My stars, yesterday was a crazy day! I was really tired (I didn't sleep well to start with and then had a terrible nightmare), it was pouring rain, and, as always, I have to work the morning completely alone. So much happened the ref grunt I kept got really huge, I may have to do it in chunks and take out the little stuff like newspaper handing-out and printing, etc..
If you don't feel like reading the whole long thing, the bolded parts are the true craziness of the day.
Oh, great, the Internet and catalogue computers are down throughout the system. Of course, there's a bonus to that. I put a sign on the door to tell people about the computers before we opened and the line-up of folks waiting to get in disappeared. And it's very quiet in here now, which is nice. But I can't do much work, because I need the catalogue to either do ordering or weeding. Fortunately, for some reason the info desk Internet connection still works. We must be on a different server.
Hmmm...maybe I'll clean out the half year's worth of old e-mails in my in-box...
No, before you even finish that sentence, I don't know when the computers will be back up.
Thankfully I actually know the Dewey number for the solar system, so I can show you the books.
Wow, the World's Loudest Family has come in but they're not being insanely loud because the mom, son, and daughter aren't all playing on the computers at the same time and yelling back and forth to each other. I didn't know they had any other volume than loud.
If the computers were up, they could look up your library card number at the circ desk for you to use the Internet. But the computers are down. For the whole city. Yes, you could probably go to another city and use theirs, if you had a library card for them. Yeah, that's the rub, the library card thing. I tell him about the Internet cafe (but I'd have to pay, right?) and the recreation centre that offers free service, if they're not on the same server as us.
No boys, none of the computers are working.
I shamelessly plug today's storytime to a mom who's looking through our program brochures. She actually sounds interested, I wonder if she'll come? (She didn't.)
The computers are back up. So much for my nice, quiet morning. And, like there was some kind of Bat-signal in the sky, they start streaming in. Hoorah, the residents of Springertown have managed to survive an hour and 20 minutes without the Internet. Actually, the 2 guys who asked about it earlier never left. Don't you people have lives? Were you going to sit here all day, waiting to see if they came back up? Bleagh.
I'm sorry, we don't have that video about trade unions at the turn of the century.
A man asks for directions to an in-the-middle-of-nowhere northern lake. Hooray for Google. (Okay, I could've looked it up in a map book or atlas, but would it have contained concise driving directions? No.)
The reason the printer isn't printing is because you haven't asked me to put paper in it. Weirdly, she figured out that she had to pay at circ for the paper, but managed to ignore all the signs about the printer being left empty. But you'll have to wait, because I'm clearly helping lake guy, you impatient thing.
Basketball books are over here, boys.
The photocopier is over there, it's 20 cents a page.
And woo hoo, Methadone Man and a buddy have walked in. I recognized his pathetic, droning voice before I even looked up. Thank goodness we have Phil on duty today to kick him out if he falls asleep. The other guard tends to watch problem patrons carefully for a long time before doing anything. He will eventually do something if you ask him to, but he's not Mr. Quick Action.
The guard upstairs will let you into the washroom. (Ugh, please don't take the DVD and book you're holding in with you!!)
Oh my stars, the 3 basketball/solar system boys have been joined by another bunch of boys and they appear to be doing a craft project involving styrofoam balls on our little children's table.
And a big teen boy who must be with them asks for basketball books, too. Are the foam balls going to turn into basketballs? I go over to investigate...
Oh my GOD! They're painting the balls to be models of the solar system! They have paints and a cup of water and library books all over the table! What the hell? I go over and sternly tell them they can't paint in the library and point out that they'll get paint on the books (one set of paints is resting on a book already). When I point it out, the one boy says that the book is his. A quick look reveals a library stamp, but he thinks it doesn't count because it's from another branch. I freak out at them a bit more and at their mom, who's looking at me blankly, but then they start slowly packing up.
A girl asks me where the encyclopedias are. After a bit of probing ("So these are where you look stuff up?") I discover that, in the grand tradition of teachers, her teacher has told her to find out about "famous Canadian" John Humphrey. I've never heard of him, so he can't be too famous. I show her the Canadian Encyclopedia, which has a blurb about him and tell her we can look up stuff on the Internet. She says she's tried that and there wasn't anything. Well, I'll try (I just *might* have a bit more searching knowledge than a 10 year-old). Turns out he wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When I check to make sure we have the right John Humphrey, she asks me if he's the right one. Um...what the hell is wrong with your teacher? She's also supposed to find out when he came to Canada. He was born here, so I guess your teacher wasn't paying attention to the people he was assigning when he wrote the questions. But happily there are a few pages about him online, at least enough to tell about his involvement with the UN. Not that that's not important, but come on - when all you can find about him is a tiny encyclopedia blurb and brief biographies online, how assignment-worthy is he?
She needs the address for a care home and it's not in the Yellow Pages. I'll look it up online, mucho faster.
And that was just before lunch!!