I Love Childrens Librarians...

Dunnnn Dun, Dunnn Dun...  More Books Need Augmentation Apps...

Yesterday, the quarterly, biannual, whenever they feel like it, Childrens Librarian Management meeting was held at my branch.  Needless to say, I was really looking forward to it.  One of my old branch coworkers emailed me a week before to say that she was coming in extra early to say hi and catch-up aka gossip.  She even brought me a little goody bag with a bacon flavored lollipop.

I ended up getting stuck on the desk for the whole duration, 3 straight hours because the assistant branch manager had to set up the web cam for their teleconference and had to be present during the whole thing.  The video came through just fine, but surprisingly a good majority of the librarians are near retirement age and they had a hard time hearing the presentation.  I could only imagine the whole room going, "We can't hear it," "What did she say?"  "Can't you turn the volume up?"  It stressed out my manager so much that he had to take a break outside.

When I came in to work today, my branch Children's librarian was so excited to show me one of the things she learned in the meeting: the 2013 Guinness World Records Book augmented reality app.  Granted it only works on a handful of pages and it is actually pretty wonky.  I tried it on the branch's iPad and then on my Android tablet and both had their own issues but overall it's pretty damn cool.  My favorite pages were the dunking parrot and of course the shark one --- "DEEP BLUE SEA... THEY ATE ME!  A EFFING SHARK ATE ME!!"

Me getting paid to play with stuff at the Info Desk.

I'd make a horrible "Library Yes-Man"...

I am on the verge of declaring an all out war on the administration in my library system.  They are taking the library I love and running it into the ground.  The sad thing is, is that it seems that I am the only one against their plans.  Well, until recently.  I made two open comments posted on our internal blog directly questioning our library director's motives and reasoning.

After the second comment, my coworkers wanted me to check my voice messages because they wanted to see if I got a call from the director.  I learned after leaving my first comment, that trying to talk to the director would only end in a never-ending game of phone tag.  It seems that my second comment is actually getting a reaction from the rest of my coworkers at other branches.  They seem to be in agreement with my statements and I hope that this will lead to some changes.  No matter what I post on this blog, no matter what some readers may infer from my posts, I love the library and I will fight for the it and librarianship.

I posted the comment using my log in so my name was posted with it.  The first two responses that followed were made anonymously from others working at two different branches.  I can understand why people would be hesitate to post their opinions under their own names, they have become "institutionalized."  They've been working in the library system for too long and/or they're worried about retaliation from admin.  Quite frankly, I've had enough of it.  Libraries have been screwed over enough by outside powers, I'm not going to sit around complacently while library upper management does the same to us.

I'm fairly certain that I have been blacklisted by upper management and HR so I honestly do not care about burning bridges.  In fact, when my library friends warned me to "not burn bridges," I could only reply with, "What does it matter if that bridge doesn't lead anywhere?"

Mardi Gras in the Library: Librarians Gone Wild...

When the childrens librarian walks up to you and hands you some beads to wear, you can't say no.

EDIT:  You don't know what I had to do to earn these beads... you'll probably see it in the next episode of "Librarians Gone Wild!"

Damn you Oreo Library Commercial!

✓ - visit from the fire department
✓ - patron fight/beef
✓ - calling the police from the info desk
✓- visit from the cops

So my favorite library commercial has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can say it started last week when a brat pulled the fire alarm.  Yes, I am completely justified in using that word because if you are old enough to walk and talk, you should know not to pull fire alarms.  While we were waiting outside for the firetrucks, my coworker pointed out that it probably turned in to positive reinforcement for them: Pull a fire alarm, get to see a firetruck (or two in our case).  As one patron pointed out, "at least you can count this as your fire drill."

Then this week, a patron came up to the info desk where my supervisor and I were spending the last 30 minutes before close.  He told us that earlier a patron sitting next to him at one of the internet stations threatened him after he asked the guy to take his cell phone conversation else where.  It must not have been that threatening if he waited until he finished typing up his document and printing it to tell us to call the police.

My supervisor called the non-emergency line and passed the phone to the guy.  While he was talking to the dispatcher, the accused came up to the desk to tell us his side of the story, he pretty much said the other guy started cussing him out the instant he answered his phone.  I honestly do not remember hearing a loud phone conversation when I was on the desk and it was a typical slow and quiet night.  But whatever, the accused said that he would wait in the lobby for the police to come.

I was worried that we would have to stay after closing to deal with this patron beef but the police were pretty damn quick and they came in force.  It appears that it was also a slow night for them as well, since 4 decided to stop by the library.  The accuser told them that the guy flashed a knife at him, they searched the guy and looked for it in the lobby and bathroom but there was no knife to be found.  The next morning I also did a search of my own, there's only so many places you can hide a knife in our small library.  The police couldn't really do anything, so they just took everyone's contact information and told everyone to play nice and left.  As one of them walked by the information desk, he said, "Uh-oh drama in the [little rich town] library."  All I could reply with was, "I know right" and roll my eyes.  This was probably only the second time the police have been called to the library.  The only other time was during the last weekend for absentee voting, the lines were really long and voters' tempers were really short.

When all 4 officers were walking out, it was like the commercial was being reenacted in front of me, one of them brought up the commercial and he whispered to his colleagues:  "You guys have to stop fighting, we're the cops!"

Oreo Library Commercial... Best Super Bowl Commercial Ever??

So this was my first time watching the Super Bowl with my library people, this was also their first time watching a game this season...  Needless to say, there were a lot of side conversations like, "Why did that guy run into that group of people, why didn't he just run around them?" "Why didn't he catch the ball it was thrown in his direction?"  Thankfully, I wasn't extremely invested in the game, alcohol does that, so it turned out to be a good time.

But the instant this commercial came on, the whole room was quiet.  It was instantly agreed upon that this was the best commercial of the night.

My Super Bowl Supplies

Thank goodness I got my MLIS for this...

I kid, I kid.  I have three straight hours off the desk and our lobby was looking pretty dingy with all these rampant leaves.