary and Laura to play with. They could throw it into the air and spat it back and forth with their hands. Or it would bounce along the ground and they could kick it.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods, pp.13-16

I fully understand that when you lived off the land, you had to butcher a few animals. But… yeeeeech. Once the pig stops squealing, Butchering Time—which I notice gets capital letters—is “great fun”? Dismembering an animal! Yippee! But even on that I suppose I can look the other way (given that I do eat meat, but praise the Great Geometer for conferring aesthetic distance); these people do need to eat, and a sudden flurry of activity around the house would be very exciting to a four-year-old.

But I can’t get past that bladder balloon. “Here, my young daughters! A new toy! It’s an internal organ! Extra-special, just like you: there’s pee in it!”

I won't grow up, unless I become poor

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- British author Geraldine McCaughrean fought off 100 writers from around the world on Sunday to land a daunting literary challenge -- writing the authorized sequel to "Peter Pan."
[…]
The Great Ormond Street hospital in London launched the search for a sequel last year to mark the centenary of the classic and to keep much needed funds flowing when the copyright runs out -- in Europe in 2007 and in the United States in 2023.
[LINK]

JM Barrie donated the rights of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, eight years before his death. Obviously the hospital is now free to do anything they want with it, but they’ve been sitting on it for about 75 years. Three-quarters of a century went by, the original copyright is about to run out, and the hospital is running short on cash, so they’re doing the only logical thing: create a sequel so that they can keep drawing the money from the books, the movies, the franchise.

What I find most interesting is this except from Salon.com’s AP report:

It has stipulated that the new work, titled "Captain Pan" must feature the original characters: the boy who never grew up, along with his pals Wendy, fairy Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys -- as well as the fearsome pirate Hook.
[LINK]

The Salon story is unclear whether the hospital or Barrie’s original donation has set the terms of the sequel. I think they mean the hospital, because I don’t know how else to explain a contract for a Peter Pan sequel that includes Hook—after Peter finishes Hook off in the original book, in a hard battle between the pirates and the Lost Boys. It strikes me odd that any author would say “sure, you can write a sequel to my book whenever you want, but you have to bring the main villain back from a death in which I left no room for misinterpretation.”

The Disney adaptation of Peter Pan never interested me much. I don’t know if it was the story, the color palette, the tone, or what, but it always felt very blah to me. Years passed, and suddenly I was seeing Peter Pan all over, through a number of non-Disney lenses. Christopher Durang’s ’Dentity Crisis, in which the main character (Jane) has a long monologue about Tinkerbell drinking the poison for Peter and all the children in the audience clapping to save her. (“My palms hurt and even started to bleed I clapped so hard. Then suddenly the actress playing Peter Pan turned to the audience and she said, ‘That wasn’t enough. You didn’t clap hard enough. Tinkerbell’s dead.’”) In another play, Sonia Flew, several characters talk about a mother’s love for her children in terms of Peter Pan’s misogynistic roots—his mother, whom he trusted would love him forever and wait for him forever, betraying him by closing and locking his bedroom window, so he could never return. The movies—the live-action Peter Pan, Finding Neverland, Return to Neverland. Laurie Fox’s excellent novel The Lost Girls.

I had to read the original (which, by the way, is called Peter Pan and Wendy—check your local library), and found so much more in it than I’d ever anticipated. The writing felt a little flat at first, but once I’d adjusted to the century-old style, I found an amazing wit under it. (For instance, the dog is named “Nana” because all the other families on the street had nanas for their children, but the Darling family can only afford a dog—so they name her Nana, and the dog acts as the baby-sitter.)

And now there’s going to be a sequel, written over a century after the original. I don’t know how any author will pull off writing a sequel that involves the same cast of characters (especially when one of them has been slain by another, and at least one other returned home to grow up and have children of her own) after so much time has passed. I wonder how the boy who swore he’d never grow up would react to know he’s been sold out due to economic necessity.

Silly Rabbit! Comics are for Kids!

A few days ago, a little boy (maybe 6 or 7) came in looking for comic books. “Something with superpeople,” he asked (he really said "superpeople"!). Anybody specific? “Um… Green Lantern.”

Now, much as I would like it to be otherwise, we don’t really have much by way of comics for kids. And even if I had my way, I don’t know that Green Lantern would ping my radar in buying things. Sure, I’ve recommended some Batman books based on the cartoon, and some other quasi-superheroes, but here’s the thing: I don’t really know a lot of the superhero cartoons.

So I’m looking up the Green Lantern, and nearly everything is flagged as YA or sci-fi. The things that are listed as children’s books are prose novelizations of The Justice League’s adventures. I managed to find a comic based on the cartoon and I’ve requested that for him, and now I get to bask in the glory of a job well done.

I find it interesting that comics are “kids’ stuff”, and yet I had to spend twenty minutes to find a superhero book that’s appropriate for someone under 14.

I Wasn’t Talking to You

I just had my first experience with kicking people out of the library. The computers in the children’s room are technically supposed to be for kids 12 and under, but if it’s quiet we let older kids on. Two girls came in, maybe 13 or 15. They obviously know one of our regulars playing on a computer, and start bugging her about a puffy eye. (“I bet you got beat up. Yeah, someone punched you really bad. You get beat up a lot?”) The little girl denies it all and is getting increasingly annoyed at these bigger girls who keep harassing her. (And it is harassing; they’re not just asking.) I told the older girls that if they couldn’t leave her alone they’d have to just leave.

They quieted down for a little while, then started up again. Quietly at first, so I wouldn’t hear them. But then… “you must get beat up a LOT.” And they started again. So I asked them to leave.

“I don’t care who you’re talking to; you need to go downstairs.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“I don’t care who you’re talking to. You need to go downstairs.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to my best friend.”

“I don’t care who you’re talking to. You need to go downstairs.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I was talking to my friend, not you.”

“I don’t care who you’re talking to. I’ve asked you already to leave [other girl] alone. You need to leave.”

“I ain’t leaving.”

“You need to leave.”

She and her friend finally left, but with much huffing (“I guess we’ll go downstairs and cause a commotion down there then!”), withering looks, and barbed comments, most of which I didn’t catch as they stalked out of the room. She really looked like she was going to punch me.

This is the most confrontational I think I’ve ever been, and I don’t like the feel of it. I don’t understand how people (people half my age, at that!) can be so aggressive and hostile as a rule.

I suck as a ninja.

The comics are coming! The comics are coming!

The beginnings of our new graphic novel collection are beginning to trickle into the library. So far, it’s been an odd mix that’s come in—at least, as odd a mix as it could be, for the order I placed. We’ve got some Astro City nestled on the shelf with Bone, Scott McCloud chumming up to Lizzie McGuire cine-manga (I swear to god I didn’t order this; it was in the paperback collection when I got here). The collection is currently taking up about a third of a shelf. There are 45 titles coming up with a subject of “graphic novels” (tip: this is the official Dewey subject classification—graphic novels. Plural. Use it to search your library catalog!) at our particular library. 18 are currently in (including the three books I just recataloged and moved into the GN section), 16 out, 8 on order, and 1 each lost, damaged, and in transit (meaning somebody elsewhere wants it). 2 weeks ago there was no collection—about 25-30 of these books are brand-new.

We’re waiting on a fair chunk of other books, though they’re not even listed as “on order” yet. I don’t know what the delay is, because the ordering meeting was at the end of January. I think it’s something with budgeting and seeing which branches have money (ours) and which ones don’t (everyone else), and ordering accordingly. Our branch was automatically filled in on some of the Greatest Hits of Comics (Goodbye Chunky Rice, Fax From Sarajevo, extra copies of Persepolis) and a whole lot of manga (Fruits Basket, miscellaneous Clamp titles, Usagi Yojimbo, among others), but since my branch was filled in on the same order card as all the other branches, I have to wait until everyone is cleared for their orders. Once those orders come in, though, I’ll have almost a hundred books in my little hatchling of a collection!

I’ve put up a sign on the shelf announcing the new collection and stating that there is more coming. (I certainly hope there is, anyway.) I also asked for requests. I want this collection to be popular with the teens, and the best way to ensure that is to ask what books they want. That’s my theory, anyway. It seems that the collection is already fairly popular without their input, but it could always be a little more popular.

Unless they ask for more of that god-awful cine-manga.

A few words about TwentySevenLetters.com

TwentySevenLetters.com. It’s the alphabet, of course.

The more astute members of the audience have just cocked an eyebrow and said “waaaaait a minute… the alphabet only has 26 letters!” (The astute copyeditors in the audience cocked an eyebrow and said “waaaaait a minute… ‘twenty-seven’ ought to be hyphenated.” I know. But we were going for visually attractive, and hyphens in URLs? are not.) Anyway, you were asking about the twenty-seventh letter.

I think it’s time we paid proper attention to the oft-ignored, but hardworking, diphthong. Nobody pays much attention to these ligatures, graphemes like æ. And who would? Most people can make do with their fancy encyclopedias, but how many would be willing to give up their encyclopædias? Certainly not Britannica, that’s for sure. Certainly most college graduates are content to be lumped together as Alumni, but wouldn’t they feel better as alumnæ? If a vowel wants to glide and share space with another, who are we to get in the way?

Anyone tired of my linguistic discussion can instead elect to count ‘y’ twice. As both a consonant and a vowel, it certainly does its share of the alphabetic heavy lifting.

Ego Surfing

Back in the days before I got married, my name was Brandy Straus. Or, for those who knew I was fussy and used my middle initial, it was Brandy L. Straus.

I mention this because I harbor the delusion that people from high school actually care what I'm doing now, and in some casual ego-surfing, I realized that I'm a complete unknown on the web. So this post is being backdated about a month to bury it in the archive, where Google can find it and my general readership won't. Because it's not that important and it has nothing to do with libraries OR comics.

Library Ninja

Information is tricky. Even when you know what you’re looking to find, there are tangents and corollaries and side quests along the way. Facts throw up roadblocks, potholes, detours. Fact and fiction gather in dimly-lit rooms to strategize how best to keep their secrets.

They need to be defeated. There is a way.

You need someone to infiltrate. You need someone who will understand the way information works and what it’s trying to disguise. You need someone who can think like a chronological index. You need someone with stealth.

You need a library ninja.

Now, here’s the thing: I’m not a ninja. Not yet, anyway. Right now I’m just another children’s librarian wishing I had fancy weaponry to swing around. But I’m working on my subversion and infiltration tactics, toward the end of developing a strong—nay, enviable—graphic novel collection in my library. And I’m planning to share my trials and tribulations with the world, or at least with both my readers.

So consider this a warning: this will be a nerd blog. The main topics will be comics and public library service. Because I am a nerd. I am a librarian.

So much for stealth.