Library Ninja
Brandy Danner is a librarian specializing in young adult services.
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Poor manatees!
A woman came in a week or so ago. Conversation was as follows. (Italics are things I wanted to say, but didn’t.)
PARENT: My son is going into second grade, and needs to bring in a fact or two about an extinct animal.
ME: Sure, I can show you where those books would be. Do you have a certain animal in mind? Dinosaurs, mammoths, the dodo bird…?
P: I’d like him to do something on manatees.
ME: Manatees aren’t extinct now, are they?
[Did something happen overnight that I should be aware of?]
P: Aren’t they endangered?
ME: I think they are, but that’s not the same as extinct. I can give you a few books on manatees if he’d like to look at them anyway, but the extinct animal books—
P: He needs facts on an extinct animal, and I’d like him to do manatees.
ME: But they’re not extinct.
P: They’re endangered!
ME: That’s not extinct. They’re still swimming around.
P: But they’re endangered! He can use that for his extinct animal report!
[Endangered means there aren’t many of them left. Extinct is when there aren’t any more. These are not the same thing.]
ME: Here are some books about manatees. On the other side of this shelf there are books about dinosaurs, and we have some books about other extinct animals.
P: He can use manatees! Endangered animals turn extinct!
ME: Well, some do, and there may be books here that are old enough that the animals have gone extinct. But once a species makes it to the endangered list, there’s an effort to bring their numbers back up. That’s what making something a protected species does. Like the bald eagle.
P: But manatees are extinct!
[This again?]
P: I want him to do his extinct animals report on manatees, because we just saw them in Florida!
[Was it wearing a sign that said "I am the last manatee, and I am lonely and ill"? Did it commit suicide before your very eyes?]
Slow night
School starts tomorrow. The library is very, very empty. I came back from dinner a week ago, and the clock says it’s only been 2 hours and ten minutes. Egad.
[Time lapse while I try to come up with something, anything, to say]
It’s now 7:30, and we’ve just gotten a bunch of people in. One boy is looking for specific books on the fourth-grade reading list. Another wants the study guide to Hatchet. A third wants A Year Down Yonder, and I guess she plans to read it tonight before bed, and maybe on the bus in the morning. Then I got called on to troubleshoot a computer where the keyboard wasn’t working. (Solution: keyboard and mouse were plugged into the opposite jacks. How the mouse worked is a bit of a mystery to me.)
Last week’s teen events went well enough. The D&D group had 14 kids. The Teen Movie Night (Pirates of the Caribbean) had 9. The henna demonstration had 23, including some staff members. (I have a dragonfly this time.) And my book club—my poor, lonely book club!—had one girl. A girl who was obviously there because her mom made her go. A girl who is, technically, too young to be coming to my teen events (she just turned 11). But—one girl. On the bright side, she liked the book (So Yesterday), and had read another book (Uglies) by the same author (Scott Westerfeld), so we made the best of it. Talk about one, then the other, then back to the first, similarities, differences, how would Hunter and Jen act in Tally’s world, etc.
I inadvertently scheduled the September book discussion for the 29th, which happens to be during Banned Books Week. So, I figured I’d do a banned book. The problem, though, is that a lot of the banned books are fine for high schoolers, but if I’m going to have middle schoolers attending, also, I’d need something a little different. So I’m going to do 2 discussions instead. For the middle schoolers, we’ll be reading Fly By Night, a fantasy about a world where books are banned because information is dangerous. The high schoolers will be reading Geography Club, which is a high school GLBT/Pride-type group that they call the Geography Club so that “outsiders” won’t be tempted to join. Interestingly, this book isn’t banned because of the GLBT content. It’s banned because in it, teens “engage in high-risk behaviors.” Well, you say, that’s no surprise, in a teen book about sexuality. Yes, but the “high-risk behaviors” in this case aren’t sexual. The teens find each other online, in a chat room.
Yeah.
Tomorrow’s plan involves making flyers for the book discussions (with the heading “Be Subversive! Read banned books!”), and writing a letter to the middle- and high-school teachers about the book discussions. I’m told that, in the past, attendance at book discussions improved when the teachers offered extra credit to the students who read the book and attended the discussion. Sadly, the “read the book” part had to be added on. There’s going to be a meeting here with something like 30 of the teachers on September 20, and the library is putting together individual folders of information for them—about our collections, our resources, assignment alerts (in other words: teachers, TELL US when you’re assigning a major project), and other information. It seems as good a place as any to promote the book discussions.
Moving and programs and books (oh my!)
After some significant delay, I’m finally writing up the events of the past week. I know you’ve all been sitting with bated breath, just waiting for my scintillating update, so here it is! Just for you!
After staying up far too late and packing into the wee hours of the morning, we started officially moving at 7:30 am on Saturday. Our movers… well, they left much to be desired. In our last two moves, the movers had no problems at all with our boxes of books and kitchen supplies—in fact, the last set of movers picked up three big book boxes at a time and marched out the door. This time our book boxes were smaller (because we didn’t have any more of that same size and were mostly using boxes from the liquor store), and the movers complained that they were all too heavy. Then they started making snide comments about how many boxes of books we have. And don’t even get me started on how they felt about moving the comics boxes… if you’re moving around the RI/MA area, I would not recommend these folks at C**** Bros. I’m kicking myself for not going with the last company we used (Benny’s Movers), which was fantastic, but seemed like they’d be more expensive (since we’d have to pay round-trip travel for them), but they were just so much faster than these clowns.
Anyway, once we finally got rid of the movers, we were able to start unpacking. I started in the easiest place possible for me: the bookcases. Before I get carried away talking about how great I am for unpacking so quickly, let me give proper kudos to Summer for her help. Summer answered my irresistible siren song of an email that said “Come over and do work! Unpack my stuff!” So, kisses! (And feel free to come over this weekend and see how it looks with MORE stuff unpacked!) The books are all on shelves, the dishes are in cabinets, clothes are in closets/dressers, and we’ve been able to cook real food in the kitchen already. We’ve only got a few more boxes remaining to be unpacked (plus some buckets of stuff that just need to be stored), so we’re moving along in that regard. Progress! Hooray!
Monday was the All-You-Can-Read Buffet, which was awesome. About 20 kids showed, maybe a couple more. There was one boy who waved me over not to ask for food, but to ask if we had a dictionary handy, because "they've used this word four times, and I don't know what it means. They're on a mountain, so I think it's some kind of mountain geography, but I'd like to look it up anyway." (Incidentally, the word was berm.) My favorite kid was the boy who came in and immediately gorged on pudding, mac & cheese cups, soda, cookies, and chips. 2 hours in, he complained of a stomachache. At the end of the day, he filled out his program evaluation, rating the food 2/5 and leaving the comment that we "need better food, candy and more types of soda." (We had 5 kids of soda, but I was only putting out 2 bottles at a time, and I KNOW he had some from every bottle that came through the door.) Very much "the food was lousy and the portions too small." Anyway, it went well and I'm very excited.
While I’m in the habit of kudo-ing people who did my work for me, I’d also like to praise one of our teen pages here. While I was setting up, Jordan wandered into the room and asked if I needed help, so I sent him to mix up a batch of Kool-Aid in the big thermos. He came back a few minutes later and put the jug on the table, then went to find cups, napkins, spoons, and all that good stuff. Offhandedly, he remarked that when he was late coming back from his break, he’d blame me. “Uh,” I said. “You’re on break? And I made you do a bunch of stuff?” So I went back to the clerks and explained that I’d stolen him, he’d be late, and it was my fault. They suggested he stay and help out, which was perfectly fine by him. Everyone was happy! Jordan was a big help, running food over to hungry (and stupid!) teenagers, microwaving cups of EasyMac, and generally being a great employee. Unfortunately for me, his shift ended at 2 pm, and the event went until 7. At 1:00, he called home to tell his mom he was planning to stay the rest of the day as a volunteer, because he was having fun working. !!! So he worked an extra 5 hours for no pay and was a huge help to me. Go Jordan! (I made sure to thank him for his help and tell him how much I appreciated his efforts, and I also made sure to tell the head clerk (his direct supervisor) and the Children’s Librarian (Head Clerk’s boss) how helpful he was, and how much I appreciated that he volunteered his time to help me.)
Next week is the end of the Dungeons and Dragons summer campaigns, Teen Movie Night (Pirates!—I technically can’t publicize the name of the movie outside the library due to licensing restrictions, but it’s Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightly in a swashbuckling adventure), the second henna program, and a book discussion (So Yesterday, by Scott Westerfeld).
Oh, and an interview with yours truly ran in the local paper for this week. It’s not online, so I can’t link it, but I just thought I’d mention that I’m famous.
Locusts, and other business
We had another meeting of the Dungeons and Dragons group here yesterday. This is the third session I’ve been here for, so I thought I knew what to expect. The last two sessions had 14 kids—5 in the 12-14 range and the rest are 15+. There are 2 girls, one in each age group. They eat a bunch of chips and stuff.
But yesterday caught me by surprise. The group swelled to 21 boys and 1 girl. 7 were under 14, so the ratio was about the same. In two hours, they consumed 2 bottles of soda, a gallon of lemonade, a gallon of iced tea, a box and a half of cookies, and three and a half bags of chips. (The halves were just what was left over after last time.) We’d have given them more, but it’s all we had around—we were somewhat unprepared for the size of the group.
One of our pages (who runs the D&D group) did the best he could, but once you put 22 teenage boys together in a room, they’re going to be loud. I turned a somewhat deaf ear to it, I admit, because there wasn’t much we could do about it. At the end of the session, our page turned to me and asked, “when did D&D become cool?”
In other news, I’m moving on Saturday, and I’ve begged, borrowed, and stolen more boxes, since what we had, we filled, and the bookcases are only ¾ emptied. I hope to finish the bookcases tonight, if we have enough boxes this time.
And my All-You-Can-Read Buffet is on Monday. I think someone else is going shopping for me on Thursday, to acquire all the food we’re going to need. Right now, it looks like we’ll have about 15 kids, and I’m probably looking at close to $100 worth of food, before we even get to the end-of-the-day pizza party. Yikes.
I’ve compiling ideas for fall and winter programs. Another of our pages asked about random craft programs, so I’m looking at things like glass etching, marble magnets, duct-tape accessories, and sock puppets, among other projects. I’m also planning some food programs—chocolate-covered snack foods, make-your-own French-bread pizzas, and maybe even candy sushi, just because I think it’s hilarious.
Lastly, I’m thinking of creating a MySpace account for the teen area of the library. I need to look into it more, to decide what sorts of things I’d be able to use it for, but several of our teen pages assure me that area teens will add the library to their Friends list. So now I just need to look into that, but our internet connection is being unreliable today. Maybe that research will be tomorrow’s project. (Anybody know anything about it that I should know before I start?)
Not much to do
As far as I can tell, I’m caught up on everything I need to do.
My programs are in hurry-up-and-wait mode—waiting for performers to get back to me to confirm dates, waiting for the program to get a little closer so we have an accurate registration count, waiting for time to pass to set up for the programs.
That’s very boring, but it’s all I can do.
So while everything else is done, I’m doing other random, invented projects.
In the past two weeks, I’ve ordered more than 50 new books for the collection (mostly fiction, but some non-fiction and graphic novels, also).
17 of the first 28 are already here and on the shelf (or not, depending how quickly they went back out).
On my way out yesterday (at 9 PM), I submitted another 24 orders; someone in tech services tells me she’s already processed 23 of them (the last one is out of stock with our supplier, so she’s searching elsewhere for it).
I’m thinking of buying the tech services people (all two of them) flowers and candy, and kissing the ground they walk on.
I think I love them.
In order to make room for all those new books, though, some old ones had to go.
The teen fiction collection hadn’t been weeded in… well, ever, from the look of it.
What’s cool about this new place is that the consortium has a script online that will query the catalog for certain criteria—in my case, teen fiction in this particular library that hasn’t circulated in three years or longer.
The list it spit back was 320 titles long; 9 of them hadn’t circulated since the ‘80s and another 54 haven’t left the building in the last 10 years.
I did keep some of the books on the list, particularly if it was part of a series or had something else to recommend it, but for the most part—that’s 300 books that won’t clutter my shelves anymore.
That feels good.
Upcoming programs: there’s a teen read buffet in two weeks, where teens come in, read for 6 hours, and we feed them all day long (and finish with a pizza party).
Seems very low-stress to me, but then I haven’t done it yet… it was originally supposed to be tomorrow, but by the time I found out it was penciled in on the calendar, it was too late for me to start promoting it.
I’ve picked movies for the next three movie nights (August: Pirates of the
Caribbean; September: The Breakfast Club; October: The Ring) and made up flyers.
I’ve booked an educational consultant to come in and talk to high school juniors and seniors about the college essay and what admissions officers look for.
(Yes, this is the same guy who did the college admissions programs at my old library, with a new presentation.)
I’m working on booking a mentalist, but he’s out of town for a few days and I’m not sure if his schedule works with ours.
I’m tentatively planning a costume party for the week before Halloween.
And did I mention that I’m moving in eleven days?
And we’ve barely started packing, and we’re still working on throwing things away?
And we don’t sign our new lease until tomorrow?
And that I’m keeping all my work stuff calm and collected because I can control work but I’m freaking out on the inside about this move? Because I am.
