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new life experience unlocked called "calling campus security on a guy who insists that the library hours do not apply to him, and he does not need to pause his study session long enough to go home or move to the reading room which is open 24 hours, and will in fact get pissy when i imply as such and will continue to sit there at his desk on the main floor as i turn out the lights in the building and leave him sitting in the dark"
library diaries # i'm-not-counting-them-anymore
So i have a favor to ask from parents. Please teach your kids how to use a call number.
I was shelving books in the kids section yesterday, and so many were in wildly wrong spots on the shelves. It might seem nitpicky, but this is how your library organizes the books and keeps track of them! If someone (including you) comes in the next day and wants, say, Curious George, we're going to look it up by the call number. And if it's not in the location that the call number says it is, then nobody else can check it out until someone finds it - likely by pure luck. We want you to be able to read the books!
I get that it's not the top priority to teach kids - they've got a lot to learn already. Hell, I get that you yourself may not have learned. If you're having trouble, your librarian can help. They're alphabetical, so if you can sing your ABCs and count to 10, you can learn to find a book using its call number - and also how to find where it goes when you put it back.
And if you're in a rush or just not up for it that day, there's always the reshelf cart. Nobody's going to get mad at you for putting your books in the designated location for books that need to be reshelved. This also gives us a chance to see what books are being read, even if they're not necessarily being checked out.
library diaries 16
this one started a little rough tbh.
first I came in and found that the box fan by the circulation desk was on full blast and really loud, and someone had managed to knock the cover off of the power dial and knock the actual mechanism inside the box. so i sighed, grabbed the tool kit from the object library, and used the screwdriver within said kit to open up the back of the fan so i could put the dial back where it went, reattach the cover, and turn down the power so it wasn't so loud in my ears.
then, i was running updates on the library desktops, only to discover that half a dozen of them had the wallpaper changed to photos of police violence at prostests. interestingly, this was only on the IT user accounts, which use a non-public password and are only used for maintenance on the computers.
*obligatory moment to clarify that i am 100% anti-police violence, and i do think awareness that it happens is important. however, this method of raising awareness is both unkind and inefficient. the IT accounts are only used for computer maintenance, meaning that people with a specific task to do are being jumpscared with traumatic images with no warning.
and finally, i discovered that someone had spilled their coffee on a desk upstairs, and instead of wiping it up (perhaps with a paper towel from one of the four different bathrooms in the building) or even just letting staff know so that we could take care of it, they simply left it there to dry. this meant that i had to go and get wet paper towels and scrub the desk to remove it.
however. after these trials, my night was much nicer. i took the sleeves off of a new band shirt (i still need to take it in a bit, but i wanted those out of the way first), and i got a bit further into Blame! I'd fallen off of it briefly but I'm getting back to it now and it's real cool :3
also, i totally saw an old lady petting Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and it was really sweet
library diaries day 15
rainy evening, a start to pocket extensions on the pants I'm wearing to a concert this weekend, and a really nice lady who asked if she could write me a nice review after I helped her use powerpoint on the library computers and introduced her to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and the tiny party room.
library diaries day 14
Met a lovely lady who pulled out her card, and I almost thought it was the wrong one. Turns out, she still has her card from the '80s! It was a totally different design and super faded, but it worked just fine. I hope my library cards look like that some day. <3
Working on re-mending an old pair of pants (the original mend was done when I was less skilled, and it hasn't held up well). It's not the prettiest, but it'll be a big improvement on my underwear showing through my comfiest pair of jeans.
Ran some updates on our loan-able computers, or tried to at least. Fun fact: Chromebooks will just. Stop updating. After a certain period of time, because Google doesn't feel like supporting them. The first piece of advice on their help page is literally just to get a newer model. *shakes my fist at planned obsolescence*
library diaries 13
Started reading Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei. I'm only three chapters in but I'm enjoying it a lot, it's like equal but opposite vibes to Kino's Journey. Where Kino seems to treat the endless travel as ultimately comforting and peaceful despite moments of violence and danger, Blame! feels like an ordeal, like a predecessor to (or maybe a descendant of?) an I-Have-No-Mouth-and-I-Must-Scream type of world. Pairs fantastically with my favorite industrial playlist, and I'm really curious to see where it goes from here.
library diaries 11:
Checked out Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer cause I've been wanting to read it ever since I watched the movie (as well as the very good video essay on it by Folding ideas).
Printed out some cute punch cards for myself. Going to use them to reward myself for progress on my comic project (and maybe some other things?). Tbh though, I need ideas for good rewards to give myself. Feel free to hit me with suggestions.
Definitely my favorite interaction, however, was with a very sweet lady who I helped with the printers, after which she had one more question - "Where's the cat?"
I quickly explained that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was nearby and well, just not in her usual spot. I'd noticed earlier in my shift that she'd moved from her usual spot atop one of the bookshelves to one of the couches (I know of at least one guy who's brought his kids in to play with her, so I'm betting this was why she was in a lower location). She'd been on her back on the couch though, and didn't seem very comfortable, so I moved her to the window where she could sit in a sunbeam.
The lady was really excited that she wasn't missing, and explained that she'd held her for some time the other day when her boss called, asking her to identify someone who had assaulted her on their security footage.
Obviously it's awful that she's going through that, but I'm really glad that it's getting taken care of, and also that she has access to that kind of comfort through the library. It might seem silly to have a stuffed therapy cat and consider that an "important library service," but there's someone who really benefits from it. After we went back to our own devices, I heard the lady talking to Mrs. PW a couple of times, and it made me smile.
Anyways. I love libraries. I love this job. You should go to the library.
library diaries 10:
read up through volume 3 of snotgirl. the volume 4 TP is dropping later this month and i'm so excited. going to put in an inter-library loan request if we aren't already ordering it hehehe
in other news, the object library jewelry pliers insist that they're available, but they're not in the object library and they're not on the restock shelves. i really want to fix my old pins. if you have the jewelry pliers pretty please bring them back (/lh)
