The poetry workshop last week went really well, from all accounts. 6 kids (teens) attended, and all were very bright, interested students, mostly from the homeschool community. Poet/Author/Teacher/Friend Extraordinaire Steven Withrow led a fantastic workshop and whipped the kids up into a frenzy—one mother called the next day to report that her kids were very excited to write more poetry as their literature assignment that morning, and to ask what Steve’s rates are to teach classes for the homeschoolers. They’ve been in touch with each other now and it looks like there’s something happening in the fall. She’s excited, he’s excited, and I get to bask in the glow of bringing them together. (Seriously, he’s a great teacher and I wish I could magically turn this into a full-time opportunity for him because he’d be amazing at it. So I’m happy it’s worked out so well.) And now I find myself blogging someone else’s news without asking first (I can edit/delete if necessary!—just email me), but it’s all very cool and exciting to me.
The college admissions workshop this past Monday went very well, also. A week prior to it, we had only one person signed up. As of an hour before showtime, while I was scrambling to arrange seating and tables, we had eight families, with a total of 16 people signed up. We set up chairs (18; it was what we could fit with an aisle for the projector to shine through) and kinda-sorta hoped that not everyone would show. When I went back down at 8:30 to help break down the room, there were a few more chairs jammed in the back, and a couple of people sitting just outside the door where they could hear (and mostly see) the presentation. And I was told the a couple of people had left before the Q&A part started. All told, we had about 22 people show up. This is a big improvement over the zero in October (after the same marketing push), so I guess this is just a Spring Program.
Let’s see, what else… we’re tentatively planning things for the summer reading program, and we’re talking about doing a multi-session craft program. What’s we’re thinking of, specifically, is making a paper-mache alligator (like this one, for example), or something similarly long (whale? giraffe? dinosaur?), so we can spread the kids out a bit. We can make the form in advance, then have the kids cover it one week and paint it the next. Then we have a nice big mascot for the Children’s Room, and they get to make a big mess two weeks running. Sounds like a win-win to me.
In other what-I’ve-been-up-to-lately news, I’ve been reading (a little), sewing (a little—but I did finish a major project), and watching Food Network Challenge (a lot). About half the FNCs lately have been on different kinds of cake and candy sculpture, and I’ve been watching these with an eye toward which things I think I could actually do in my own kitchen. I tried some of it the other night (drops of food coloring on clear poured sugar—aka hard candy—to make a stained glass effect. Turns out that it can make a pretty neat stained glass effect… if you’re using it to make windows, and not for eating. It looks a little blah (it’s a better effect if the sugar is still really hot, and hasn’t started to set yet), and while the candy hardened, the coloring didn’t, so picking it up stains your fingers and feels a little weird. Live and learn. However, the drizzling in very thin lines makes a really cool lace that one guy on FNC used to make ivy on a trellis and another used for trees. To make trees, he drizzled the hot sugar around the inside of a bowl, and then stuck the two spheres together. I’m thinking I can do this (and I tried, to poor results; the sugar wasn’t hot enough when I started) to make pretty dishes in which to pile candy. I’m very excited now, and I’m trying to hunt down a couple of books on sugar work. Maybe if I ever get tired of this library gig, I’ll become a pastry chef. If only cakes weren’t so boring…
Okay, okay, I know I said I’d catch up, and then I just haven’t. It’s been really busy, and I haven’t had a chance. Consider this (and subsequent posts) the wrap-up of All That Has Been Going On.
Last week—my first week back from vacation—was school vacation week for all the public schools (and some of the private schools) in the area. This means we had kids in here, on the computers, from open to close. Actually, on two occasions, we had kids in the library until a little past closing, which is always loads of fun. (It means staying late, filling out and filing incident reports, and giving parents the Evil Eye.)
In the one case, three brothers were dropped off mid-afternoon, and they didn’t get picked up at 9 PM when we closed. They called their dad, who came to get them at 9:15. The next night, the same boys (plus one more brother) were encouraged to call their parents 45 minutes before we closed. They insisted they didn’t need to. They were encouraged to call again 15 minutes before closing (6 PM), and they again refused. Guess who was here at 6:15 giving the father the aforementioned Evil Eye. But—here’s the exciting part—when the four boys walked outside to their dad’s car, we found 3 more boys who hadn’t been picked up yet, so we trotted them back in to call. In their case, the grandparents had lost track of time and were very apologetic, but the boys—the youngest, a 10-year-old, especially—were anxious and fidgety, less fear of being forgotten and more fear of being in trouble with the head librarian here. (I did make a case on their behalf that, even though these boys are here almost every weekend and every vacation day, this is the first time they haven’t been picked up at least 15 minutes prior to closing.) They boys were picked up by 6:30. On the bright side, I’ve banked another 45 minutes of comp time for my trouble!
A going-on-4-year-old boy who attends story time religiously (and I do mean religiously—he sits and gazes rapturously at whoever’s reading the stories that day) noticed I was gone on vacation for a week. His mom made sure to tell me “we were on our way here when D___ said, ‘we haven’t seen Brandy in a long time! I want to say hi! Where did she go?’” He then followed me around the fiction collection for 10 minutes or so, while I looked for historical fiction about ancient Asia (China, Japan, India, Korea).
Yesterday’s storytime involved a new favorite (A Boy and His Bunny), and a couple of old favorites, mostly because I didn’t feel like picking many new books. One old favorite in particular was Don’t Let Pigeon Drive The Bus, which I always find hilarious because of how expressive the pigeon can be in his wheedling. I made it to his bargaining phase (“I’ll be your best friend! I’ll give you five bucks!”) with the kids giggling, and then read out his begging, grumbing “I bet your mom would let me!”. A three-year-old girl in front laughed a little and said “no, she wouldn’t!” (A little earlier in the storytime, this same girl irritably shushed the child next to her for talking while I was reading the books. This girl is too many shades of adorable to count.)
Last week was absurdly busy--school vacation week and all. Some cool things happened, and I'll catch up on them (I hope) over the next couple of days. But for now, a little extra hilarity to make the day go faster!
I have a College Admissions program running tonight. The guy will be here soon to set up, and the program starts at 7. I'm supposed to get 15-20 people into a room that comfortably seats 10-15. But don't worry, it'll be easy! Because the Friends booksale starts Wednesday, and they're setting up today--so they've TAKEN ALL THE TABLES. They didn't tell anyone they were taking all the extra tables around, but they took ALL the tables in the big meeting room, and all the tables from the small meeting room, AND all the tables from the computer lab. And the two tables that we have up here that we use for craft programs.
Our building director came up with some lady and took one of the round tables--those low little kiddie tables--to bring down for a meeting that's in the room before me. This is the only table we can use tonight, as it’s the only one not already in use.
I can't move into the computer lab tonight because there's another meeting in there, with 20-25 people. Obviously the big meeting room is right out. So... I have to find the second rack of chairs (the first will be used for that other meeting) and set up in the small room, and lord knows how this guy will set up his laptop and projector... But without the tables in there, I’ll have extra space for chairs! Hooray!... I think.
What? Tear my hair out and cry? Why, yes, I'd love to!
So, I’m back from my trip! My family is doing well, and White River Junction, VT is a quaint little town with almost nothing to do, but in addition to having the Center for Cartoon Studies, there’s a fantastic restaurant called the Tip Top Café. We had two dinners and a lunch there. I considered moving in.
Anyway, I’m back home now, catching up on some things I missed. I’m due back at work in about an hour and a half, but I’m almost afraid to go in: there are Bad Things Afoot. Nothing is definite, but it seems that summer will not be kind to my library system. This article in the Providence Journal (free login required; if you don’t feel like making an account, bugmenot.com is your friend) explains more thoroughly. Don’t feel like reading it? Some highlights, then:
Library officials proposed closing six library branches and laying off workers to bridge a $900,000 shortfall in the fiscal year 2007 budget.
Library officials are also considering severing all branches and handing them over to the city.
The $900,000 in savings would come from staff cuts. Library officials refused to estimate how many employees would be laid off, but total salaries paid by the library would drop by one-fifth, from $5.5 million to $4.5 million. The library employs about 180 people.
The new fiscal year starts July 1, which will be the day that Everything Changes For Us.
I do feel like maybe I shouldn’t be blogging this at all, since I do try to stay pretty positive about my job in general. I will say that my branch is one of the ones that will stay open, with extended hours, so it would make sense that I’ll keep my job. But, I’m also, I think, the newest librarian to have been hired, so it would make sense that I’m on the chopping block. I really don’t know what to think, but I’m sure it will all play out in the next six weeks—we should know more of what’s happening by the end of May, when the Strategic Planning Committee finishes work on their, uh, strategic plan.
In brighter news, I’ve already got most of the summer reading program planned out on paper, for kids and for teens. I might have to rethink it, if we’re going to be getting all the kids from the other two neighborhood branches as well, but we have a start, anyway. I might also have to scrap the whole thing if it turns out I’m out of a job, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
In other brighter news, tonight is our Teen Poetry Workshop. To my knowledge, we have five kids signed up, but I don’t know if any others registered while I was away. Guess I’ll find out later. As of last week, nobody at all had registered for the College Admissions program we’re holding next Monday—if that holds, I’ll cancel it and save the presenter a trip over.
Tomorrow morning we leave for five days on Long Island, visiting family. Wednesday night we'll do a brief stop-over here at home before heading up to White River Junction, VT, where we'll stay until Saturday.
Three states! Six days! I'm on vacation! (Um, so there probably won't be any updates until I get back.)
Today’s Saturday, the last day of an unpredictable week. We were pretty busy all week long, which seemed strange given the nice weather—why were all these kids suddenly inside doing homework when the weather is finally clear, sunny, and in the upper 60s? Mine is not to question, I suppose.
Wednesday was a particularly interesting, if busy, day. I got hit with a couple of big questions, both of which were very interesting. The first was a boy (maybe fifth or sixth grade?) looking for information about Russia. “Are you doing a report on Russia, or do you need some more specific information? Leaders, exports, plant life…?” This tiny bit of basic reference interview opened a floodgate, and he explained his project fully for me, so that I could better help him find what he was looking for.
Turns out, his great-great-uncle (I think; I missed the progression of “greats”) came to the US from Russia somewhere around 1900; family history is a little fuzzy on the exact date. The relative never said why, but with the little research they’d already done, they learned that the relative was part of a relatively huge emigration from Russia and the Ukraine, and the boy wanted to know what was happening in Russia around the turn of the (last) century.
This is an interesting question, because there is no easy answer. Before I even started helping him with the research, I knew there’s no easy answer, because my sister spent a good long time a few years back researching this same question (our dad’s grandparents came from the Ukraine, and would only ever say “we left that place” when questioned) and ultimately came up vaguely empty. Finding some kind of answer was tricky, and I don’t think I really gave the kid the answer he wanted, but we at least got him pointed in the right direction, I hope. After piecing together information from multiple books and encyclopedias and making some logical leaps to fill in holes, the best we came up with is that the 1890s in Russia were very hard on farmers, due to crop failure (thanks to prolonged drought) and falling prices (thanks to a tanking economy), so the farmers were unhappy and ready to leave. The economy made it so the non-farming peasants couldn’t afford to buy the food—and it didn’t help to be wealthy, because there wasn’t much food to buy, anyway. Add to this that Russia was being governed, more or less, by Czar Nicholas II, who lacked the political knowledge, understanding, and maturity to rule effectively, and the country was falling apart as a result. World War I started in 1914, and Nicholas took control of the army in 1915. The Russian Revolution is officially dated as 1917, but I think it’s safe to say discontent was building for the 15 or 20 years prior.
I still don’t know exactly why there was such an exodus from Russia, but I think there are some answers mixed in there. At the very least, there are some leads, but short of asking people who left (most, if not all, of whom are dead by now), I don’t think we’ll ever really know for sure what was going on.
Interesting, huh? Well, it was to me; maybe it was the combination of knowledge-seeking youth and Russian history as it impacts my own life. But an hour or two later, another child came in, a girl around the same age as the boy. She’s looking for books about internment camps in the US during World War II.
This one should be a pretty easy question, as the last five years or so have brought a fair amount of light to the internment of Japanese-Americans and we have a handful of books on the topic. Only her question isn’t that simple: she knows about the Japanese-American camps, but she’s looking for information about other people who were rounded up at the same time. Specifically, she’s interested in the three camps in Texas where German-Americans and Italian-Americans were held.
German-American internment camps. This is completely new to me—as the Japanese-American camps took me by surprise when I learned about them back in college, this threw me for a loop. There are no books in this library yet about German-American camps, and in fact there are only a couple of books written on the topic, and most of those are out of print. Most of the information we found was on the Internet (sites like this and this were useful). Encyclopedias had no references to any of the camps by name, no reference to them in talking about the individual towns, nothing under America’s part in WWII… it’s like it never happened.
I spent a long time on this question, even using the reference collection downstairs in the adult department. (Turns out they don’t have the encyclopedia of WWII that I thought they had; in fact, the children’s reference collection is more useful when searching for historical information.) I found a couple of references to the camps from Japanese-Americans who’d been held there, but very little about the camps themselves.
It’s questions like these that make me really happy to be a librarian. Sure, my job is to help kids learn to do research and answer their own questions, but sometimes kids have the most fascinating questions, and long after they’ve gone home I’m still mulling the questions over and looking for more information, just to satisfy myself. It turns out that both these kids were working on school projects, but the project was to choose something from family history and learn more about it—in the boy’s case, it was his great-great-uncle’s emigration from Russia, and in the girl’s case, her (German) grandfather had been held in, I think, Crystal City. Both kids were very interested in their topics, in a way that I haven’t seen kids absorbed by homework maybe ever. Their teacher knows what she’s doing, and deserves much applause for this type of research project.
The glow of Wednesday helped me through Thursday, when a class of 25 fifth-graders (plus one teacher and one aide) came in completely unannounced, and the teacher expected me to explain the catalog (which we only got up and running on Tuesday, which is another joy of the week—switching circulation/OPAC vendors from Horizon to Millennium, a switch that means nothing to people who don’t work in libraries and aren’t subject to the wonkiness of new catalogs and software) and help all 25 kids with their research. Did I mention that every kid had a different topic? Luckily my coworker returned from an errand (buying ice packs to have on hand for when kids tumble off the benches in the storytime area) after about 15 minutes to help, and from there were were juggling questions about the War of 1812, slavery in the American West, various Native American Tribes and/or Native American art, pioneers, the physical geography of the Great Plains and how it affected potential settlers, and I can’t even remember what-all else.
The teacher was not at all apologetic about springing this on us; in fact, she was irritable with us because she’d apparently tried calling in the morning before we opened, and we didn’t answer the phone. (Duh, we weren’t open, so nobody was here.) Rather than call again when we were open, she just brought the kids over, and then was cranky that we couldn’t (a) train them on the brand-new catalog that we haven’t been fully trained on ourselves, (b) help them with their every question, and/or (c) provide new library cards for the kids who don’t have them yet without a parent’s signature. Somehow these things were all our fault.
At least I’ve had the happy of Wednesday to see me though. Let’s hope it can get me through today—we open in 15 minutes, it’s about 15° cooler than it’s been (plus overcast and threatening rain), and we’re significantly understaffed today, so there’s no way I can call downstairs for back-up. Wish me luck: in 20 minutes, I’m going to have about 30 ten-year-olds in here wanting various things. I think today I’ll lay down the law early: if I have to tell a kid to keep his voice down/not throw things/stop hitting the other kids/whatever, he’s off the computer for the rest of the day, full stop. It might make the day easier—or at least more entertaining for me.
But Wednesday! Wednesday was a great day to be a librarian.
