Have you ever had an experience of reading something, having it stick in your mind, but being unable to track it down years later?
When I was in college, I worked at a university library for a couple of summers, and one task I ended up with at one point was going through these big, thick Congressional Record books to literally check the pages and make sure they were all there.
(I can't remember why I needed to do this. Maybe the books had been ordered and bound recently or something? For some reason I had to check the pages and make sure that none were missing.)
As you can imagine, this was not a very mentally engaging task.
And the books I was going through were not even the main ones with all the speeches and legislation. They were like, some supplemental ones with just a bunch of dry records in them.
But every once in a while some speech or whatever did get stuck in them, and if it looked interesting, I'd take a break from flipping through pages one-by-one and read.
And I remember seeing this one speech (or possibly a written argument that was submitted for the records, but I think it was probably a speech) that has stuck with me forever afterwards.
I can't remember who the person was. I can't even remember what time period it was.
It was an argument against the US adopting the metric system.
But not for the usual reasons!
The speaker made no arguments about "tradition" or "the Anglo mind" or any of the other specious arguments that have gotten thrown about in the long history of the US not getting with the program.
No. This person argued that we shouldn't adopt the metric system because it would only further entrench the decimal counting system in our society. And he further argued that what we really should be doing is adopting a duodecimal counting system.
Presumably, he would have been ok with a metric-like measuring system just so long as all the units were multiples of 12 of each other.
But he was against the actual, existing metric system because everything is base 10.
So he made this speech extolling the virtues of a base 12 system, and how we shouldn't adopt a measurement system that would only make it harder to adopt the far, far superior duodecimal mathematical system.
It was one of those strangely beautiful arguments that was correct in a way, but that ultimately sounded like parody given how impractical his proposal was.
I mean, if we can't even adopt a measurement system that's used in most of the rest of the world, we certainly aren't going to change our entire language about math and relearn all our basic arithmetic in base 12!
Like, cool idea, buddy, but it's not happening.
(And honestly, who knows. The guy may have just been a crank. Maybe he was making absurd arguments just to gum up the works and stop metric adoption because he hated the French but didn't want to say that out loud. It's totally possible. Like I said, I have no idea who this person was, or how serious he was about his proposal.)
So yeah, I remember this random Congressperson McGee and his logically-sound-but-still-absurd proposal to this day.
A librarian from Scotland named Mel (@grumpwitch) decided to lift the veil off of the secrets of the library world, tweeting out some of the industry insights that she has learned on the job. "I figured a few of my fellow library assistants would relate," she says, "If I’d known how big it would become, I’d have proofread them first!”
What does a library card symbolize to you? Here's one reader on how a library card can become as cherished as a best friend.
There is also an insatiable desire inside me to collect and hoard more books. But I am without an endless supply of money to support this habit. So, libraries are a source for me. While most kids might have preferred parking in front of their TV for the (then) 104 days of summer vacation, my sister and I cheerfully walked to our local branch with our backpacks every two weeks to turn in and replenish our book supply.
The library became a safe space for me in middle school since those years were pure hell. It became the place where I would hide out when the teasing voices got too loud. A place to tuck myself away when my few friends and I had different lunch periods. This desire to use the library as a safe haven didn’t disappear with high school either. Even after finding my own merry band of misfits there, I regularly would seek out library for peace and quiet.
When I was a stay-at-home-mom, the library was also a haven for me to break out of the monotony of day to day tasks. It became a way to interact with other adults during baby lap sit time. It was also a place to escape to by myself when I just had to get out of the house.
Honestly, my happy place still is any type of library. Libraries calm and center me. And now they do so much more than when I was growing up, and truly are a pillar of the community.
Like most wines, they have only gotten better with age. I will always be a champion them because, as dismal as this world can be, it would be a whole lot bleaker without libraries in it.
I know you posted about it awhile back, but at the public library I’m applying for I applied for an asa job in June of last year and didn’t get an interview until September. Applying again I might not hear back till July,and I applied in April
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It truly is wild, especially from the applicant's point of view (when you're not seeing anything going on, just wait), how long it can take to get interviews or a job!
I'm having way too much fun watching my coworker struggle to grasp why making something white in her document will not print white onto colored paper. She's very smart; this isn't difficult but it's been a really rough day.
I've been working in the same library system for almost fifteen years now. I worked in a small-town branch for about a year, then ten years in a super-busy, semi-corporate branch for ten. I've been here at this smaller neighborhood library since a little before the pandemic.
During my time at the busy branch, I had a track record as a problem worker. I had notes in my professional file about being hostile to authority and combative. I was repeatedly refused standard pay raises in spite of being one of the most efficient and capable people in our circulation staff. The staff at this branch frequently had complaints from patrons about customer service and attitude.
When I came to the branch where I work now, none of my coworkers could understand the notes in my files. The feedback for our branch is consistently higher than for any other branch. We just had a regular patron donate $250 to the Friends of the Library "in honor of [our] staff."
Very little about me has changed in the last eight years. Except where I work and the kind of stresses I've been put under. I'm now working for someone who understands my emotional and psychological issues and needs. She allows me to take the breaks I need to maintain a lowered anxiety level, which also allows me to deal with patrons more positively.
I'm not sure where I was going with this originally. But yeah. I'm happier here. I'm a better worker here. And I can still crank out 50k words of fanfiction in a month without my customer service suffering. So, nyah.
