Sandy Children's Book Relief

If anyone like me is still looking for ways to help out victims of Hurricane Sandy, the organization Urban Librarians Unite is holding a book drive for children's books. Many public library collections were decimated. And since many NYC libraries are acting as community centers, and a safe haven for affected families, they could use help. Donating to the book fund is one way to get involved.

http://urbanlibrariansunite.org/2012/11/05/sandy-childrens-book-relief/

Hospital Stays are not my Cup of Tea

My partner J recently donated an organ to a family member for transplant, as a life saving measure. I was lucky enough to be able to stay with him in the hospital for the surgery and the hardest part of his recovery. Unfortunately, because the family member and hospital reside across the country from us, J needs to remain out of state for the next month or so for home based recovery.

I thank my lucky stars that J and his family member came through the surgery without a hitch. The nurse working in the OR kept their family and I updated every couple of hours as to the progress of the two patients. Everything went as planned.

J came out of surgery and slept much of the next 12 hours and was actually in good spirits the 12 hours after that. Then the anesthesia wore off, and despite intravenous pain medication, he was in a hellish amount of pain. Things were up and down for the next week. Sometimes, he would feel well enough to walk and eat a bit of "red" Jell-O. Other times, it was all I could do not to strangle the well-meaning staff for opening the door every 5 minutes to draw labs, take vital signs, and most infuriatingly of all, change the barely filled trash at 3AM.

This is how hospitals work. Everyone has their job to do and tasks to complete like any other job. But it is infuriating to see someone I love, who is in pain, only get a few moments of desperately needed sleep at a time because someone needs to check something off a To-Do list. Sometimes all I could do is hold his hand, kiss his forehead, and alternately lay siege to the nurse's station. Those were not my finest hours.

We had some angels with us. A few really caring staff members to help tend to the pain with dignity and compassion, and others to motivate (from gently prodding to full on reality checks). Those people are the one's that I really credit with the fact that J is now out of the hospital and recovering on his own. They got him to walk, and to eat, and told him that it was okay to relax in spite of it all.

To many of the doctors, though they did their jobs well, he just seemed to be an outcome. They pushed him too hard too fast and extended many of his hardships. So if any of our angels read this blog, however improbably, thank you. Thank you for being human and real and treating us the same. Thank you for the ice chips, the hot packs, the extra blankets and popsicles you did not have to give. Thank you for caring!

J is staying at his family's house and is now recovering nicely, a little bit closer to normal every day. His family, the transplant recipient, was released but following some setbacks was re-admitted to the hospital. His doctors believe they are minor/routine complications that are easily fixable. And he does seem to be improving with treatment. But the setbacks still wear on all our hearts, J's especially.

I am back at home now and several thousand miles from J. So I cannot be there to hold his hand through the hard times. Thank god for cell phones and video call apps. There is nothing to do now but for all of us to put one foot in front of the other and hope for the best. I cannot wait for J to come home safe.

To Knit the Fanboy Hat

I learned to knit in college. Neither of my grandmothers knit nor does anyone else in my family. My mother claims that my great-grandmother used to knit and crochet, and tried to teach her at one point but it didn't take. Unfortunately, great-gran died when I was a baby, so I was never able to reap her knowledge or even to find out if she really enjoyed it.

I am a self proclaimed nerd, geek, fan-girl, and gamer girl and I was lucky enough to find J who is all those things in male form. I was also lucky enough to find a kindred spirit in college who I could not only discuss my different scifi fandoms with, but who was willing to teach me to knit as well. I will always be greatful to her for this. She showed me the basic cast on/off, knit, and purl stitches and how I could make a really awesome Dr. Who scarf if it took my fancy.

Having been a frustrated painter for most of my angsty teen years, (fan art was hard to market in your teens without benefit of modern day Internet) I found that knitting satisfied my creative impulses. I could take it everywhere with me and it wasn't as messy as paint or bulky as a sketchbook. And past initial surprise at seeing such an "old-fashioned" activity, most people didn't ask me to explain myself past what item I was making.

As it seems to be with all my hobbies and artistic pursuits, I got away from knitting a while after I graduated college. I didn't pick it up again until I went to library school. That's when I discovered the knitter's haven, the yarn shop. My local shop had all kinds of soft and squeezy fibers to fall in love with and I developed a small stash.

I took another short break until I moved in with J, and we started having in-depth dialogues over the directing and writing merits of Joss Whedon. I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and he loves Firefly. Any friend of a Browncoat know that there is a very famous cunning hat that one of the main characters receives from his knitter mother. It is absolutely ridiculous and too fun for words.

So for Christmas, I will be knitting this for J. I took J to my local yarn store that I had never been to before, and my face lit up at the knitter's table and candy colored skeins of fiber. I could see a light bulb go on in his brain as I asked him to squeeze the yarn I bought. The yarn did not interest him personally, but I feel like he now understands a bit more about me. Now if only he'd start wearing a black leather duster.

E-book Demos at the Library

I have recently joined my library's e-book team. I spend a few hours each week showing patrons how they can check out free e-books and downloadable audiobooks from Overdrive on the library's website. We set up a table with various e-readers and tablet computers, to show people how to download the books onto their different devices.

The library staff has just recently taken over this project (it was previously done through contractors) and I think it is really taking off. Admittedly, most of the patrons that come up to our table think that we are advertising the devices themselves.

"Are you giving these away?" and "How much are you selling them for?" are frequent questions. I even had one patron complain that he did not think we should be advertising e-readers in the library because "people should be here to read books." When I explained to him the function of the e-book table and that it does promote reading books, he seemed mollified.

I've found that I really sort of love the e-book table. I get to learn how to promote the library's e-book collections and I get to play around with the different devices myself. I especially enjoy encountering patrons who either have no idea that the library offers e-books and are impressed, or patrons who are aware and disapprove.

A lot of people still believe that the Internet will be the death of libraries. That readership of books will go down because "that information can be found online easier." Many people believe that library staff should be the guardians at the gate, holding back the harmful onslaught of technology and the damage they think it will do to literacy. This is turning out, as many librarians have been saying for years, not to be true. Libraries are adapting as they always have. We are incorporating technology to provide a wider range of access to materials.

I enjoy explaining that current studies, (and certainly our own circ statistics) are baring out the fact that e-books actually increase paper text circulation. When a patron sees a title that may have 15 or 16 holds on the print text to 1 or none on the ebook, they'll often checkout the ebook. Conversely, say they search the catalog for an ebook from an obscure author. They find that the library does not own the ebook but does have it in print. In these cases, they will often travel to the library to pick it up. Then they'll often stay to browse the shelves when they find out that the library also offers CDs, DVDs, and internet access.

Books and promoting literacy are still mainstays of the library. But now, we can reach a wider audience with ebooks and downloadable audiobooks.

Dumb days at the library

My last post was about how to get thrown out of the library. Today is one of those days as a library professional where I wonder mildly, embarassingly if I should be thrown out of the library.

We are fortunate to have a wonderful security team at my library. They spend, what I am sure are "thrilling" moments policing library infractions and making sure that everyone's rights and safety are upheld. Today I spotted a patron whom I distinctly remembered one of the security staff pointing out the week prior, as a banned patron. I went to the head of the security team to report the individual was in the building.

Now, here is where I promptly opened mouth and inserted foot, by completely forgetting the name of the security guard. Adding insult to injury, I referred to her as a "security person." I have been working at my library every weekend for almost a year now and I should know better. I apologized profusely to the head of security, who just laughed and told me I worry too much.

Then, of course the man I had seen did not turn out to be the banned patron at all. So I got to apologize again for wasting everyone's time. But I will tell you one thing, I won't be forgetting that security guard's name any time soon.

I had a brief period of confidence guiding a patron through his and my first inter-library loan request. He was quite appreciative that he would not have to pay inordinate amounts of money for a text book he simply wanted to check out.

But then, I completely mucked up our phone reference system on the main level, trying to make way for our telephone reference librarian to give me a break. Talk about walking away feeling like a toddler needing to put myself in time-out. Bad librarian...go to your corner!

I know everybody has those days where we feel like our heads are just not in the game. But how can my patrons expect quality service from me when I'm running around like a zombie with it's brain scooped out?!

How do you get kicked out of the library?

I was having a conversation a friend and the subject of public library access came up. Specifically, having access revoked. In my library, like most I know, access to library services is available to the whole community, not only those who have a library card. Patrons can use the computers with guest passes. They can read or use wifi, and of course consult the information desk in person or by phone.

A library card does provide a wider range of services such as materials check-out, longer time on public computers, subscription database access, and the ability to request holds on materials. So we heartily encourage patrons to get library cards. But it is not a club pass, and we do not check cards at the door. And when a patron's access is suspended or revoked, the only difference having a library card makes is how easy it is to contact and inform the patron. All patrons are held to the same public use policy.

So when my friend asked, "What do you have to do to get kicked out of the library?" I responded. "Oh so many things." But those things all have to do with lack of respect for others and for the library.

Basically, in order to have such wide ranging access suspended or revoked, you have to make yourself a public danger or nuisance. (Again, I am only making observations of my library.) Most offenses, like falling asleep in the library or being entirely too loud for extended periods of time, etc,will only get you warned or asked to leave for the day. If you are repeatedly or consistently asked to leave, the higher ups in the security staff and library administration may consider suspending your access. However, this is on a case by case basis, and they always try to be fair.

So my way of seeing it is, if you wouldn't do it in a grocery store, don't do it in the library.

The only people I have ever heard of having access revoked, either for a set period or permanently, are people who break the law while in the library. Patrons who get caught committing illegal acts such as harassment, assault, destruction of public property, stealing, or viewing illegal material on the computers, can expect to not visit the library for a long time to come. I personally find this policy to be more than fair.

Why am I going on this rant , you may ask? Because there are some very gray areas. For instance, what constitutes harassment? We have had a patron of late who calls every branch of the library nearly every day, sometimes multiple calls within a day, sometimes to multiple floors in the same branch. He asks for library staff to do over-the-phone job searches for him with very specific parameters. Often times the parameters he sets either return very few results or are simply not reasonable, often both. When he gets an answer he does not like, he asks to be transferred to another staff member or abruptly hangs up and calls back to get someone else. This has been happening for weeks.

Now, to this man's credit, he may be curt but he is never abusive. Aye, but there's the rub. He is a patron with questions, and as such all staff that he has contacted have tried to help him to the best of our ability. But he can eat up 45 minutes at a time with one staff member, get frustrated, hang up, then call back and do the same with another. So when is enough enough?

This is the question that is being kicked around at work lately. I can see it in a number of ways. He has never been abusive and has never broken any rules that I know of, but he can be extremely annoying. On the other hand, since he just calls in, he is only annoying library staff and therefore not a public nuisance. At this point, to the chagrin of some, he has done nothing worthy of suspending his access to phone reference. And since he is primarily using phone reference, there is no physical library to "kick him out" of. So we will just have to see how this one plays out. I am interested to see how it does.

3 More Cool New-to-Me Technologies

Alright since my last post was an extended personal rant, I'll keep this one short, sweet, and techie.

I've been acquainted with the following technologies recently that I deem cool and share worthy.

1. LogMeIn - Web-based Remote Desktop software. Work on your home computer from anywhere, not just computers setup for RDP, and it lets you set several layers of security for the connection. I've been using it for the past week and been highly impressed by it's versatility. I'm interested in trying the Wake-On-Lan functionality. Possibly useful in library settings for those "I knew I saved that link on my home PC" situations.

Note: I'm using Windows to connect Windows. Mac looks like it would also work but it does not mention Linux compatibility.

2. Topsy - Social networking search engine. Searched Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more. I may be late on the bandwagon on this, I admit. However, it could be very useful for Reference interviews that require searching multiple social networking sites.

3.Kickstarter - Crowd Sourcing website for fan-funded independent films. My recent favorite film to contribute to was Gamers: The Hands of Fate. But this site is used to fund horror, fantasy, scifi, drama... and perhaps it's most noble use, documentaries.