June 2, 2018

This morning I woke up, got ready, and dropped the academic librarian off at her house on my way to work.

It was our summer reading kick-off day, so after counting money with the assistant, I went over to the children's area to set up a Makey Makey, potato piano. I like the whack-a-book game better but the theme for summer reading this year is music, so the piano made more sense. It was a little tricky figuring out which keys activated each piano key, we had to look at the code, but we got it sorted and as far as I know everything worked out pretty well.

I was on desk until 11:00PM and in that time I caught up on emails, helped patrons, and briefly talked to the academic librarian who stopped by to work on a presentation. I also talked to a guy I graduated from high school with and ran into several years ago at the grade school because he was an IT guy for the district. He apparently quit around the same time I did, went out to California for a year, and now he's back in town working for a software company and he's happier. Good for him.

Then I had a walkthrough and covered a break at the tech desk. I followed this by refilling audiobooks and DVDs, made a cheat sheet for summer reading prizes, and printed/folded fifty brochures.

I ate lunch in the third floor meeting room and I hooked my Chromebook up to the giant TV so I could watch YouTube videos. In the last fifteen minutes I was joined by one of the tech desk workers for her break and we watched the first video in a new Neebs Gaming series, where they play Far Cry 5 and film it as if it is a documentary. It's pretty funny, and the tech desk worker laughed a lot, so I think I've created a new fan.

I was on desk for two hours after lunch and spent the majority of that time starting a list of romance books for the romance display. I briefly thought I lost the list, because I was compiling it on our website while logged into my account and at one point my account timed out, but when I logged in later, the list was there, so it was only a minor scare.

After that I covered another break in the tech center. The academic librarian was teaching a class in the classroom, and when she was done, I went in and turned everything off and talked to her for a little bit. Then I ran upstairs to grab the personalized reading list notebook because it is summer and we have been getting a lot of requests recently. And then I helped a patron find a travel book. He said every year he goes on a roadtrip with his daughter and was looking for some non-touristy places to stop. After that, I requested a new book by John Atkinson, where he uses two comic panels to summarize classic books, and it looks really good.

A family member for one of my homebound patrons stopped by and said they were wanting to pause the service for awhile. This is the patron who gets sixteen large print nonfiction books each month, and we were getting really close to running out of books. The pause is not a surprise because she has been having some issues the past few months, but I'm hoping for the best.

Throughout the day I unintentionally updated my catalog tutorial because I kept finding previously unknown icons for the various materials in our collection. I added them to the slide I have all the other icons on. I also figured out a way to find all of the possible icons, by editing the web address for one icon with various other numbers, and pulled out all the icons. They aren't labeled with the material they represent, but I figure I'll be ready if I come across something else.

After work I picked up the academic librarian and we headed out of town to go to an outdoor concert. It was a nice drive. We laid a blanket out in the grass and ate a dinner which the academic librarian prepared. It included roasted vegetables with rosemary, and roasted green beans with lemon. They were all vegetables but two distinct dishes. Both were really good. Her friend was playing in the symphony and she stopped by to talk for a little bit before the concert. It turned out to be a really beautiful night and the music complemented it nicely. I never would have thought to drive out of town for a concert after work, but it was definitely worth it.