post #12

last night i had the beautiful surprise of working in Periodicals. Alone.
The thought alone initially made me think of how God-privileged I was to do that, mostly because the other two Reference librarians I was with that night, regardless of their MANY years of library experience, have never been trained to work Periodicals. In fact, rarely any of the PT Reference staff have been trained there. Here I was, the 5-month-old baby, trained in Circulation a month ago, and in basic Periodical policies less than a week ago (at least during that time, there were 2 other Periodical staff). Mind you, I’m not speaking out of arrogance – you’ll have to understand me as a person to understand the tone I say that all in. That also being said, at least my initial response was not stark refusal (a past life assumes the fear position).

My adventures were frequent, learning how to operate things as I attempt to hold a facade of confidence, trying to mimic the actions I’ve observed of the real staff workers. It would be unnerving for the patrons to know that the only Periodicals staff at hand had no idea what she was doing.

But now I know. Because of last night’s experience, I had my foot in the door to be trained a lot more in depth during today’s shift.

Let me say, though, that among the interesting situations, I had two guys hit on me, one a teenager who showed no decency in scaling me with his eyes, the other a subtle mid-aged man who poured out his life stresses, concluding with “What are you doing this weekend? Any big plans?” “Celebrating Easter, Sir,” I replied. I also had to search for two obituaries. Having two in one night, I wonder if that’s a frequent task…

I felt bad at closing when a man would not get off the computer, and I later found out that he was deaf and mute. I wish I knew how to sign.

Today a teen girl told our Young Adult Librarian, “Man, all the small libraries are like – cold corn straight out of the can. But THIS library – this library’s like a gourmet dinner!”

I said she ought to be a poet.

I also had a woman call me for the recipe for thousand island dressing.

In Periodicals, they handle all the new materials – it’s like Christmas, and it’s tempting to flip through the fresh pages and put that book, DVD, or CD on your holds list. On the other hand, I had the beautiful task (which is not new to me) of withdrawing books off the US Travel shelf. One by one, scanning and changing their status to “unavailable.” It’s like a circulation of life and death.

Plus resurrection because there’s a gargantuan book sale of these withdrawn books last week of April.

Happy Easter.

God wrote the Best Book of all.