January 19, 2017

 It is nearly midnight and I have to wake up for a haircut in the morning, so let's make this quick.

Today went by very slowly. I'm not sure why that was because I was fairly busy all day. I learned how to use the folding machine upstairs, which allowed me to fold ninety-nine brochures in less than five minutes instead of five hours. I'm definitely okay with that.

I finalized my blog post about the tax forms and assistants programs and got that posted to the library's blog. I don't know how many people actually look at that but if they do, they now know more about our tax situation.

I finished a personalized reading list, which I had kind of forgotten about. It was the one that was mostly interested in non-fiction Christian books. Surprisingly that is not my wheelhouse but I think I did a pretty decent job. I put a lot of thought into it and hopefully the patron finds it useful.

I also started another personalized reading list because when I opened up the binder to add my list I noticed that one of the two pending requests is due on Saturday. Why it has been sitting there for two weeks without being claimed, I do not know. I'm pretty sure I've done two in that time. I think this weekend I'm going to make a sheet to put on the outside of the binder where we can write down the due dates of pending requests. At the moment we just put a sticky note on the front with the number of pending requests. This is important but not terribly informative. I would like to avoid situations where a request goes unnoticed because no one checks the due date. It will be much harder to miss if it is on the outside of the binder.

Speaking of the list, I managed to get six of the ten books picked out. It's kind of an annoying list the patron was not very helpful. They ticked nearly all the boxes under Fiction and close to all of them for Non-Fiction. So apparently they like everything and aren't particularly interested in anything specific. Thanks for narrowing it down for me. A lot of that has to do with the questions we ask, which allow patrons to be way too broad. The patrons do have an option though to be more specific, listing favorite books and authors. So not all the blame falls on us. In this case, given the tight deadline, it might be for the best that the patron wasn't specific. I was a bit overwhelmed by it at first but then I just started picking popular books from various genres that I thought looked interesting. I'm doing five Fiction and five Non-Fiction because they couldn't even indicate a preference there, either, so we'll see how it goes. And really, I'll never know how it goes because I have yet to hear back from any of the patrons I have spent hours creating lists for. I'm not sure that patrons realize how much work goes into stuff like this.

An older lady came in today and wanted books on surgical instruments because she was going to be tested on them and she wanted to make sure she remembered them all. She seemed at least a decade past retirement so I'm not sure what kind of situation would require this sort of test but whatever. The only books we had were on the history of surgery, which were interesting but none of them had pictures of surgical instruments.

I managed to find some pretty good guides online but the lady said she didn't use computers. That was her only option though so I talked her into it. I got her logged into a computer, opened the browser, did a searched and opened up a few different tabs, and then spent a decent amount of time showing her how to use the mouse. It was very reminiscent of helping kindergarteners when they first came to the computer lab. I only had to help her one other time with the mouse, and one of the other librarians had to help her switch tabs when I was at lunch, but she managed to get all the information she needed, so I would say it was a success.

I refilled the Inspirational display today and withing ten minutes two or three books had already checked out. Not bad. I'm not going to win any checkout awards this month but both of my displays are doing alright. I can't complain.

And we'll say that was my day at work. At least what I can remember of it. Or feel like writing about.

When I got home I had my leftover Chipotle and watched YouTube videos. I also playing Farming Simulator 15. I got tired of constantly having to switch out implements on tractors so I broke down and bought another tractor. I was tempted to get the same one I already have but I decided to go with the one that I could get the front-loader attachment for. So I did, and I also bought the front-loader and pallet fork so I can now do missions that require it. I also accidentally bought two solar panels. I only wanted one but got confused on the placement screen and clicked, which apparently committed me to a second panel. But they were on sale so it was only a $100,000 mistake. Good grief. Live and learn.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I've been tired for at least a few hours and I have to wake up early for a haircut. Following the haircut I want to go to the bank and then I'm going to my Mom's house to do laundry. While that does it's thing I want to watch Star Trek, if it's on TV, and look through the art books I checked out tonight. It should be a fairly boring day. I'm okay with that.