April 25, 2017

I spent a decent amount of my morning, pretty much all of it, making a list of Korean books that we can get through interlibrary loan. There is a university that has a collection of various Asian books and it includes about 200 Korean books. I couldn't find a way to save the entire list and it only displayed ten or so books per page, so I ended up copying and pasting each book into a Word document. That took a really long time. Then I went back and numbered all of them because I figured if we do end up getting books for this lady it would be easier for everyone involved if she gave us the numbers for the books she wants, rather than the titles. In the list, each title is listed twice, first with the Korean alphabet and then with the English alphabet. I can't read either version so I don't really know what the books are but my fingers are crossed they don't all suck.

This afternoon I got sucked into two reference questions. The first was via chat, where someone asked us the history of one of our street names and if it was named after the same person that a town in the state is named after. I looked all over and even had two other librarians look and we didn't come up with much. I had a short blurb from an old newspaper in our history files that just said the street was named after the person who donated a bell and money for the first college. But it doesn't actually list the person's name. The last name is obvious but the first name not so much. Searching online we found a letter written by someone in town to the person (who was on the East Coast) asking them for money to support the building of a new college. That apparently worked out but we couldn't find any mention of him in any of the books we have about the history of the college. It was very strange.

The second question was internal and stemmed from the street name question. In that search I ended up on a county website that mentioned a boil water advisory in a particular water district. This got me thinking, and eventually all the other librarians in our department and even people in Circulation, that we didn't know what the water districts were in town. Or even if there were specific districts. The boil advisory was for a place outside of town and the last time there was a boil advisory in town it was for the whole town, not just particular areas. We ended up looking all over but couldn't find any maps or anything that laid out what the districts were or how things were divided in town. I assume it would be by water tower and the GIS website can show the various water tower locations, but they aren't named on that map and there is no indication of what areas each water tower covers. It seems like this information would be much easier to find. I ended up emailing the person who's name was on the statement about the original boil water advisory. So we'll see if he gets back to me.

Other than that stuff, I walked an older patron to our cookbook section, and I helped a kid print things. I originally helped her with figuring our printer and then I went down to the children's room with her to show her how to change the printer from the default black and white one to our color printer. I kind of miss helping kids learn things.

I also ran into my former practicum supervisor in the cookbook section. This was after I had shown the older gentleman the section, when I was doing a walkthrough. We talked briefly about our presentation, she's adding GIFs and I am definitely okay with that. I also emailed with whoever is in charge of the conference to figure out registration. We aren't presenting until the afternoon and I didn't really want to be there at eight o'clock in the morning if I didn't have to be. He said they planned on closing the registration table at eleven o'clock but he said he would leave my name tag out and that I could meet up with him later and pick up the other stuff. I'm cool with that. There is a chance that I may go earlier, possibly use it as a networking opportunity, even though it's an academic library conference and I work in a public library, but we'll see. I think it's a very slim chance. It would be more likely if I wasn't having to drive to another state as soon as our presentation was over.

I am working tomorrow night so tonight was Chipotle night. It took me a few trips around the block and a wait in a long line but after twenty-five minutes I finally had food. I took a detour on the way to my Mom's house to drop off the list of Korean books at the nursing home. The girl I spoke to said she would give the resident the list and have the staff member I talked to the other day get back to me. If the resident ends up wanting books we can get her signed up for a library card and then we should be good to go.

Dinner went well. I'm still underwhelmed by the food but I'm not a fan of change. The videos were good, however, but I am biased because I picked them. After dinner we sat around and talked and watched TV until I finally called it a night a little after nine o'clock.

When I got home I spent the rest of the brief night watching YouTube videos, clicking around the internet, and writing this. And it is now 11:30PM so I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I don't go to work until one o'clock tomorrow and I am tempted to go get an oil change in the morning if I don't sleep it all away. We'll see.