Creepy Clowns, Forever Creepy...

"Make me a bicycle clown!"

My aversion to clowns was not grown from a horrible memory of a children's birthday party gone awry.  It's just that I have never found them funny.

Big shoes -- "so what?"
Squeaky red nose and gaudy outfits --- "meh."

Even as a grown-kid, my stance on clowns is still the same.  During the pre-show of every Cirque du Soleil I have been to, I have always sat in my seat hoping and praying that they wouldn't come near me and try to make me a part of their act, I don't care if you're French-Canadian, you're still not funny!

Anyway, I must have come across this book awhile ago hence the horrible resolution from my old Blackberry.  How this book survived numerous rounds of weeding we will never know...

Finally! Someone outlames those Corny Library Videos....

EPA... you make me LOL.

Behold, the answer to anyone outside of the librarian field who calls you out because they came across a lame public/academic/whatever librarian-produced video on YouTube, there ARE SO MANY out there.  There's only a few that are original and well-done, the rest are raw with embarrassment but I won't link to those. Unfortunately, people will attribute one bad library video(librarian/library) to the whole profession.

You can now proudly retort that the EPA is now the lamest governmental department.  So relish in the moment and go make fun of your EPA friends! 

Cutter Classification Makes Me Want to Cut Someone...

Last night's lecture was brutal.  3 and a half hours of Cutter.  I'm not quite sure what the professor was thinking when they expected to go through Cutter AND Dewey in one lecture.  This wasn't just a brief glossing over either, it was an introduction, then full explanation and lecture on how to classify and encode any item.  I hate to admit it, but I think taking Cataloging and Classification in an intense, compressed summer session was a mistake.

This is the first time myself and most of my classmates have ever delved into the reason or rhyme to the Cutter System and it's never ending-schedules and tables.  The few that work at the campus library had a leg up, I on the other hand have no experience whatsoever, I'm more of a Dewey kind of guy.  Of course all you academic people are down with Cutter, while most public libraries are hardcore Dewey.  I can kind of see why people swear by one or the other.  I liken the situation to people who are vehemently against dating people who are steadfast in their beliefs; democrat vs republic, cat vs dog-person, etc.  If I ever were to date another librarian, first I would have to find out if they were down with Dewey or LCC, or dare I even say BOTH, and second, I don't think it is possible because the sheer awesomeness of two librarians together would be too much to handle.  To make matters worse, I was sitting there thinking that I could be at Comic-Con instead...

How to make Library Staff Meetings even more dreadful...

"How can staff meetings get any worse?" you ask, well I'll tell you how!   
TL;DR You spend the majority of meeting time on a complaint from an irrational patron who disrespects staff.

When our branch manager handed out the meeting's itinerary (exhibit 14.a example of Librarians hate trees), there was a collective sigh/grunt of disappointment by the circ staff.  The info side showed no response.  What was circ having a fit over, well it was over the printed email complaint from the devil spawn patron.  This guy is the epitome of an a-hole patron.

The gist of his email complains about how the circ staff comes over to help when he's FAILING at the self-checkout.  He finds it "discourteous and disrespectful," I've witnessed first-hand his blowing up when someone points out that he has miscanned an item and he didn't notice, patrons never notice, they just continue scanning and wonder why only 1 out of their 8 items checked out.  He goes on to mention having "a couple of very pointed exchanges with staff about it."  Pointed - yes.  Exchanges - not really when it's all one-way with him talking down to staff.  He suggests a "refresher in courtesy" for staff and he's upset that "some taxpayers (and their small children) are treated more courteously than others." One Rules of Circulation which I have not delved into --- When a patron refers to themselves or other patrons as "taxpayers" it is accompanied with a complaint.  He goes on to say that if staff was trained this way "I will just shut up and stop re-training them." 

He has blown up on 5 different circ staff, two of which are managers so it's not like he's always being "helped/disrespected" by a disgruntled staff member which do not exist at my branch.  There is nearly a total of 25 years of library experience among his victims so it is not as if they are still tyros of the circ desk.

The branch manager broke us up into 3 groups, I was with two of my info friends and unfortunately the assistant branch manager was also in our group which is like having a group project with the teacher's pet --- no fun to be had.  Although she has also witnessed one of his "retraining sessions" and acknowledges he is an ass.  We spent over a freaking hour on this douche patron.  We were asked to answer three questions: "What does this customer dislike?" --- LIFE  "What is he asking for?" --- A position as circ manager to train us  "Can we accommodate him?" --- Does restraining from punching him in the face whenever he disrespects my coworkers count?

It was a complete waste of time.  Of course management kept saying, "We're not saying that you aren't doing your jobs properly."  Really?  Well their assuming this is a rational patron who has a rational complaint is implying that we don't know how to do our jobs, a monkey could do circ work and monkeys are also known to throw feces... hold on, I think I'm on to something here.

The Avengers Trailer...

via SciFiMania.com

The first Avengers movie trailer via Gizmodo.

Oh man, I just caught this and I watched this 3 times in a row and I get more excited each time.  Hopefully the hype will be worth it, unlike 'Sucker Punch.'

The trailer will be out this Friday with the release of 'Captain America.'

Library Banhammer

For the past few months our branch has been frequented by a mid-20's homeless guy.  He's been dubbed "the young porn dude," as to not confuse him with the "old porn dude."  This new guy likes to bring in a pint of ice cream for his porn perusing.  We've had several patrons complain about his hygiene or lack thereof, but that there isn't much we can do about that minus a few discrete drive-by's with the Febreeze bottle.

He has recently been using other patrons' library cards to use the public internet stations past the allotted time.  He probably thinks of himself as a hacker, when in reality it doesn't take much to "hack" when you can enter in random library card numbers that still use the default password of '1111.'  I am not sure why he hasn't been talked to about this already.

I did a quick search and brought up several charges which includes unlawful entry, destruction of private property, and two counts of assault on a police officer.  He confronted by Info BFF after showering in the men's restroom.  He walked out dripping wet and when he saw her giving him the evil eye from the info desk he walked up to her and started talking trash.  Unfortunately, I was not working (damn Cataloging and Classification class!) but another info worker stepped in.

Last week we found out he was arrested for public urination outside of a different library.  On a side note, my coworker-friend came across a "pee spreadsheet" that denotes the time and location of said urination zones on library grounds.  He was promptly banned from that library, unfortunately it wasn't a system-wide ban... yet.

Rex Libris: Bibliotecher Remix Part 3

I love LED's.  I have swapped every possible light on my car to an LED format.  What's not to love about them; they're bright, last a long time, take less power, and are relatively cheap.

I only managed to burn myself once using my beginner's soldering kit.  I am finishing up my second Rex statue and I am still trying to get this soldering technique down, thanks YouTube!

Since I have not used a paintbrush since grade school, I choose the easiest option when it came time to paint --- acrylic markers.  These things are amazing.

I'm pretty satisfied with my first edition.  For the second one, I painted the barcode scanner and wire in silver for better contrast against the black suit.  My next revision will be to sculpt the head to make it look like Sterling Archer (LLLAAAAANNNNNAAA!)  and maybe to re-position the barcode arm pointing upwards.

The Library Thief.

Last week I got a text from a coworker-friend that another coworker caught one of our teen volunteers stealing a Yu-Gi-Oh card from my cubicle.  I was sitting in the middle of my Classification & Cataloging class so I received all the real time updates VIA G-chat.

Apparently it was this kid's second day to volunteer.  My cubicle is on Main Street too, it is right off the main walkway from the library to the backroom so it's in the open, it's not one of the off in the corner cubes.  The coworker that saw him asked him what he was doing and he just replied, "Just admiring."  She asked him if he took anything and he just poker-faced it and lied to her.  She went to the youth manager who is in charge of teen volunteers and told her.  Of course being passive aggressive librarians, neither youth staff asked him directly.  My C.F. told me that they both acted like they didn't want to deal with it at all.  The youth manager asked her, "Does he (referring to me) even care about the card?"  Really???  Is that how we are going to handle thefts now?  We only do anything if the item was of any value to the owner.  We had one witness and if you looked in my cube, you would see a whole section hanging loose because it was the cornerstone to which I started taping my collection up with, he was also caught a second time in my cube.

My C.F. said that I probably don't care about the card which is true since everything I have posted in my cube is stuff people have left unclaimed from their returns.  But still, she tried to reason with the manager that if he's willing to brazenly/stupidly take a gaming card what isn't there he wouldn't take?  We all know that stealing Yu-Gi-Oh cards is a gateway theft, next thing you know he will be "stealing" moldy book donations from the Friends, and then he'll be boosting cars from the staff parking lot!

The Circ P.I.C. got wind of this after the second time he was caught in my cube, and he went to the Info P.I.C. and she asked my coworkers for the details and then promptly fired the guy.  The two youth info people got upset that they weren't consulted at all, not sure what other outcomes could have come from it.  "Okay, so you got caught stealing once, don't let us catch you again---now go shelve these books."

When the kid's mom came in to pick him up she didn't act at all surprised when she found out he was fired for stealing.  If you know your kid is becoming a kleptomaniac, wouldn't you let the volunteer host know????  We could have made arrangements and he still could be volunteering.  Hell, if he really wanted the card he could have asked me for it and I would have given it to him.

Dear Library People...

I found this little gem taped to a book in the drop last week.  When I first saw a piece of paper attached to a book, I instantly thought it was a note that a patron lost a book and this was its replacement, which is NOT the way we handle replacements.  Patrons should also not drop cash in the bookdrop thinking that it will magically apply to their account's late fees.  It doesn't work that way and until the library accepts online payments, stop trying avoid the walk of shame and please come inside the branch.

Anyways, back to the note, after reading the note I thought that this is an example of great parenting.  Unfortunately the jaded library work side to me thought, hmmm, maybe this is a new scheme to avoid paying fees.  I wasn't the only one who thought this after I emailed this to my coworker-friends.  The reactions I got were: "How cute," "Go mom!," and "That's pretty funny, but I'm so cynical so I instantly wondered if it was a trick to get the fines removed."

So Miss Danielle, I was able to remove any associated fees, unfortunately, I was not able to let Ted know how sorry you are.