Sarah the Librarian

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Today there were actually things happening in my schedule. Due to a random alignment of circumstances, I actually got to help grab hold items this morning. Sometimes I'm amazed by how little time I actually spend in the stacks, so grabbing holds is as good an excuse as any to get me doing that. Then I spent an hour in our phone room and double checked that I had the right outline for a computer class I'd agreed to teach for a co-worker at 10. A few months ago we were finally able to offer computer classes to the public again, but there have been numerous scheduling headaches as we get used to offering this service again. The class I ended up teaching wasn't too bad. It was part one of our Computer Basics series, and since I usually teach part two, it was more just reminding myself what information needed to be covered in this particular installment. As usual for a Basics course, it was a diverse group full of questions. One lady even brou...

Tuesday, January 26, 2009 - This is my usual night to work, so I came in at 12:30 as usual. I didn't have any desk shifts this afternoon, so I returned to cataloging, which was interrupted by a few administrative details. In March we're starting a new anime club and our public information officer wanted to run a possible ad design by me, which led me to do a little more research about just exactly what we want this club to be so it does get marketed correctly. Mostly, though, I cataloged some more books that had simply been waiting far too long to be added into the collection. Most Tuesday nights now have programs, so the fourth Tuesday night of the month seems so calm in comparison. Generally everyone who works from 5-9 has a four hour desk shift of some sort. As is usually the case, mine was spent in our phone room. In between answering calls (there was a deadly lull from about 6 to 7) I spent the evening working on some ideas for my Intro to Social Media computer class a...

Monday, January 25, 2010 I forgot to post yesterday, but since it's only yesterday, it's easy to remember what I did. Monday was a very strange day for me because I had no hours scheduled at any of our public service desks, and I also had no classes to teach, programs to lead, or meetings to go to, so I essentially spent the whole day cataloging. As long as I've worked here, we've been behind on cataloging, but lately, with the last few stages of our move into long-term temporary quarters imminent, there's been a push to get caught up so that the backlog of books to catalog doesn't have to be moved yet again. I definitely made a dent in the pile yesterday. Spending the whole day on cataloging also gave me the time to deal with some problem items that I'd been putting off dealing with for awhile, so it was a pretty good day all around, even if I was seeing a little cross-eyed at the end of it.

How did I become a librarian? Well, it's not a terribly surprising story. I grew up the "reader" in my family. It seemed like I always had a book in my hand. My parents would get mad when I'd forget to do my chores because my book got really good and I just couldn't put it down. My aunt happened to be a librarian and I always looked forward to her birthday presents, which were always books I ended up devouring. So far it sounds like I might have always wanted to be a librarian. Not really. Before I knew how to read I wanted to be an artist because I loved drawing pictures with my crayons. Unfortunately my artistic talents never developed much past the stick people stage. Then I wanted to be a nurse just like my mom. Then my 2nd grade teacher nurtured my love of words and started my desire to become a writer, which lasted through most of my childhood. Somewhere along the line, though, I realized that I liked writing for myself a lot more than I liked writing for ...

Last week was one doozy of a week, so it was perfect timing that it happened to also be time for the second annual day in the life of a librarian. I worked on this last week, but forgot to post it, so before it's completely irrelevant ... Monday: started off the week by opening our technology center by myself part of that job is reconciling the register from the previous night - for the first time ever (I don't do this terribly often) the register did not balance & without someone else to watch the desk, I had to hang tight until someone could come help me out while working in the technology center by myself I had the inevitable rush of people who needed library cards/forgot their pin #/had never been on the internet before all at the same time after taking my break, I was shocked to discover that I was scheduled at our circulation desk on the opposite side of the mall that's currently housing our long-term temporary quarters, so I had to hustle over there as...

Star Wars at ALA Originally uploaded by dumbsarah At the last minute I decided to visit this year's American Library Association conference. It just so happens that my college roommate lives less than 10 blocks from McCormick Place, where the conference was held. Add in the fact that it was my first full weekend off since sometime in May, so of course I wanted to spend my time off with other librarians. Since I was only in town for the day on Saturday, I just stuck to the exhibits, but that was enough for me. Luckily, I've been to similar types of conferences before so it wasn't too surprising, but it was still a little surreal to see so many librarians in one place at the same time. The part that was overwhelming to me is that I've now been a librarian long enough that I actually found most of the exhibitors relevant to my work life, but I haven't been a librarian long enough to know how to make the most of that relevance. There were giveaways and prize drawings...

Thursday was the one year anniversary of starting my first professional librarian job. I'd worked plenty of library jobs before, but this was my first full-time gig with real professional responsibilities. I was looking forward to finally having collection development responsibilities and maybe doing some programming. After working in various libraries all through college and grad school and being a book lover since birth, I was ecstatic. My dream was finally coming true. In reality, dreams are never perfect, and while I still think I am incredibly lucky to have found a career that I can see myself being happy in for a long, long time, things have definitely not been perfect. Exactly four weeks after beginning what I hoped would be my dream job (or at least the beginning of a dream career), I, along with the rest of my co-workers was forced to leave the library building at 5PM due to the city's mandatory evacuation of downtown in anticipation of the rapidly rising flood wat...