Calling all ACPL Animal Lovers

The call has gone out for suggestions as to which organizations should benefit from the staff Jeans Day funds.

I have suggested the Allen County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but I would be thrilled to see more than one animal-related option on the voting list when it comes out, so if you know of a deserving group, please suggest it to Janet.

If there's one thing I've learned in 20-mumble-something years of working directly with the public, it's that I like animals more than most people. When was the last time a Rottweiler chewed you out over a 50 cent fine?

To my knowledge, no staff fund-raising project since I started working here has ever benefited an animal organization. It's time!

Saturday Morning Portrait of a Bookdrop, and What Passes for Vampires Nowadays

Breakdown of items placed in our outside drop between 6:00 pm on Friday and 8:30 am on Saturday:

57% three-day dvds
41% books
2% audio

How sad is that?

Regarding the currently popular vampire series The Twilight Saga, by Stephenie Meyer, which my inner voice insists on pronouncing stu-FEN-ee, thanks to the odd spelling....

I haven't read any of the books in the series. When one comes across the desk, however, I make a point of opening it up and reading a sentence from a random page. There are vampires in this series, right? All I see are exchanges like "Well, Tiffany said that Drake was talking to Ashlee yesterday, and then Brock said...." If I want teen angst, I'll stroll past the public computers. I guess they don't write 'em like Bram Stoker did any more.

Lighten Up, Francis

10 points if you get the reference in the title.

I happen to be at the top of the route list for Library Journal, so unlike most other routed publications, I get to read it before it's completely irrelevant. (Yeah, I know many of the routed titles are available online. I'm old. I like paper. Sue me.)

For those of you further down the route list, I wanted to point out an article from the August 2008 issue. It's not often that I find an article in any library publication that I think is timely, spot-on target and practical, but this one is. It also happens to be on a topic near and dear to my heart: humor in the workplace.

Read it here.

More Uniformity. Or Less.

I've been watching the Olympics this weekend. I was a rabid Olympics fan as a little girl, when Jim McKay and the whole crew from ABC sports brought us "Up Close and Personal." To give you an idea of exactly how long ago this was, Jim Lampley was the young, cute one on the broadcast team.

Along with everything else, the Olympics have changed, and I won't presume to say the changes haven't been for the better, but I will say I don't enjoy them as much now as I did then, for a whole host of reasons.

But that's not why I called...

While I'm not entirely convinced that beach volleyball even deserves to be called a sport, there's one thing I like about it. They play in the rain! We've taken the weather out of virtually all pro sports in the U.S., either with indoor venues, or by simply cancelling the game if the players don't like the weather. This is a shame. Some of the most entertaining games I've seen in my life were played in inclement weather.

But the most interesting thing about beach volleyball is that the women play in tiny little bikinis. The men, however, play in baggy shorts and tank tops. Anyone interested in signing my petition to the IOC that men should have to play in skimpy Speedos, let me know.

Amazing Superpowers of Library Patrons

2008 is the summer of the superhero movie, but we have hundreds of people with their own superpowers walking among us. I'll wager your patrons have other, equally amazing superpowers-- please share!

--Inducing daily paper jams in the PC Res receipt printer. (How do they do that? Identical printers at the circ desk never jam.)

--Can make any book inserted in the book drop land face down and splayed open, for maximum spine/page damage.

--Intuitive mastery of complex mathematical formula needed to determine most thinly staffed/busiest hour in the week to bring in 10 family members to sign up for library cards.

--Ability to indefinitely occupy whichever aisle the last ten books on your cart need to be shelved in.

--Can psychically determine which of the 100 items they have checked out are readily available and cheap-- and return those 99 items safely. 100th item-- limited edition and out-of-print-- dropped in bathtub.

No Public Internet Access

Wow. It's almost like a vacation day. Who would I need to bribe to slow the server repairs?

Welcome to the Dr. Dolittle Public Library

I've mentioned before that I'm not overly fond of change. We've had a surfeit of it lately, most of it stressful, even when I agree with the reasons for it. All the changes have been churning around in my head for a couple of months now (rather like boiling mental acid-indigestion soup), and the following musings are the results. I'm sorry that I don't have solutions to offer, but in this instance, it felt like a victory to finally define what I think is the problem.

We seem to be using the pushmi-pullyu model of service.

On the one hand, we have individuals, committees, and departments devoted to allowing people to use more and more of the library's services without ever leaving their homes. Examples-- online signups for SRP, online renewal, online library card signups, library blogs.

On the other, we have individuals, committees, and departments devoted to promoting the library as The Third Place. Come on in, and feel the sense of community that you should be getting from your own neighborhood, but aren't! Come attend a concert! Come and knit! Come to storytime! Come view the art exhibit!

If we want more, more, more people to come to the library, why are we making it easier for them never to darken our door, yet still suck up precious resources from the comfort of their easy chairs? If we want them to stay at home because we can no longer staff our agencies to appropriate levels, why are programs proliferating to such a degree?

I think it's an extension of our tendency to attempt to be all things to all people at all times. I didn't believe that was possible, or even desirable, in 1985 in my first professional job, and I still don't believe it. I observe in our most recent attempt to create new mission statements, goals, and objectives the same thing I always observe in every attempt at that process-- as a profession, we're incapable of saying no. Every single thing we do is the most important thing we do, in someone's opinion. Not only do we keep doing everything we've traditionally done, every time something new comes along, we willingly (nay, eagerly) add it to the list.

There's a mantra I think we all need to chant every time we're tempted to add a new service, particularly in these times when taxpayers are marching with torches and pitchforks: Just because no one else is doing it doesn't make it OUR job. And here's where I'm going to get myself into trouble: Early literacy? Not our job. (Late literacy-- also not our job.) Teaching
people how to use computers? Not our job. Doing people's taxes, or facilitating the process? Not our job. Life skills? Absolutely, positively, definitely Not. Our. Job. People are supposed to use libraries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps-- instead, we're breaking our backs trying to pull them all up ourselves.

My psychic powers can sense the question coming: What IS our job? A full answer to that is a subject for a different post, and I'm only going to answer it in the negative for now: if it smacks even slightly of social work or the classroom-- it's not our job.

I don't even know which end of the beast I'm cheering for, honestly-- the pushmi, or the pullyu. I do believe that if we continue to try to please everyone in an era of dwindling budgets, eventually, we won't be pleasing anyone.

Pecha Kucha?

Isn't that where the Azteks hung out?

Or am I thinking of what Charo was always going on about?

You can't make this stuff up.

An unretouched photograph of NWH's bookdrop this morning.

If I could save time in a bottle...

I thought another blog entry would be the best way to answer everyone's questions. (And a good opportunity to stick my tongue out at Ian. :-Þ)

I have no beef with the patron/user end of Evanced. Well, maybe a little one-- if you're looking at all agencies' programs at the same time, as I imagine many patrons will try to do, it's messy and overwhelming. I don't expect the average patron to brave the learning curve to use it to its full effect.

It's the staff/admin part I'm not thrilled with, for reasons both general and specific.

Generally, it's one more task that I HAVE to have a computer to do, along with selecting books and filling out my time card. I used to be able to knock out part of a book order on paper while waiting for a meeting to start. Not any more. And before someone suggests that I take the laptop with me everywhere so I can do it, the branch laptop has already been commandeered for the entire summer by the SRP folks. (I can guarantee you a future post on that topic.)

More specifically, we used to be able to (and frequently DID) knock out program outlines in under 15 minutes on the last day possible, stuff them in an envelope, and were done with them. My first effort at using the Evanced calendar, entering an average number of programs for 8 weeks, took over three hours. Part of that was because I missed the introductory session at the branch managers meeting, and I understand that it will take less time than that as I get used to it. But I can't see it ever taking less than 15 minutes, like using paper did. I can see it saving CMR tons and tons of time, and I'm happy for them, really, but very very sad for me.

If the time savings are supposed to be realized in being able to set up a whole year of storytimes at once, for example, well... if you're happy with a generic notice that says "STORYTIME!" you can, but if you'd like to put a little info in about what's actually going on during that specific session, each individual date has to be typed up separately, even though the event is recurring. The only event I can think of that could be entered as recurring with no additional work to change the description is tax help.

Perhaps this was covered at the meeting I missed, but... how do we know when to publish? We got a reminder the first time. Will those keep coming? While fishing for answers on this issue today, it was suggested that we could publish immediately-- type it up, and bam, put it out there for the patrons. Uh... is anyone approving these programs? What if we put something out there and our purchase request for supplies is denied? We publish a retraction? (And if literally no one is approving them, I have endless ideas for much more fun programming than we're currently doing. Torchwood/Doctor Who marathon, anyone? Peter Davison Film Festival? Catty Librarians' Gossip Fest and Sewing Circle?)

There's also the issue of events which are added centrally, like one person adding all the SRP programs systemwide. Evidently, I still have to publish those for my branch, however. So how many times per week do I need to look to see if there's an event awaiting publication?

Another specific concern was the broad event categories that we're forced to select from. Maybe my YA person is just unusually inventive, but half her programs don't fit in any of the categories. I wasn't overly worried about that while I was entering the info on the admin side, but today, when I finally took a moment to look at what the patrons see, I noticed that list of categories is one of the main ways that a patron can limit their search. We're a diverse lot at ACPL, and I can imagine three different agencies categorizing the same program in three different categories, which is going to confuse the heck out of the patrons.

There's also a proofreading issue. If we absent mindedly wrote down 10 pm for a program on a paper form, chances are someone in the pipeline would see that and correct it. It took no time at all to find multiple errors on the patron version of the calendar--errors some of our patrons might not be savvy enough to realize are mistakes. Yes, I know errors creep through with a paper system, too, but with evanced, it's possible that only one person sees the info before it's published, and that practically guarantees more errors. On the bright side, if we catch the errors, we can correct them, and then when patrons come in at the wrong time, we can Gaslight them. "No, Mrs. Smith, the calendar never said this program was at 8 p.m. Are you feeling all right?"

I just can't see this ever being easier or taking less time than paper. (On my end, that is. I understand the benefits for the people who aren't getting 500 pieces of paper any more.) I'm gaining nothing from the switch, and that makes all the extra time it takes difficult to swallow.

P.S. Composed at home, posted at work.

Can I have a show of hands, please?

Who thinks evanced is saving them a lot of time and effort?

My hand is not up.

What comes after third gear?

Overdrive! So far, I'm liking this nearly as much as I despised the old downloadable audiobooks service. I was able to download a title and transfer it to my mp3 player, which I never was able to accomplish with the old service. Title selection looks pretty darn good, too, so thank you selection committee.

In other news-- you know those flash drives that the library magnanimously provided to us? I use mine all the time, and really love being able to carry files from work to home so easily. So... I ran over mine. With my car.

No, it wasn't on purpose, though if I'd downloaded that latest message from HR about summer hours onto it, I would have been sorely tempted.

Here's the thing-- it still works! No damage at all. Who knew SanDisk was a subsidiary of Timex? (If you're under 35, you won't get that joke. Don't worry about it.)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

What’s the famous quote? Change is the only constant? I think I’m more inclined to agree with Dr. McCoy—“The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe.” But that’s a post for another day.

I hate change, and it’s not only because I’m an old fogey. I hated change when I was a kid. Mom would move the furniture in the living room around several times a year, and it baffled me. Why the heck would a person move furniture without a good reason? Especially when you could be sitting on the couch, reading a book instead.

So it’s not as an advocate of change for change's sake that I ask: Why is Will Manley still writing a regular column for Booklist?

He left the profession seven years ago, for pete’s sake. He doesn't seem to write much about libraries, and, pardon me if any of his close, personal friends are reading, but—is he even trying to be funny any more?

The new standard-bearers of library humor, are, of course, Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum of Unshelved .

Kindle, Schmindle

According to the January 15, 2008 issue of Library Journal, Apple's Steve Jobs had this to say about Amazon's new electronic toy:

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people doesn't read anymore."

I really don't care what he thinks about the product. I was simply astounded to find that according to Steve, I no longer qualify as a person. This explains a lot.