The "Little Red" Haunted Schoolhouse and I,Q

We are in the swing of the Summer Reading Program. Most of the questions I've been fielding at the Information desk have to do with where patrons can register for the various programs associated with SRP. There are some Reader's Advisory questions.

But for the most part my day has been spent making virtual copies of booklists on our social media accounts. Then I had a patron come up with her son. Her son wanted "John and the Giant Peach" which was easy enough to translate.

Her request was more esoteric.

She wanted a book that she thought was titled "The Little Red Haunted School House". Supposedly she had read it in grade school in the mid-sixties and it had a the titular little red school house on the cover. She was nostalgic for her son to read it, because it was what really spurred her joy of reading as a child.

Eventually she lost patience with the amount of questions I was asking and, when I said we would have to put a request on James and the Giant Peach, she decided neither was worth the trouble. She walked off.

Afterward, the best I could do was to find that there was a story called "The Haunted Schoolhouse" in a collection of stories called Strangely Enough. It was first published in 1959 and written by C.B. Colby. the story was about a local legend in Newburyport, Mass. No mention of the schoolhouse being red, but it was plausible. Unfortunately, she fled the library before I could present my findings.

Enter quiz master #2 - a 7th grader who wanted to continue reading a series that he dropped almost a year ago, and could not remember the name of. Over the course of the Reference Interview, I got that the series was about:  a brother and sister who join the government in Washington (possibly the Secret Service) as spies. Also he thought the cover had the number 1 on it.

After much research I found the I,Q series by Roland Smith. Again, my patron seemed to have disappeared. Luckily, I found him crouching among the middle school paperbacks.

Success! It was the exact series that he was looking for! The only snag was that we only had books 4 & 5 checked in, and he wanted book 3. A quick request on his library card, and he walked away happy.

Conclusion: My reference skills for children's book queries need work, when the books are older than me.

The Heart of Gold finds a new Mother Ship

I am so excited to announce that I finally have wedged my way a full halfway into the proverbial library door! I am now a half-time Children's Librarian in a local branch of my library! I now can start doing storytimes, programming, reader's advisory, and collection management. So,yay!

Though I am sad to leave my old crew at our main library, I love the people at my new branch. My personality seems to fit right in and they are all extremely welcoming. I already feel at home, and it is a much more intimate place. I mean that in all the right ways.

UPDATE:  I wrote this draft about 8 months ago. I quickly found that the work-load for a part-time juvenile librarian left no time for blogging. So I apologize profusely for the tardiness of the actual post. This month I accepted another promotion and moved branches again.

It has been a bit of a whirlwind. I can say that after my first week, I love my new branch, and miss my old branch terribly. I made a lot of good friends and learned from some amazing librarians and paraprofessionals!

But now it is on to a new career adventure. New co-workers, and patrons to get to know. New branch policies. New collections and programs.

And hopefully, more time to write down my thoughts.

SRP will set you free

Okay, now that I've dispensed with the poor me post, here are some cool things that happened this week at the library.

First, I was on desk with the seasoned tech librarian on the music floor of the library. A patron called in and at first got my colleague. It was clear from the side of the conversation that I heard that the patron was not making much sense.

He was asking if we had the CD of a song, but he didn't know the name of the song, the artist, release year, or any lyrics, just the melody. My desk buddy was very thorough in his reference interview but alas, did not have enough information to guess the song. So he politely asked the man to call back with more information.

I found out later that the patron had also called down to telephone info. While my desk buddy was talking with our telephone info librarian about that, the patron called in again. This time I got him, and though still very hard to understand, he'd called prepared. He actually held the phone to the speaker as I searched the lyrics of the song. Unfortunately, we did not have a CD with the particular song, but we did have a few compilation CDs with the artist's other music and that sufficed.

Then, I had a lady who wanted to get Scott's The Sorceress on her tablet. Unfortunately, the tablet had a memory problem and kept crashing. So I got her a paper copy. The cool part was how excited she was about the book. I went out and purchased the first book in the series (The Immortal Nicholas Flamel) The Alchemyst just on her say so. And I am highly impressed and engrossed so far.

Finally, something I am excited about. My reading world is almost entirely inhabited with juvenile and YA fiction books, what with it being Summer Reading Program season. I just found out that Rick Riordan added a Percy Jackson/ Kane Chronicles short story called The Son of Sobek to the recent paperback release of The Serpent's Shadow. I am a crossover junkie. And Riordan has said that the next book in his Roman mythology series will be coming out in October. So now, I'm squeeing like the rabid fan girl I am.

Career Conundrums

I have been working at my library for over a year now in an hourly capacity. The money is more than my other part time job, and I have been getting a fluctuating amount of hours. I love working at my library, so my overall work life tends to fluctuate with my hours. The more library hours, the better I feel about my career.

The problem (and I say this loosely, because it's all relative) is that due to recent events in my personal life, I am becoming less satisfied with my other part time "pay the bills" job. I recently got engaged to to my wonderful partner J, and we have been making plans for the future. We've been discussing the path of our careers, the possibility of the traditional house with 2.5 kids and a dog scenario. Knowing us, we may end up in a condo with one kid, a Delorean and a muppet, but that is beside the point.

Neither of us is in a financial place to roll the dice on a mortgage right now. He is freelance, and I am part-time hourly in two jobs, so while we could reasonably afford payments on an older or foreclosure home, down-payments and closing costs may be a problem. We also really like the apartment that we are in at the moment. So the house can wait.

As far as the one to two point five kids go, I am very committed to not having any until I can financially support them. Our work situations being what they are, neither J or I get benefits. Without a stable healthcare plan, I cannot justify having kids just yet.

My career conundrum comes down to this. I have been interviewing for full time positions in my library for about as long as I have been working there. Having got my foot in the door, I've been trying to wedge my whole body in. But at the moment, the job market is such that a lot of older more experienced candidates are  getting the jobs I apply for. I cannot begrudge them this. The library deserves the best, most qualified people in each position. However, it is hard to gain the experience to be competitive if all the jobs go to more experienced candidates. It's an old story.

My career situation is by no means dire in comparison to unemployed and much more underemployed Americans, many of them with families to support. Nonetheless, I am faced with the choice of seeking full-time employment outside my library, that may not be as fulfilling but pays benefits, or waiting it out. I do not want to abandon the dream that I've spent years of my life and thousands of dollars in student loans pursuing. It is just hard not to get discouraged when my interviewers and co-workers tell me that I am an ideal candidate for the library, but they keep finding others that are more ideal. I've just gotta decide whether to keep trucking or veer off the road.

RSS Spring Cleaning

Okay, so it isn't Spring yet, as evidenced by the now constant fall of snowflakes from the sky. But regardless I need to clean out my Google Reader feed. It has become a runaway train.

I have a tendency to Subscribe to any blog that I find intriguing (title, background, subject, etc.). This is especially true when others in the library world recommend them. I currently have over a hundred feeds coming through Google Reader and a good 60-70% are written by librarians or library staff.

The problem is that not all of them are relevant to my life, library or otherwise. Still less of them do I read on a regular basis. But my pack-rat tendencies kick in when I try to clear out the feeds.

I always think, "Oh but this one is so well written! That one had that humorous take on e-book publishers that one time! Certainly I cannot disrespect this blogger by throwing out her feed like yesterday's socks!"

I do respect each and every one of the bloggers whose feeds I subscribe to. But sometimes, it is so easy to get overloaded with ideas and career solidarity, and well ...life,  that I end up with 400 unread posts in a day and end up chucking them all. And so I have committed myself to clear out Google Reader like I would clear out my wardrobe.

Just like I would toss clothes that I have not worn in a year into a Goodwill bag, so I will UnSubscribe to feeds whose posts I have not actually sat down to read in a month. Please don't hate me all you wonderful bloggers!

Question of the Day 1/26/13

A patron came up asking how to spell "AmusementMonkeys.com" While I was happy to spell it for him, I thought I should check the website to make sure it was live, which it wasn't. Nor did Google return any results for "Amusement Monkeys".

The patron informed me that he was a carnival worker and that they called themselves Amusement Monkeys because they have to climb on the rides to take them apart and put them together. He was looking for work. He was very nice, and very inebriated. 

After a bit of a long search, I found one employment result for carnival employment with listings by state. I told him there were a number of different company listings and he yelled. "I only need one! Thanks honey!"

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/