Ref Grunt

Book about a battle -- turns out to be a scholarly article, so we don't have it.

Copier.

Eavesdrop on one woman asking another where she got the Betty Boop purse.

Vampirates (his grown up asserted "there's no such thing")

Try to track down someone with a huge, terrible cough - turns out to be smallish older woman who needs The Help, in large print.

Woman is haughty about having to reserve a study room and agree to use room policies.

Award summer reading prizes.

Second encounter with a woman with whom I talked about books being in the teen area not because they are harder to read but because the topics are for more mature readers. Her boy (7? 8? -- but an Advanced Reader) did not like Grisham's Kid Lawyer book. Let me know it really isn't for younger kids. Got it.

Change is in the Air

We're re-arranging some staff in my library system -- as a hiring freeze keeps us from replacing folks who have left over the past year and a half -- and I need to pack up my stuff and head to one of the big libraries soon. Yeah, that's right: I moved house in February (learned a new phone number), got new phones at this lib (learned a new phone number), and now I need to move my office (and learn another new number!). Once again, I am becoming friends with copier paper boxes full of things I think I need at the new place. As at home, I am trying to toss unneeded stuff, rather than move it across town. Pictured below, two items I won't move. The 1970s GRE prep book was donated to us. You know, for the collection or book sale. Because patrons always ask for oldest test help book we have. Or - no -- because a professor writing a definitive history of test prep books might shop our book sale!

The gems below (scanner made them washed out - click and they look better) have been on my cubicle wall, to make me smile. The note reports a patron's comments to a circ staff member. I agreed with the patron that the book was too old to be useful in a public library collection and withdrew it. Someone drew the bugs on a bit of scrap paper and left it by a computer. I think I found it the year the summer reading club had the theme "catch the reading bug," but these weren't like any of the official art. They were much more fun.

Technology

By random drawing, our library system will give away a Kindle this summer. Maybe one quarter of my branch's patron's say "what's that?" when I tell them. Meanwhile, according to this LA Times item, early adapters face prejudice -- perhaps linked to the inability to identify the object and its purpose.