This month is flying
by. Just saying.
Today at work I
finished weeding my second section, pulling around sixty books to get
it done. The inside cover of one of the books I weeded was a really
cool green and I kind of want it to be the color of my front door. I
need to go hold it up next to the siding and see if it work with the
color of the house.
I finished watching
usability videos for the website and started recording another
hundred. I don't know that I will have time to watch that many
before the end of the month but they will at least be ready to go if
I find myself with nothing else to do.
I sent out follow-up
emails to patrons I have made personalized reading lists for,
starting in July and going through September. We only rarely get the
feedback forms back, I don't know if we've gotten one since I have
worked there, and it would be nice to know if the time we put into
the lists resulted in a positive outcome for the patrons. So I sent
emails asking for feedback, which is not something we have done in
the past but I figured it couldn't hurt. We'll see if anyone gets
back to me.
I spent a long time
this afternoon trying to answer a couple questions about a local
Thanksgiving lunch and a food drive in a nearby town. The patron
asking said the lunch was at a pizza place last year and wanted to
know if they were doing it again. It took awhile but I eventually
found that the pizza place no longer exists. Around the time I
started looking elsewhere I got a call back from the patron who
called a neighbor and found out a different restaurant was having a
lunch this year, so I moved onto the second question. After a lot of
digging I found out where and when that town was having a community
Thanksgiving lunch but couldn't find any specific information about a
food drive. There was no mention of it in the town's newspaper and
all the local church newsletters only referenced the community lunch.
I called the patron and let her know about the lunch and that the
only thing I could find was that one of the churches was responsible
for collecting food for the food pantry this month. I don't think
that is what she wanted but I gave her the number to the church so
she could follow up.
About an hour before
I left I had one of my more interesting reference interactions. A
lady came up to the desk and seemed a bit rushed. She said her son
had a paper to write over Thanksgiving break and she wanted to know
about looking for sources in the newspaper. She also said she had no
interest in the computer. Despite that I started with the computer
option because trying to find what she wanted in the physical paper
and microfilm would have taken forever. I was quickly able to find
the articles she wanted using keyword searches and copied and pasted
them into a Word document. I then looked up her card number and we
went over to one of the public computers so we could log in as her
and print off the articles because that makes it easier to pay for
the prints. While over there she said she also wanted Letters to the
Editor on the same topic so I edited my search and got those copied
and printed.
During the whole
process it came out that her son was actually a college student,
probably a Freshman because this was for a speech class, and the mom
picked the topic for him because he hadn't picked one yet. And she
was going to do all the research. Or have me do all the research. I
would not be surprised if she also wrote the speech. At one point
she lowered her voice and said she would pay me in cash so she
wouldn't have to figure out the computer. I thought this was a joke
and finding the articles was actually the easiest thing I had done
all day so I didn't give it a second thought. But then, after we had
printed everything off, she lowered her voice again and got very
secretive. She was hiding one of her hands under the newspaper she
brought in and then tried to hand me money. I told her I was already
getting paid but if she wanted to make a donation to the library she
could do that. And instead she just put the money in my jacket
pocket, said something about paying people for their work, and
thanked me. It was a tad uncomfortable.
Once she left I
tried to look up on our website how we handle donations but it seemed
like the easiest way was to do it with a credit card online. So I
went to my boss and asked what the easiest way was to make a
donation. She jokingly said to make a check out to her, but then I
said what about cash, given to us by a patron, and pulled out the $40
the lady had given me. I told her I had tried to decline and
suggested the donation route but it wasn't successful. She made
another joke about how I probably didn't realize I would get paid
like a dancer working at the library, which was pretty funny. She
also said that she would take it over to admin tomorrow and see if we
could use it toward our tech classes in the Spring. I would be cool
with that.
Tonight I watched
YouTube videos and livestreams while playing Terraria. I did
not go over to my house. The original plan was to spend my first
night there because I had tomorrow off. Well, I no longer have
tomorrow off. We have a tech class tomorrow with at least eleven
people signed up for it and the only person scheduled for it was the
lady teaching it. That would have been overwhelming and pointed that
out to my boss when I realized what had happened. So now, I am
working tomorrow so I can help out with the class, and I have
Wednesday off instead. That actually works out a lot better because
now I have five days off in a row. I am cool with that.
Due to that I have
postponed my first night until Tuesday so that I don't have to worry
about waking up and getting ready for work in a new environment. I
know that is probably weird that I haven't spent the night in my new
house yet but I'm weird, so I'm staying in character.
I will soon be going
to bed. I always look forward to sleep.
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