#that librarian life

[marvelingjules]

Got the other application (for the teen services position) for that other job I want submitted.

A friend-acquaintance heard today about the other one I have the interview for and knows the town it's in. They did not have great things to say about it and warned me off of it. I'm trying not to think about that too much, and I do appreciate the other friend that was like 'still, if it gets you closer to where you want to be and the state you want to live in, that's good'.

And it would. Its not that I don't love where I live, state-wise - but it's so expensive and the exact area where I live is not my jam. I want forests, I want ocean, I want out. The one with the interview isn't near ocean but it's right on a river, and it's got plenty of forest. The other has forest and ocean and I want it bad, I do. When I first got into librarianship, I wanted to be a teen services librarian. I wanted to do that, and I still do. I've known I'm always going to enjoy doing the kid programming, and I've discovered I actually really enjoy adult programming too.

Clearly, I just love programming.

But one of the things I've worked so hard for at my branch is building up, fleshing out, and curating our teen collection. It's got newer titles, more diversity, and I've expanded out graphic novels and especially manga collections. It's my goal to get teens coming in regularly enough so I can create a advisory group. I've got teens that come in, but not consistently enough for that yet. The teens here are busy with a lot of things, there's competition for their time... but one of my goals for this branch is to make the library a go-to place for them more. Just... takes time. I've got the adults coming way more often. Now I can shift full-focus onto the teens.

Anyway, it's a bit tough in that the one I have the interview for is right after the application for the teen one closes. So there could be a bit of a 'I'm waiting to hear from the one I really one and get an offer from the one I want less and what do you do at that point'.

But that's getting ahead of myself. One step at a time. If I get an offer I can take time to think it over; I don't have to answer right away. Gonna practice my 'I'd love to read the job offer over in more depth and get back to you with my response soon' line so it comes easy lol.

But yeah. Interview coming up, and hopefully another interview at somewhere I desperately want to work and live soon too. Fingers crossed!

[lakecountylibrary]

We don’t have a uniform, why do you ask?

Inspired by our friends at Rapid City Public Library (link goes to TikTok). Music only - sound not needed.

[Video Description: A librarian with glasses wearing a polo shirt and shelving books answers an unheard question from someone offscreen. His words are inaudible but the caption reads "The librarian wearing the cardigan and glasses will be able to help you." Video cuts to an information desk where four librarians wearing cardigans and glasses are working. They all turn and wave as four more librarians wearing cardigans and glasses pop out from behind the desk and wave. The librarian from the beginning walks on screen and puts on his own cardigan. And waves.]

Music credit: George Street Shuffle Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[icarus-suraki]

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

[intothestacks]

I was flipping through one of the new books I got for the library and I came across this:

Nick Fury canonically owns a guinea pig, y'all.

[librarianproblems]

Watching a patron check out your display

[tinyowlthoughts]

"I want to be remembered as the Anti-JK-Rowling."

"JK Rowling the billionaire author (which, by the way, billionaires should not exist) who instead of using her wealth and reach to better our world has decided to spend her days on Twitter attacking trans people for having the audacity to exist. Imagine, you are one of the BIGGEST authors the world has ever known, writing books for standing up for what's right, only to turn into the villain you warned about.

"What a slap in the face that is. What an absolute betrayal. People like that - people who think that they are somehow better than others, more human, deserve to be shunned from society, no ifs, ands, or buts, and nothing less than just that. At the end of the day, Rowling has no idea who I am, and that's okay. I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing, writing for my community who deserves to see themselves in books.

"Our stories matter. Important stories that show all the different facets of our lives. Stories where we get to be the heroes. Stories where we get to be the villains. Stories where our truths are put down on page. Trans and nonbinary authors like Ryka Aoki, Anna Marie Macklemore, Andrew Joseph White. Those authors are telling trans stories in a way that no one has ever done before, putting trans characters front and center where they belong in stories that defy imagination."

TJ Klune Library Journal Day of Dialog 5/9/2024

[cloysterbell]

All right, write that down guys.

[navybrat817]

Lovelies, I took my kiddos to Trunk or Treat yesterday at their school and one of the cars had kids pick out a treat AND a book to keep. Totally a librarian!Bucky move (and have to once again share this beautiful Nix edit.)

Which one of your fictional husbands is giving out books along with candy?

[radio-show]

Thinking about how Grant (and the other kids yeah but specifically Grant) had only known Henry (yeah the other dads too but I'm thinking about Henry) for less than a day before getting dropped into the forgotten realms and then at least a month later when he sees him again he has to see totally different sides of him and his dad. How jarring must that be? You meet a guy and his insane sons and your first impression of him is that he's some tree hugger granola dad who's a total pushover and then the next time you see him it's in a death game where he volunteers to kill a man by shotgun blast to the face and then leaves the dead body of the guy outside to send a message to the other players. Imagine meeting this guy whose whole gig is being vegan and a free range granola parent and the next time you see him he's breaking into another explosive burst of anger and yelling at the arena that he will fight and/or kill anyone who comes to hurt you or his friends. Imagine knowing your dad all your life and seeing him one day and then having to know that your dad has killed someone. And then you kill a chimera and you're changed forever. And then you grow up and marry a man named Marco.

[marvelingjules]

A teacher clearly bribed her students to come to my paper lanterns book upcyling program today, because I have almost 10 of them already which is about 10 more than usual and 6 more than a usual good turnout 🤣

[lakecountylibrary]

Just the essentials!

Music credit: "Cinema Blockbuster Trailer 7" by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/329-cinema-blockbuster-trailer-7 License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license (CC BY 4.0)

[Video Description: A 26 second video. Orchestral, cinematic music plays. Text reads The library is on fire! Grab the most important things!

A librarian at her computer spins around in her chair in slow motion, a look of horror on her face. Video cuts between various librarians frantically rescuing items. Each scene is labeled with the item:

The South Shore Posters: A librarian completely obscured by a framed South Shore Line poster she is carrying backs out of a room.

The hand chair: A librarian hauls away a large red plastic chair shaped like a hand.

Patron holds: A librarian shovels patron holds off the holds shelf onto a cart.

Benny the library skeleton: A librarian princess-carrying a large skeleton dressed in an oversized t-shirt frantically looks around for an exit before dashing away

The cardigan pile: A librarian almost completely obscured by the pile of cardigans in her arms runs toward the camera.

3D printer: A librarian dashes up to a large 3D printer and attempts to lift it off the table

Cecily the giraffe: A librarian pats a life size baby giraffe statue and then grabs it by the leg and begins slowwwly scooting backward to slide it across the carpet

The library tree: A librarian grips an enormous planter out of which springs an entire tree and pulls with all her might. It doesn't move.

James Patterson books? : The librarian carrying Benny sprints into frame between shelves loaded with endless Patterson books. Record scratch. The sound of a clock ticking as he considers the books for maybe two seconds.

Text changes to "Not enough hands". The dramatic music resumes as he sprints off frame with Benny.

End card with the library logo. The words 'Not actually on fire. Everything is fine.' are typed across the screen. End description]

[icarus-suraki]

I don't like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.

I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.

An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject is often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say "short of biohazards" but since I know there's a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.

When a collection of materials--which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever--on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive's records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it's all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I'm proud of you).

This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce's loveletters to Nora.

Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.

So now apply this to Ao3--which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.

And the "whether you personally like the materials or not" is important, hence why I mentioned Jim's loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)

If it's made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don't need to lose any more.

The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of "purity culture" and panic over "dangerous" fiction.

The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn't be like the banker's box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.

It's really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I'm not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all--but they're still there. That's the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what's there, to stay "on topic" with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.

The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of "dangerous" fanworks and 2. public access to those "dangerous" fanworks. These are issues of "purity culture" and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.

Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.

[marvelingjules]

Depends on what kind of book scanning system the library has - mine doesn’t have the money for the above kind of thing so we manually check in the books. We flip through quickly to check for damage or anything like that - such as things left behind - and we do usually pull them out.

Wouldn’t blacklist anyone though. Depending on things we might just leave them in frankly, either from missing it or because we’ve caught on what you were doing and think it’s amusing to let happen.

library bookmarks

I have a question for those among y'all who are librarians or heavy library users.

So my dude exclusively reads books from the library. He needs the little deadline to get him to read the book; ones I own and like and give to him, he just never gets around to finishing.

Anyway. Just a moment ago he was reading Reward System by Jem Calder, and he found a bookmark left behind by the previous reader. ("It's okay," he says. "I don't actually know anybody I'd recommend it to, but it's fine.") The bookmark was something about Mornings with Jesus. Cardstock, punched-out. Whatever.

But he was like. What if I left some weird unhinged bookmarks in the books I returned? Alive with possibilities, he was considering hilarious and weird shit he could put in there. But then he was like. Surely when you return a book they check to see if you left stuff in it! And if they found too many weird bookmarks they'd... idk blacklist you or something?

My thesis is that library staff does not hunt for bookmarks, per se, but if in the course of handling a returned book they notice something left in it they'll of course remove it. (Hence the posts you sometimes see about the stupid shit people use as bookmarks in library books. Don't use sliced cheese guys. That kind of shit.)

But I felt like, if he just printed some hilarious slogan on pieces of paper and cut them into bookmarks and left them in some of his books, nobody would notice or care.

But he's still convinced he'd get on some kind of blacklist.

(He mostly just uses his hold receipt as a bookmark, for the record.)

[intothestacks]

Shared by my library supervisor

I feel called out. lol

comic by @myjetpack

[librarianproblems]

When someone says libraries are a waste of taxpayer funds

[thatsbelievable]