Friday night, I went to the library's Festival of Ghost Stories. It was a collaboration event, so the library had teamed with Bloomington City Parks and the Storytellers Guild. The night included creepy tales about ghost-summoning, one great babysitter story (why is babysitting so scary??) and a really crazy story about a childhood cuddle toy that wouldn't go away. It was fun sitting out on the grass drinking cider, and even though the stories weren't terrifying, it was still a lot of fun to watch great programming at work.
One of the things I really like about this program is that it's been a long-established tradition in the community. People expect it to happen. They expect K from AV to get up with his guitar and sing murder ballads. They come ready to accept the silly stories and the occasional creep-fests about rotting corpses. I like the idea of certain programs that make themselves more essential to the community, and I think this is something that at least some families plan around for their Halloween entertainment.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Keep the Customer Satisfied
I've worked a lot in customer service professions, and customer satisfaction is one of my goals as a librarian (even if the terminology becomes something more like "patron" or "client.")
Today a sweet middle-aged lady came in looking for a book called Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch. We didn't have it. I offered to put in a request for purchase for her, but after talking to her for a minute, it became apparent that what she wanted was not that particular book so much as something fun to read with her sister, who was coming in from out of town. I did a quick keyword search for "assertiveness" and then scanned the list for other titles that looked fun (discovering quickly that the only ones that sounded like fun had the word "bitch" in the title, and by the way, it's awkward to say that word over and over from the reference desk) and found one that was checked out. I gave her the call number and she headed to check out, but at the last minute I saw another title that was in. I ran over to circulation, told her the title, and took her back to the shelf, telling her that other books near that one might also be fun. About 10 minutes later, I saw her leaving the library with a stack of books she hadn't had before. I hope she and her sister have fun reconnecting.
A few minutes later, a man came in hoping for a complete list of colleges in Indiana - specifically to the person they would contact for a job. "I know that's a big request," he said, "but a good reference librarian can find anything, right?" Right. I did a search for HR Departments at Indiana Universities, and soon I had a list of universities with links to their HR pages. "Oh, you're good," the man said. "How many times a day do people tell you that?"
Well sir, not nearly often enough. Clearly. (Have I mentioned that I love this job?)
Today a sweet middle-aged lady came in looking for a book called Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch. We didn't have it. I offered to put in a request for purchase for her, but after talking to her for a minute, it became apparent that what she wanted was not that particular book so much as something fun to read with her sister, who was coming in from out of town. I did a quick keyword search for "assertiveness" and then scanned the list for other titles that looked fun (discovering quickly that the only ones that sounded like fun had the word "bitch" in the title, and by the way, it's awkward to say that word over and over from the reference desk) and found one that was checked out. I gave her the call number and she headed to check out, but at the last minute I saw another title that was in. I ran over to circulation, told her the title, and took her back to the shelf, telling her that other books near that one might also be fun. About 10 minutes later, I saw her leaving the library with a stack of books she hadn't had before. I hope she and her sister have fun reconnecting.
A few minutes later, a man came in hoping for a complete list of colleges in Indiana - specifically to the person they would contact for a job. "I know that's a big request," he said, "but a good reference librarian can find anything, right?" Right. I did a search for HR Departments at Indiana Universities, and soon I had a list of universities with links to their HR pages. "Oh, you're good," the man said. "How many times a day do people tell you that?"
Well sir, not nearly often enough. Clearly. (Have I mentioned that I love this job?)
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Genealogy Class 101
Yesterday, after a couple of busy hours at the desk, I attended C's Genealogy Basics class. I've always been fascinated by the methods here, and by the demographics of the people who get into it. It's something that happens a lot in my home town (where we're 15 minutes from a huge genealogy library), and I figure that if I ever end up near home, I will probably end up needing to know about the resources (most of which also come out of my home state).
Unfortunately, the beautiful fall afternoon and the scarcity of parking cut into our class size. Seven would-be genealogists had signed up, but only one showed up. C gave her a basic overview of the resources, and then we spent some time trying to find her family in the Census. Note to future librarian self: most of the 1890 census is missing because it was destroyed in a fire, so if the information you need is in there, you might be out of luck unless you can find the information in veteran records or in the state census. Tricky.
After our student left, C talked to me about the difficulties of hosting a program, particularly free programs. She said that one program was so time consuming to prepare and so consistently under-attended (despite having full registration) that they started charging for registration and then gave the money back to the patrons if they came. She said most people's theory is that if something is free, it will always be offered again, so it doesn't matter if they skip it without telling anyone.
Another interesting tidbit I picked up while helping C clean up: a county official had been pressuring her for a long time to set up a class about county records. He wanted her to create flyers, advertise in the paper, tell reporters about it. C was frustrated because he could have easily reserved a room himself and held the meeting on his own time, but he didn't seem to want to - then she realized that he had been pressuring her to get it in before November - election day. "It's just so transparent," she said. "And it's not like I can turn him down, because we get funds from that and need to have a good relationship with him. But I just feel so dirty! They don't tell you about this stuff in library school!"
Indeed, they don't. The politics of libraries are complicated, especially in public libraries where we're so dependent on funds from the government. It was certainly an interesting, informative night.
Unfortunately, the beautiful fall afternoon and the scarcity of parking cut into our class size. Seven would-be genealogists had signed up, but only one showed up. C gave her a basic overview of the resources, and then we spent some time trying to find her family in the Census. Note to future librarian self: most of the 1890 census is missing because it was destroyed in a fire, so if the information you need is in there, you might be out of luck unless you can find the information in veteran records or in the state census. Tricky.
After our student left, C talked to me about the difficulties of hosting a program, particularly free programs. She said that one program was so time consuming to prepare and so consistently under-attended (despite having full registration) that they started charging for registration and then gave the money back to the patrons if they came. She said most people's theory is that if something is free, it will always be offered again, so it doesn't matter if they skip it without telling anyone.
Another interesting tidbit I picked up while helping C clean up: a county official had been pressuring her for a long time to set up a class about county records. He wanted her to create flyers, advertise in the paper, tell reporters about it. C was frustrated because he could have easily reserved a room himself and held the meeting on his own time, but he didn't seem to want to - then she realized that he had been pressuring her to get it in before November - election day. "It's just so transparent," she said. "And it's not like I can turn him down, because we get funds from that and need to have a good relationship with him. But I just feel so dirty! They don't tell you about this stuff in library school!"
Indeed, they don't. The politics of libraries are complicated, especially in public libraries where we're so dependent on funds from the government. It was certainly an interesting, informative night.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Reader's Advisory: Horror
Today I attended the monthly Reader's Advisory meeting for the library. Each month, they choose a genre and everyone has to read a book in that genre. One librarian presents materials about how to serve the readers of this particular genre and what the librarian should know about the features of the genre, and then everyone gets to talk about their books (which is awesome and makes me feel like I'm an English major again.)
This meeting started with a presentation by P, one of the head tech guys. He had recently reconfigured the library's "Author Alert" system so that most of it is online. Until now, librarians have called people on the author alert list, manually placed holds, and generally had to spend a lot of time. The hope is this new system will be less expensive and more efficient. Patrons can create their own Author Alert list and specify what kinds of materials they want (Large Print, Audiobook, etc.) and then the system searches for new titles every day and sends either an email or a text message to the patron whenever new materials are available from his or her favorite author. It doesn't seem like a perfect system, but it's certainly a step up from they way they have been doing it, with paper Author Alert forms and lots of man-hours. Check it out here (because you might never find it browsing the website - it's a little buried right now): http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/fiction/author_alert.html.
From there we moved into the discussion of the Horror genre by our resident Horror expert, E. (She also brought Halloween cupcakes, which endeared her to me greatly.) E had a powerpoint and detailed handouts for everyone, with sample authors, notable feature and appeal factors for each subgenre of horror. She told us about everything from haunted houses/ghosts, vampire and werewolf novels, psychological horror, and splatterpunk. (I'll probably be steering clear of splatterpunk.) The most important thing to remember when doing RA for Horror is the level of violence, gore, sex, and general terror in the book. It's also one of the harder things to judge unless you have experience with the novel, because NoveList isn't always very specific about what the novel contains. Some people like a little chill up their spine and some people like something that's a knock-down, drag-out gore fest, and you really don't want to give people from one category something meant for someone in the other. E did mention a few other resources that could be helpful for getting more specific content information about books, some websites and some books.
The best part was just sitting around as librarians and talking about the books we'd read - what we liked about them, what we didn't like, what kind of patron might like them. I love the way this library tries to stay fresh and explore new ways to better serve the patrons.
This meeting started with a presentation by P, one of the head tech guys. He had recently reconfigured the library's "Author Alert" system so that most of it is online. Until now, librarians have called people on the author alert list, manually placed holds, and generally had to spend a lot of time. The hope is this new system will be less expensive and more efficient. Patrons can create their own Author Alert list and specify what kinds of materials they want (Large Print, Audiobook, etc.) and then the system searches for new titles every day and sends either an email or a text message to the patron whenever new materials are available from his or her favorite author. It doesn't seem like a perfect system, but it's certainly a step up from they way they have been doing it, with paper Author Alert forms and lots of man-hours. Check it out here (because you might never find it browsing the website - it's a little buried right now): http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/fiction/author_alert.html.
From there we moved into the discussion of the Horror genre by our resident Horror expert, E. (She also brought Halloween cupcakes, which endeared her to me greatly.) E had a powerpoint and detailed handouts for everyone, with sample authors, notable feature and appeal factors for each subgenre of horror. She told us about everything from haunted houses/ghosts, vampire and werewolf novels, psychological horror, and splatterpunk. (I'll probably be steering clear of splatterpunk.) The most important thing to remember when doing RA for Horror is the level of violence, gore, sex, and general terror in the book. It's also one of the harder things to judge unless you have experience with the novel, because NoveList isn't always very specific about what the novel contains. Some people like a little chill up their spine and some people like something that's a knock-down, drag-out gore fest, and you really don't want to give people from one category something meant for someone in the other. E did mention a few other resources that could be helpful for getting more specific content information about books, some websites and some books.
The best part was just sitting around as librarians and talking about the books we'd read - what we liked about them, what we didn't like, what kind of patron might like them. I love the way this library tries to stay fresh and explore new ways to better serve the patrons.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Moyer, M. (2009). Talking with Gary Giddins. Library Journal, 134(16), 55. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
This article from Library Journal was actually an interview with a leading scholar in jazz music. The librarian was discussing what artists are essential for every library to own in their jazz collection, both old and new, and what the place of public libraries is for introducing people to jazz music. I was reading the article to help me as I prepare to start a collection evaluation project at MCPL, but one of the most interesting answers for me was "With libraries, it's great to know the music is there. But how does the library foster it?" Giddens argued that unless the library brought in speakers, made displays, etc., having jazz in the collection is just storage.
The rest of the article was very informative for the project purposes - a great list of essential artists, lesser-known artists, and new artists. Giddens's list will become part of my evaluation list, and includes Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and others.
This article from Library Journal was actually an interview with a leading scholar in jazz music. The librarian was discussing what artists are essential for every library to own in their jazz collection, both old and new, and what the place of public libraries is for introducing people to jazz music. I was reading the article to help me as I prepare to start a collection evaluation project at MCPL, but one of the most interesting answers for me was "With libraries, it's great to know the music is there. But how does the library foster it?" Giddens argued that unless the library brought in speakers, made displays, etc., having jazz in the collection is just storage.
The rest of the article was very informative for the project purposes - a great list of essential artists, lesser-known artists, and new artists. Giddens's list will become part of my evaluation list, and includes Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and others.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Book List
I've completed by book list for Teen Read Week, and I think it's lovely. Have I read most of the books? No. But NoveList recommends them, and I think they look good, and I slipped on a couple of books I love. It turned out well too, with clip art of musical instruments. I'm excited to see it in the display.
Here's the final list:
Here's the final list:
Books With Beat: Novels About Music and Musicians
So Punk Rock and Other Ways to Disappoint Your Mother by Micol Ostow
Four suburban New Jersey students from the Leo R. Gittleman Jewish Day School form a rock band that becomes inexplicably popular, creating exhilaration, friction, confrontation, and soul-searching among its members.
Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway
While trying to score a date with her cute co-worker at the Scooper Dooper, sixteen-year-old Audrey gains unwanted fame and celebrity status when her ex-boyfriend, a rock musician, records a breakup song about her that soars to the top of the Billboard charts.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn
High school student Nick O'Leary, member of a rock band, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex-sweetheart. What begins as a spontaneous ploy turns into something surprising and real in the course of one night as Nick and Norah roam Manhattan, listen to bands, confront past hurts, and hurtle toward romance.
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim's fantastic life takes an unforeseen turn when rollerblading delivery girl Ramona Flowers makes her appearance. Told in graphic novel form, this book starts as a story about slackers in a band and becomes a manga-kung fu fantasy adventure that spans five books.
The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld
As an ancient evil stirs beneath the streets of New York City, infecting rats and people like a plague, five quirky teens come together to form a "New Sound" band whose music seems to have paranormal power. This creepy novel comes from the best-selling author of Uglies.
Pay the Piper by Jane Yolen
When Callie interviews the band, Brass Rat, for her school newspaper, her feelings are ambivalent, but when all the children of Northampton begin to disappear on Halloween, she knows where the dangerous search must begin
Vandal by Michael Simmons
The love-hate relationship between high school musician Will and his older brother Jason is fueled by the abuse Will suffers at Jason's hands but a devastating accident changes the everything for the boys and their family.
My Fine Lady by Yolanda Joe
The Student Conductor by Robert Ford
Returning to the orchestral communities of Germany just as the Berlin Wall falls, Cooper Barrow begins studying under the cruel and capricious maestro and concentration camp survivor Karlheinz Ziegler, an endeavor that is compromised by a psychologically complex relationship with a beautiful fellow musician.
Rock Star, Superstar by Blake Nelson
When Pete, a talented bass player, moves from playing in the high school jazz band to playing in a popular rock group, he finds the experience exhilarating even as his new fame jeopardizes his relationship with girlfriend Margaret.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan.
Rock and Roll Love by Misako Rocks
When the daughter of her host family takes her to see a rock band, Japanese exchange student Misako falls in love with the lead singer, Zac, a groupie-magnet and notorious flirt, who gives her mixed signals. Zac and Misako become friends, but Misako wants more, and her romantic feelings threaten to ruin her summer and her friendships back in Missouri, including a possible romance with an attainable boy.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Reconsideration
Today I got to hand out my first reconsideration form to a patron who was unhappy with a book on our shelves. Interestingly, the book was not offensive because of the sex, violence, or language it contained. The patron was incensed because the book was "inaccurate" and had no place on the shelves. This was the book:
The thing that was most interesting about this is that the book had the word "conspiracy" in the title, which would have made me take it with a grain of salt anyway. However, we respectfully gave him a form to fill out, and the book will be submitted for consideration, where a committee will read it and decide whether it will remain on the shelf. It probably will. (I think most books do.)
I also got held up with a patron today who was telling me all about how we are ruining our eyes with the color of lights we have in most places - specifically in the library. Apparently, we should have full-spectrum lights to save ourselves from going blind. She was wearing dark glasses and wanted to know how the lightbulbs around the desk were changed because we needed to get rid of that horrible yellow color, which was nothing like daylight. After I'd been there for a few minutes, one of the other librarians called me over with a phone call. Bless B in circulation for asking me to come and "run an errand" for her by the drive up.
"That patron is difficult to get away from," she said, "so I'd like you to come back to the drive up for a minute."
"Oh, okay," I said, "I'll be right there to help you with that."
When I went back, she introduced herself and then had me wait by the drive up window until the patron left. What a wonderful group of people librarians are.
Other than that, it was a fantastic day. I got to help lots of people with their computers and copiers, placed lots of holds, amazed a few people with my powers of finding things, restocked the staff picks shelf, and started a list for Teen Read Week, "Books With Beat." So far I've found seven novels that center around teens and music. 3-8 to go.
The thing that was most interesting about this is that the book had the word "conspiracy" in the title, which would have made me take it with a grain of salt anyway. However, we respectfully gave him a form to fill out, and the book will be submitted for consideration, where a committee will read it and decide whether it will remain on the shelf. It probably will. (I think most books do.)
I also got held up with a patron today who was telling me all about how we are ruining our eyes with the color of lights we have in most places - specifically in the library. Apparently, we should have full-spectrum lights to save ourselves from going blind. She was wearing dark glasses and wanted to know how the lightbulbs around the desk were changed because we needed to get rid of that horrible yellow color, which was nothing like daylight. After I'd been there for a few minutes, one of the other librarians called me over with a phone call. Bless B in circulation for asking me to come and "run an errand" for her by the drive up.
"That patron is difficult to get away from," she said, "so I'd like you to come back to the drive up for a minute."
"Oh, okay," I said, "I'll be right there to help you with that."
When I went back, she introduced herself and then had me wait by the drive up window until the patron left. What a wonderful group of people librarians are.
Other than that, it was a fantastic day. I got to help lots of people with their computers and copiers, placed lots of holds, amazed a few people with my powers of finding things, restocked the staff picks shelf, and started a list for Teen Read Week, "Books With Beat." So far I've found seven novels that center around teens and music. 3-8 to go.
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