TwentySevenLetters / B

A brief moment of happy

This week has been one of those very busy weeks—lots of questions, lots of fetching, and lots of post-holiday, turkey-induced sluggishness through which to get it all done.

As usual, probably about half the questions we get are people coming to the desk with a paper in their hands, and they ask us to fetch them a book. Or many books. Or everything on this list of 20+ titles. What’s important to note is that they never try to find it themselves—they walk through the door, give us the paper, and say, “I need this book.” Most of these people will continue to stand at the desk and wait, even once we’ve walked to the shelf. They are completely uninterested in knowing how to use the library themselves; the library is, to them, just a slow, clunky delivery system.

An hour ago, a woman came in with her daughter and asked where we had the card catalog, because her daughter would like to find a book. I showed them the catalog computer and walked the girl through the pull-down menus to find the “title browse” option, and waited while the search results came up. She looked at the screen, scrolled around a little, and tried to puzzle it out. “What does ‘jpb’ mean?” Mom asked. I explained that it stands for “juvenile paperback,” and showed them where those are. Sadly, the book they were looking for is out, which I hadn’t realized when I glanced at the catalog, so I showed them also how to request it from another library. Mom and Daughter were very excited to have used the catalog and at least found a listing for their book. I was very excited to work with patrons who honestly want to use the library, not just have things magically brought for them. These sorts of patrons make me happy.

I have no words

4 PM. The phone rings.

“Good afternoon; Children’s Room.”
[someone talking in the background.]
“Good afternoon; Children’s Room.”
[more background chatting, some laughter, then:] “hello?”
“Good afternoon. Children’s Room.”
“COAST 93.3 wants to pay your business’s expenses this holiday season!”
“Um.. what?”
“COAST 93.3 wants to pay your business’s expenses for one month! Groceries, gas, bills.”
“I don’t think that—“
“We’d like to pay all your expenses for a month, if we catch you listening to COAST 93.3’s holiday music between now and December 24!”
“You’re aware that you called the public library, right?”
“We’re calling all the small businesses in the area.”
“You’re aware, though, that this is the Children’s room of a branch of the Providence Public Library, right?”
“We’re calling all the small businesses and [something mumbled chirpily] deliver the message!”
“If you’d like to talk to someone—“
“COAST 93.3 thanks you and have a good day. [Long pause.] Hello?”
“Yes, hello?”
*click*

Comics want to be educational!

Today's Stone Soup comic. As much as I hate the word "herstory," this strip makes me very happy. I'm a nerd. But we all knew that.

Fans of this particular comic should check out virtually any of Jim Ottaviani's books, but particularly Dignifying Science, which is a collection of short comics about female scientists. Many of them also had their contributions marginalized or ignored just because they were women. Dignifying Science isn't about the scientific advances as much as about the sociological barriers they were up against. Read it. It's good.

As for this particular Stone Soup comic: I did, in fact, Google Mileva Maric, and came up with this from Wikipedia. Some of the information in the comic is just speculation, apparently, but what little I've read so far today is very interesting. (Some of it smacks of conspiracy theory, but that's the Internet for you.)

Read comics! Learn stuff!

Smile!

I think I’ve mentioned before that there are two brothers at the pre-school storytime who never, ever smile. I’ve honestly wondered if maybe they have some kind of problem with facial muscles, because their expressions never change. Ever. These two brothers come to storytime nearly every week, and in weeks when the crowd is small, it’s very hard to get an idea of how successful the books have been.

A couple of weeks ago, the younger one cracked a tiny hint of a smile. I thought I’d imagined it, honestly—a split-second of amusement, in a crowd of 10 other kids, is hard to really be sure of. But then he wanted to check out three of the five books I’d read. And he smiled (fleetingly) again.

I didn’t see them last week, but they came back in today. Their babysitter (who all this time I’d thought was their mom) said that they have a new baby in the house, and that’s why they missed last week. I congratulated both boys and bestowed Big Brother status on the younger one.

He made a monkey face at me, jutting out his lower jaw, then grinned. Then hid behind the babysitter and made another monkey face. The sitter laughed. “He’s flirting with you,” she told me. Monkey face, grin. “He really likes you a lot.”

This makes me happy. They may not smile or laugh or clap their hands if they’re happy (and they know it) at storytime, but at least one of them really likes coming.

And as flirtation methods are concerned? I think monkey faces are underrated.

Teen Read Week, come and gone

Teen Read Week was a couple of weeks ago. This is the week where libraries are supposed to pull out all the stops and really do it up for teens—programs, give-aways, speakers, parties.

We did none of that.

Because of the poor response to the summer reading program, our reduced staffing levels, and the cuts to our hours, I was told that I couldn’t do any real programs—nothing that would take me out of the children’s room for any real length of time, anyway. I had permission to do more passive programs, though—a DIY murder mystery (written over the summer, with a response rate of nil) and a book review thing. The book review "program" was just a flyer asking teens to write up a mini-review of anything in the YA collection ("mini" meaning "about 50-100 words"—a short paragraph, really) and they’d win a prize. That’s it. Hand in anything and get a prize. Easy, right? I gave away lots of prizes in the three weeks I let this run, right?

Nope. Not a one.

After some early angst, I finally realized something: It’s not me. It’s not that I’m planning crappy programs that the teens want nothing to do with. It’s that the teens in this particular area are completely uninterested in library programs for a variety of reasons. Many go to the Hebrew Day School, where the school day is 8-5, so I can understand why they’d want to just go home at the end of it. Many of the public-schoolers are involved in after-school sports, so their days end up about the same length. Some, of course, are just too cool for the library.

What really drove this point home was that another branch (one that does have great teen response) did a city-wide Teen Read Week writing contest, with the winner getting a $50 gift certificate to the mall. From the 10 branches, there were 46 entries. Of those 46, there was one from our branch, and none from the branch closest to us. I think this might just be a bad area to try to get teens involved in programs.

On the one hand, I don’t want to give up, but on the other—well, I’ve tried pretty much everything, from writing workshops to speakers to computer games they’re playing anyway, and nothing has gotten any response. I might take a stab at a craft program, but I’m not holding my breath.

I haven’t seen October circulation statistics yet, but the good folks in circulation tell me that teens are checking out the books at a good clip. I’m sure it helps that we got 30 or 40 new titles in the past two weeks. (Some were supposed to be for school Summer Reading lists, but better late than never… right?) The face-out shelf isn’t emptying as quickly as I’m used to, but we’re nearing the end of the first quarter of school and I’m sure the pace has quickened. With another 80 titles still on order, I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of the kids again soon.