... musings of a too-short girl in the high-stacks world of librarianship
Let's see....nope, there isn't a Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 yet.
Here's how you open something on your floppy. If you hadn't kept the computer running after I told you you were on the wrong computer to open a document, you wouldn't have lost so much time.
Standing beside my desk riffling the children’s booklists, not saying anything, isn’t a great way to get help. Try coming where you’re not in the corner of my eye and speaking to me, it might just work! But since he’s annoying me with the riffling, I ask if I can help. And, sorry, we don’t have any more computer training here at this branch, there’s no funding. The larger branches have some in their computer labs. He smiles ruefully at me when I mention funding. Sorry, dude, it’s the government’s fault, not mine.
Map of Canada
Books about bridges
“There was an author who died recently...and the last word in the name of the book was [I don’t quite catch it] rye. They say it’s controversial, I want to read it.” Fortunately my colleague says Catcher in the Rye, but do you think I can think of Salinger? Anyway, at least I can look it up by title and 25 other people have the same idea as she’s had, so I place a hold for her.
“You’re in jail and there are army men and zombies come...” Sounds like a small person is describing a rather exciting video game to someone.
Oh, whoa, don't stick your library card in the disk drive slot, woman! She's clearly very frazzled, she has about 2 dozen little scraps of paper with notes arranged all over the keyboard and computer desk.
Bus schedules are over there...although it looks like there aren’t any left. You can ask the ladies at the checkout desk.
And another person for bus schedules.
And another one!!! Lotta people taking the bus this weekend, apparently.
This is only part one of the first part of yesterday's shift - after lunch I ran out of the energy to keep track!
Huh, somebody managed to dial the secret number to leave a message before we’re open. I wish they’d fix that. But he’s out of luck, we don’t have any Cole’s notes on Lord of the Flies.
If I want to own this book...can you advise me? Um...go to a bookstore? [Aside to myself: please don’t steal the library’s copy!]
A grandmother brings in a piece of paper from her granddaughter with a title she can’t read. Fortunately, I can read teen - it’s Love the One You’re With by Cecily Von Ziegesar “17 years old, she writes like a 3-year-old!”
Huh, the kid I sent to circulation to get his card checked because it “didn’t work” even though he’d “tried it a bunch of times” turns out to have been banned from the system, probably for misusing someone else’s card for the Internet. That would explain why it didn’t work. The guard tells him to leave, he eventually saunters out.
Grizzled old guy shows me the local free paper’s “sex and romance” headline for V-Day “Look at that – sex and romance. For young people like you, eh? [chortle]”
I hate it when people come in and ask if there are any computers available – you have eyes the same as I do, you can look over there.
Guy asks for an antibacterial wipe, “My hands are a bit sticky.”
Wow, someone requesting “guest” Internet access who is actually a guest, that is, a visitor from out of town.
Oops,I’m sorry, the reason it wouldn’t go to Google was because I typed in Goggle for you. Darn privacy screens make it impossible to help people over their shoulder.
Easy readers are over there by the fire extinguisher. I always love that they made sure to have an extinguisher in the kid’s area.
German-English dictionaries are over here.
The booksale is over here.
A woman asks for a book called The Thin Fine Line, which I can find no record of. She says the cover has a picture of a boy climbing a pole and it’s about India. Sorry, can’t find anything with any of those words that matches that. She says she’ll try and think of the right title.
Colouring sheets are right here.
New Garfield books (new being a relative term) will be with the kids’ graphic novels if we have any, smiley young man. Oh, you found two already, good for you!
A dad read his little girl Eloise at Christmastime in the children’s area and now she’s singing “Eloise, E-lo-ise....” to herself to a happy little tune. I heart Eloise!
Oh lord, my hearing’s going. A girl asks for The Elephant Tale by Lauren St. John. first I hear Dolphin Tale, then I hear Elfin Tale. Happily, I think to look up her name and there it is as elephant. Although it turns out she does have a book with dolphin in the title, so I wasn’t too far wrong!
Sweet smiley boy wants Pokemon comics, too, but they’re most likely all checked out. But because he’s so cute and polite, I go and check the shelving cart for him and find a Pokemon and Garfield bonanza.