Winter in no uncertain terms

Well, it must be winter: had to break out the warm, fake-leopard-skin robe this morning. The pretty, pale aqua one that was a Christmas present from friend Meaghan a few years back has served faithfully since about May, but this morning it was 28 degrees out (and snowing, about which more in a moment), and it was cold in my little house. Even turning the heat up didn't do the trick, so I dug around in the bottom of my portable closet (my little house comes with only one real closet), where I stack extra blankets, and I pulled out the folded-up, warm winter robe.

As to the snow, 6-12 inches are predicted. Although we had a freak snowstorm at the end of October -- which made newspaper headlines across the country, since it was only the fourth time since the Civil War that snow had fallen in New York City in October -- and many areas in New England got close to two feet of snow, here in the Augusta area we had only maybe four or five inches. So this is our first real snowstorm. And naturally it arrives on the day before Thanksgiving, when the whole world has a plane to catch -- or a couple of hours on the road to drive -- in order to get to Grandma's house. Fortunately I don't have to go anywhere, not even to work, since I made the executive decision, after digging out the winter robe, and standing at my front window for a few minutes looking out at the gently-falling snow (and the six inches that were already on the ground) not to open the library. Didn't even agonize over the decision, as I have so often in the past (see Note of Jan. 12, 2011). Although I have to admit I vacillated a little bit. I decided that if the snow had let up by this afternoon, we'd open at 2. My reason for this is that we are definitely and absolutely closed for the Thanksgiving holiday both tomorrow and Friday and, as I discussed in the note of Jan. 12th, I know some of our patrons depend on the library for reading (or viewing) matter to get them through such things as holidays, weekends, and snowed-in days. To be closed three days in a row is a bit much.

So I call the staff member who normally opens on Wednesdays, to tell her answering machine (Sue never answers the phone directly) that we are closed until maybe two o'clock; I call our answering machine at the library and change its message to say the same thing ("Please give us a call after that time to see if we are open), I call our snow-removal guy to let him know he doesn't have to worry about getting our walks cleared until this afternoon, and I prepare to enjoy an extra day off.

But nothing is ever simple. In my life these days nothing is ever simple. About an hour later I remember that this is ILL delivery day. Some libraries have two or three deliveries a week; our little library has only one, so if we miss it -- because, say, we're closed due to a storm -- then our patrons have to wait an additional week for their interlibrary loan books, and the libraries we are lending books to have to wait an additional week for their books.

So, sigh, I call the delivery service, to ask if they think the delivery guy will make it through, like the P.O., just maybe late. The woman I talk to says he may run late, because of the state of the roads, or he may actually run early, because so many libraries will have closed. So ultimately we agree that someone will be at the library to receive our delivery at two o'clock, unless I hear otherwise from her. And then I have to call Sue back to convey this information to her, so that she can plan on definitely being there then (Sue lives within walking distance of the library, so her getting there is not the ordeal it is for me when it snows.)

Now I just have to hope my neighborhood doesn't lose power...and that some strapping young boys will come around at some point and offer to do my shoveling for me (wait, do I have any money in the house? Hmm...)

Winter comes early as the witches fly

We had our first snowfall last night. Here in the Augusta area we got about two inches, so definitely more than a dusting. To my mind, early; last year the first snowfall was a whole month later (Nov. 26). The year before we had what I called a mini-snowstorm on Nov. 6th (See Note of Nov. 9, 2009), and I declared I wasn't ready then. So needless to say I'm not ready on Oct. 30th to wake up to snow on my lawn, my car, the back deck railing. But of course Mother Nature (don't you think it's interesting that humankind made God male, but Nature female?) couldn't care less who's ready and who's not. Just as she doesn't care how many people are living in paper houses above a fault line, or on the hillsides below a volcano.

What's really strange is that, since there were still leaves on the trees, and the snowfall was accompanied by wind, my snow-covered lawn is also pockmarked with yellow-brown leaves. It looks almost like a white quilt, with a leaf pattern.

Yesterday we had what has become our annual Kids' Halloween Party at the library. One of those events I HATE putting together. Librarian as Social Director; as we all know by now, my least favorite role as a public librarian. Thank God I have had a Program Coordinator for the past year and a half (we hired him when I went to reduced hours), who takes care of most of the details for most of our programs now. But this party required a lot of input from me. Ideas -- e.g., we've had Pin the Wart on the Witch for three years running now, what other, similar game could we have [answer: Pin the Tail on the Cat, with the tails proving to be much easier for the little kids to handle than the oversized warts were) -- running to the store for this, that and the other thing, mainly prizes for the various games, as well as for Most Beautiful, Cutest, Scariest and Most Original costume, which I also had to decide on. I performed this last task by wandering through the Halloween Spirit store that magically appears every year at this time, and the Dollar Tree, and Reny's Department store (the wonderful throw-back to a different era that can be found in several Maine towns -- it's actually more like an upscale Woolworth's than a Macy's, with, often, some really good bargains) hoping something would leap out at me. And things did, slowly but surely.

I also had to come up with clues for the Build a Skeleton Scavenger Hunt. I tried to delegate this task, but the only staff person who got into it produced a lot of clever clues that would have been a challenge for adults. So I had to do a lot of refining, then type the final product up and run off on appropriately orange paper with an appropriate skeleton on it. (And yesterday, as people were starting to arrive for the party, I was still running around tucking plastic skulls under dictionaries and plastic backbones under sofa cushions.)

During the party I was busy making sure things were going smoothly at all the various venues: besides the Pin the Tail on the Cat area, where two members of our Friends organization were writing names on construction paper tails and turning blindfolded kids around so that they would end up attaching their tails to the cat's legs, there was the dunking-for-apples spot, with the newest member of our Board of Trustees nobly providing guidance and towels to the eager young dunkers, the Mystery Box, where the president of our Board, who had also volunteered her services, oversaw children trying to guess what items were in the box by touch only, including such things as a pumpkin, a witch's hat ('wizard's hat' would also do), and a severed hand (all they had to guess was 'hand'). Kids who guessed everything got a festive badge that declared "I Guessed Everything in the Mystery Box," while those who were less successful got one that said "I Guessed Almost Everything in the Mystery Box."

There was the crafts table in the Children's Room which enjoyed a steady business in kids making bats and decorating construction paper jack-o-lanterns. Stacie, my intrepid helper every Wednesday when I do the Children's Story & Craft, was stuck there practically the entire length of the party, because the demand was so much greater than we'd expected, and she kept having to churn out pumpkins and bat wings and bodies. In the main reading room, beside a sign that said Make a Spooky Halloween Picture for our Wall, we also had black and orange paper, with sidewalk chalk for the former and colored markers for the latter, and this area did a brisk business as well. The lady from the Friends who was minding the nearby refreshments table would help the kids tape their pictures to the wall when they'd finished.

There was also a Ghost Walk, which I found myself having to oversee whenever I had a free moment, because there was no one else to do so. This game was another clever idea of Stacie's. Stacie is an absolute whizz at coming up with ideas for craft activities -- which I sometimes have to modify, to be within the capabilities of 2-3 year olds, but still -- and she's even more of a whizz at producing the prototype we always make so the kids will know what to aim for. Anyway, it was her idea to blow up a balloon, draw a ghost on it, put the "ghost" on a paper plate, and have the kids walk a certain course without the ghost flying away. Turned out to be a very popular activity, and whenever I would see a child looking at loose ends I would say, "Have you done the Ghost Walk yet?"

The Grand Finale was my "spooky story," the beginning of which I'd made up in my head while having lunch, before leaving for the library (the party started at 2 p.m.) I told the kids gathered around me that at different points in the story they would have to help me, by providing the next thing that would happen, when I pointed to them. So I had the bored twins, Troy and Tracy, who couldn't go Trick-or-Treating on Halloween night because it was too windy and rainy, deciding to go explore that big old empty house next door instead (they hadn't done this before, because they'd just moved into the neighborhood the week before). When they finally get the front door open, and Troy shines his dad's flashlight inside what should they see but (point, pause while surprised child thinks, then) "a ghost!" Yes! A great big ghost, hovering there in the dark. Tracy screamed. Troy screamed and dropped the flashlight...

And on we went. It was fun, and afterwards all the grownups who had gathered to listened as well were saying 'that was a great story!' and 'you're a born story-teller!', and I was thinking, yes, yes, I have all sort of talents you have no idea about because what you see me do is this job, which has almost nothing to do with any of my real talents.

But ah, well. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and now IT'S OVER FOR ANOTHER YEAR.

The joys of librarianship

On Wednesday, even though I was officially on vacation, I went in for an hour and a half (which ended up being two hours), in order to put on the show that is our weekly Children's Hour. Any time over the past year I could have just left this to my assistant, who can certainly read a simple story and oversee a simple craft for two or three, or even four children. Which is how many kids we've been getting for the past year. Demographics were at play here: all the little kids who had been coming regularly suddenly graduated to pre-school or kindergarten, and there was not a new batch of children of the right age to replace them.

However, week before last we were inundated with children! Not two or three or four, but sixteen! It was like the old days. Which was nice, but we weren't prepared. We didn't have enough of the needed supplies for the craft we had planned. So Stacie and I had to do some quick thinking, to come up with an alternative. And, clever ladies that we are, we did.

We had to assume we would be getting about the same number of children this week, and I knew Stacie could not handle sixteen children by herself, however simple we made the craft. So I made the decision to go in, just for that time period. What the heck, it wasn't like I would be interrupting my Bermuda cruise. I would just be driving the 15 minutes from my house in Gardiner to the library in Hallowell, reading a story, getting however many kids showed up through a craft, and then splitting for my air-conditioned home once more.

However. We had been thinking: decorate rocks if it rains, paint on the long roll of white paper taped to the wall outside if it's dry. It was dry, and also very warm. The library was very warm. Painting really seemed the best option. But before the children could paint, Stacie and I had to attach a big piece of plastic to the wall outside, then tape the paper onto that. The wall is made of large, rough blocks of granite, not the best surface to be painting on, which was why the plastic needed to go on first.

But what a trial getting that plastic onto the wall proved to be! We did this one time before, a few years ago, and it surely was not so difficult then. The roll of clear "packing" tape I'd taken out would not stick to the wall. Stacie had brought out the almost defunct roll of masking tape, which worked better, but Stacie's hands shake even more than mine do (for a different reason), so she had trouble peeling the tape from the roll, then tearing it off (she'd forgotten to bring out scissors), then attaching it smoothly and securely to the plastic. My impatience couldn't tolerate her fumbling long -- keep in mind that we were not able to do this in a leisurely fashion, because Stacie only arrives at the library about 20 minutes before story time -- so I took over the taping, while Stacie held first the plastic, then the paper in place. There was also a fairly good breeze, which complicated matters. And I kept fuming, "I don't even have a book yet."

I'd actually spent some of the time before Stacie arrived looking for/trying to think of a good book to read. Normally I have this done by the day before, but of course I hadn't been in on Monday or Tuesday. I did go in for 3 1/2 hours on Sunday, partly to get some things done that needed to be done, partly to insure that my paycheck this pay period wouldn't be too pathetically paltry (since I went on reduced hours last year I am paid by the hour, rather than having a fixed salary as I did before). But on Sunday I was thinking 'decorated rocks', rather than painting, so what little time I spent looking for a book was spent looking for something having to do with rocks (and finding nothing). We try to connect the story to our craft, though that isn't always possible.

Selecting a book is always something of a challenge anyway. Our usual audience is made up of 2-4 year olds, and you can't challenge their limited attention span with too long, too complicated, or too abstract, a story. They want something to happen, and in a fairly short amount of time. And there have to be good illustrations to show them.

The situation is complicated still further when you have older children as well, which we now did. Part of our new influx of children included a private day care center (containing only six children, thank god) with ages ranging from 3 to 8. So what to read, what to read.

When I got back inside, hot and harried, it was 10:45, the time I usually sat down with a book and started to read. No time to find a book now. So what the heck, I'd tell them a story. Which I did. Not really hard at all for me...I am, after all, a writer! And as I've mentioned in these Notes before, I used to entertain my siblings with stories when the family would travel. I very cleverly included the children gathered around me in the story -- whenever I pointed at them they were to say their names. Thus I could begin my story, "Once upon a time there was a brother and sister named..." (point) "Sam!" "and..."(point) "Lily" (said very shyly, but said). I had Sam and Lily walking through a big forest that got darker and scarier as they walked, and they were starting to get a little nervous when all of a sudden they met... (point) "Corrina." And on we went, looking for the Ice Cream House, where they had such good ice cream, and meeting lots of children along the way.

So once again the human brain problem-solved in a pinch. And then we went out and painted.

And they think we sit around reading magazines

This past Saturday was Old Hallowell Day in new Hallowell. Very big deal that encourages citizens to celebrate their city (smallest city in the state of Maine), and bring folks in from around and about, to spend money at the local merchants. There's a road race, a parade, lots of junk food for sale down at the river, etc.

As usual our library had a book sale. It's generally the most successful of the three we have during the year (the others are during the town's Fall Fest, and at Mardi Gras), at least partly because it's held on the lawn, where passers-by can be lured in.

The sales are lucrative fund-raisers for the library, but they are a lot of work, much of it hard physical labor. When people bring donated books in, one of my staff has to go through them, pulling out any we might want to add to the collection (someone will have to check them against the catalog, to make sure we don't already have them), tossing any that are in too bad a shape (it kills me the way people "hate to throw away books," so will bring us stuff that's grown mildew, sitting in the attic or basement for years, which we then have to throw away), then put them into one of the several boxes we always have sitting on the office floor. One box holds hardback fiction, another, paperbacks, another, kids' books, another, cookbooks, etc. When a box is full it has to be labeled and carted down the stairs to our dark, dank basement.

This last step is the initial "hard physical labor;" carrying heavy boxes of books carefully down stairs and around to where they can be set down is not fun. But the real killer comes the evening before a sale. All those boxes that have been collecting for months have to be brought back upstairs, along with the long tables that they will be set out on (and no, there is noplace to store them upstairs). For the past three sales we have had the use of three brawny young men from the local pre-release program, which has helped enormously, but there are still plenty of boxes to be carried by the rest of us. The first couple of years that I was in this job the volunteer helpers were almost all elderly members of our Friends' organization, and their equally elderly spouses. I was always worried someone was going to drop dead of a stroke or heart attack.

Fortunately those folks have pretty much retired from the field, but unfortunately, younger blood, and muscle, has not stepped in to replace them. Last Friday night the volunteers who showed up were two middle-aged male members of my Board, one younger, though not really young, female member, and two other women, also no longer young. And the 63-year-old library director, who has the physical strength of a guinea pig, and the stamina of a four-packs-a-day smoker (note that i've never smoked in my life). I had sent out a plea for volunteers in our monthly newsletter, which goes out to a large number of patrons electronically, and a print version of which is distributed around town. Had also sent a Reminder email a couple of days before the event. The only responses I received were from two also-no-longer-young-women who apologized that they weren't going to be around, or they would certainly help.

Where are the men? Where are the teenaged kids? I hate lugging boxes of books up and down stairs (and note that all books not sold, except for those I'm quick enough to toss into boxes set aside for trash, have to be re-boxed and taken back downstairs at the end of the sale); and for the Old Hallowell Day sale that re-boxing and labeling and carting is done in the heat and humidity of a typical Maine summer's day. I had also volunteered to work one of the cash tables for the last hour of the sale -- because of the shortage of volunteers for that task, as well -- though I ended up spending most of the hour doing the aforementioned weeding of books that were obviously not going to sell, no matter how many sales we put them through. I was able to do this because the president of our Board, who had nobly agreed to walk in the parade, carrying one end of the library's banner, had returned from the parade and collapsed into the chair next to his wife, who was helping me. Business was very slow at our table -- the Friends' items-for-sale table, rather than the regular cashier's table -- so I left them to it, condemning myself to standing under that heartless sun, discarding or repacking books.

So we made lots of money, and thank god it's over.

A life change

I recently reduced my hours at work, went from a 36 1/2 hour full-timer, to a 20-hour-a-week part-timer. It's been a little strange adapting to the change. Except for part-time jobs during my 3 1/2 years of college, year and a half of graduate school, and a year and a half when I lived in Maine the first time, I've worked full-time, 35-40 hours a week, my entire adult life, since I was 18.

But I'm adapting! To going in later, leaving earlier, not pushing myself so relentlessly. This is, after all, exactly what I was seeking, when I asked my Board if I could reduce my hours. Semi-retirement, the closest thing to the real thing I could afford at the present time. And in case you're wondering how the Starving Librarian could afford such a move: Social Security benefits are supposedly going to offset the reduction in income. I won't be making any more money, but shouldn't make any less, either, if the lady at the Social Security office and I got our figures right.

Truly, I'm worn out. I'm ready to be retired. I've had a lot of trouble with extreme fatigue, and I'm hoping this will help. If nothing else, it should help my mental fatigue.

Besides having to adapt to actually having more time for the rest of my life, I'm having to adapt to being more focused at work, less easily distracted, less inclined to do things that other members of my staff can do. I've never been so diligent about prioritizing. And fortunately, this change came at a time when there were no looming crises or deadlines, which crop up from time to time.

One thing that I am hoping will make this change even more successful is that I have hired, with my Board's approval, a person to handle the planning, scheduling and publicizing of programs for the library. As those of you who have followed this blog regularly surely know by now, arranging programs is my least favorite aspect of my job, of public librarianship in general. Librarian as social director, just not my thing. I can only hope it is our new staff member's thing.

My Board approved this on a trial basis; we are to see if the library can manage without a full-time director. Wish me luck.

Marion, Madam Librarian

It may have occurred to some of you to wonder if I don’t enjoy any of the processes involved in being a librarian, which has been, after all, my profession for 25 years. And indeed, I do. I especially enjoy what is called collection development or collection management. That’s a matter of ascertaining what the library needs to add to its collection, and what remove. Acquisitions – the actual ordering of items to be added – can be a part of collection development, or separate. In a small library such as mine, in which not that many items are ordered each month, and staffing is very limited, acquisitions is often performed by the same person, in this case, me.

I love trying to decide what should be ordered. This calls for a consideration of many factors, including how much money do I have to spend in each area, and provides an opportunity to exercise my professional judgment, which is always satisfying. The process includes, for example, investigating the contents of preview boxes of children’s books sent to me from time to time by book distributors (the middleman between publishers and libraries). I look to see what grabs me, then see if we have holes or weaknesses in the collection that the items could fill. With children’s books I have to consider reading level: we may have a book or two on the solar system, but are they at a higher reading level than this particular book? In most subject areas, as well as in fiction, you try to have some books at all three reading levels: very easy to read, slightly more advanced, more advanced yet. In fiction, you must also have picture books – lots of picture books – which are generally read to children who cannot yet read.

This is also when I can find myself doing what we call weeding. As I’m looking at the books we have I may discover two or three that we need to withdraw – they’re too old for the topic, possibly so old-fashioned in appearance (pen and ink drawings for illustrations, for example) that no modern-day child would give them a second glance, they haven’t been checked out in ages. Removing books from the collection is also part of the process.

As for adult books, I don’t get preview boxes; I read mini-reviews in publications like Library Journal and the New York Times Book Review. This is great fun. As a public librarian I am less concerned with nonfiction that I would be in an academic library – which is one of the things I miss about working in an academic library – and of necessity must be most concerned with keeping the best sellers streaming in. Even here, though, I must try to find a balance between ordering all the latest James Pattersons/Robert Parkers/W.E.B. Griffins/Danielle Steels, and selecting new authors for readers to try. And I have the challenge of trying to ascertain what sorts of nonfiction books my particular patrons will be interested in. This has to be done over time, through observation of what goes out and what doesn’t; it’s part of the process.

I also enjoy the process of providing reference assistance. Someone is looking for particular information – where to look? You become a kind of detective. Often you have to ask questions to get at exactly what information the patron is looking for. A classic example of the importance of what is called the reference interview is having a patron come in asking where’s your section on horses, and finally getting at the fact that what he really wants is a book that will show him how to draw horses. Or you have someone say she’s looking for information on china -- is that dishes or countries the lady is interested in?

A very different process that I enjoy is that of cataloging. Here my penchant for having things according to Hoyle is in its element. Uh-oh, that information should be in field 520 of the record, not 500. Or the information in the Series Name field needs cleaning up, or that in the publisher information field. What’s really fun is when you have to supply all the information for all the fields in a record – original cataloging – but most catalogers do little of that these days, unless their collection is very distinctive, and they are unable to find records already out there, in one of the larger catalogs that one can tap into and extract records from.

Among the numerous frustrations of my current position is that I do very little cataloging, or reference. And other tasks that I do have responsibility for, such as programming (i.e., coming up with special events to be held in the library – which always seem to involve a great deal of work with, in the end, almost nobody showing up) and computer trouble-shooting, I do not enjoy at all, or do particularly well. But, life must have its frustrations, or one would be insufferably happy...