Wednesday, August 17, 2016

August 16, 2016

 Today was the first day of school. The first one I haven't attended in five years. It felt like any other day I've had at the library this summer but listening to my mom's stories tonight made me miss it. It sounds like they still don't have a replacement for me yet, so there is still time for me to change my mind. I've kind of gotten used to making real money, though. And I like my fellow librarians. We've got a good dynamic going and I enjoy working with them.

I had three hours off the desk when I got to work this morning so I had to find things to do. Among those things, I made my sign for the whimsical and witty display. I tried several different things but ended up coming across a picture on Flickr after trying several different keyword searches and it did a pretty good job of capturing what was in my head.

This afternoon I had a patron come up and want information on a man. Years ago he had bought a diary at a storage unit sale that was in the form of a book but he didn't think it was actually written by the writer of the diary, if that makes sense. He said at one point we had a book in the library about the man but I couldn't find any record of it. I also couldn't find any information about him on Google. I ended up on Ancestry and found census information and town directories that mentioned him. But I didn't really find anything substantial. Just finding that stuff took awhile and I didn't want to keep the guy any longer so I got his name and number and said I would continue looking and let him know if I found anything else.

That happened right as I got on the desk and other than that I had three online chat interactions. Or really two because one just popped up and said they didn't want a particular book anymore and then they logged off. We can't see who people are so I had no idea who that person was or what they meant by not wanting the book. It was a new book and there was at least one hold on it. My assumption is that they were on hold for the book but I wasn't going to take someone off hold for the book on the off chance that my assumption was right. Better safe than sorry. On one of the real chats I signed someone up for a state library card so they could use Mango. So a success. The other chat was less successful because of poor communication on both our parts probably. They wanted to know if the library would “sponsor” someone to come and speak at the library. I told them as long as they had a library card and the person wasn't trying to sell something, they could reserve one of our rooms. That didn't answer the question because the chat continued on and it felt like we were just talking in circles. When I offered to give them the number of the administrative assistant who is in charge of reserving our rooms they asked if they could be put in contact with someone responsible for making decisions, or something along those lines. My boss told me to just give them her email address and she would deal with it. I think that the person asking the question had no affiliation to the person they wanted to speak at the library and wanted the library to contact them and schedule a presentation. That is one problem with chat, and even email. It takes a really long time to get to the point, if it is ever reached, when it would take a fraction of the time if it was a face-to-face interaction.

I spent my last hour at work looking at microfilm trying to find an obituary. I found the original police statement in the paper and a follow up five days later after an autopsy, but I couldn't find an obituary. Online I found that the person was buried out of state so when I emailed the person back with copies of what I had found I told them that maybe one had been posted in the person's hometown or wherever they were buried. It is kind of annoying not being able to find what a person is looking for.

Tonight ended up being Chipotle night because the earliest I get off all week is six o'clock and I figured tomorrow I would be tired after doing homebound deliveries in the afternoon. I was luckily able to find a parking spot in the parking lot on my first pass, which almost never happens after six o'clock. After dinner I managed to make it through all of the YouTube videos I had but wasn't able to sshow because I was finishing up school stuff.

After dinner I finished scanning genealogy information for my grandma, turned it all into PDFs, and emailed it all to her. Hopefully remembered everything but if not I told her to email me back and let me know.

When that was done I had a little time to play No Man's Sky. After finishing yesterday's entry I logged back in and all the lagginess was gone. It held up tonight, too, which was nice. I continued making money for a bit and then discovered another planet. It's my first planet with water, which is pretty cool. I only spent a few minutes looking around before logging out but I'm looking forward to exploring further.


And now I'm going to go to bed because it is after midnight and I have to work in the morning. But I'm going to watch a few more music videos first because my friend asked me a music question, which I shockingly knew immediately, but it sent me on a nostalgia trip back to music I listened to in high school. So a few more videos. And then bed.

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