Chocolatespoon: Emily’s Musings

Another busy Sunday. 2 Hours A, 4 Hours J. Here are some of the questions/requests:

The Confident Hope
The Custom of the Sea
Goldfinger
Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing of the First World War
dictionary
videos in German
do I need a password for the computers?
someone actually called out time management a “brilliant system” for its ability to let you use your time in small increments — I don’t think I have EVER heard anyone say that
books about transportation
books featuring the letters T and W
On Liberty
do I have to go back to the reservation console each time? (no, just the first one unless all the computers are occupied, and then you go there to get on the waiting list)
Building Wealth
The Last Unicorn
What is brought on the picnic in the song?
found Polly, get a frog x7+
drugs and alcohol (362.29)
basket
Dear Dumb Diary
The Kid Who Ran for President/The Kid Who Became President
Biscuit (the dog)
teen reading club x4
High School Musical sound track
Foxtrot
damaged copy of Osmosis Jones, hold another copy (oops, can’t — too new a feature film for holds)
sign onto Internet x4
Vampire Mountain
sequel to Magyk
Beatrix Potter
age 13 daughter, ok to read these teen books? (umm… we suggested the 8th grade list instead since she was concerned about content)
4th grade boy picks (ended up with Stuart Little)
earthquakes and seismic waves
Anne McCaffery scifi
BoxCar Children
Harry Potter in paperback
how to get a library card x3
_easy_ easy readers (yellow dots)
Clique series
Around the World in 80 Days DVD
5th grade math and English
Sweet Honey In the Rock
dinosaurs
Tripping Over the Lunch Lady
old movie about the Brothers Grimm? think it was the 1962 The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, but we don’t have that
rules for attendance for Wednesday’s program? (school kids 5+, kids only)
STOP STANDING ON CURIOUS GEORGE’S HEAD! x2
card won’t work (13 yr old, kids computers are for 12 and under)
instrumental music for gymnastic routines

Jean and I also tried to sum up the different types of reference questions we get (in prep for upcoming interviews) Here are the categories I came up with (how handy to have all these refgrunts handy!)

Technology Questions — useing our system (since it isn’t exactly self-explanatory, and using the Internet, Office, etc.)
Readers Advisory — recommendations, requests for reviews, handing out book lists, etc.
Directional
Service (hours? wifi? do you… ? can you…? )
Local Resources/Referrals (I love these and get fewer than I expected)
Trivia/Facts — song lyrics, spelling, content entry help, elevation, state flowers, etc.
Subject — I’m looking for books on…?
Specific — title, list of titles, author, etc… do you have….?

A hot and quiet day on the J desk this afternoon (5 hrs) but it was fun to be there and catch up with some folks. Weeded most of the ‘N’ picture books since it was so quiet. Here are some of the (few) questions/requests today:

replacement summer reading sheet x2
I Can Read With My Eyes Shut
NYC and Washington DC travel guides
3rd grade math
Twighlight (Warriors New Prophecy Series — doesn’t come out until Sept)
Chinese DVDs
page job?
Summer Reading Signups x10
comic books
All American Girl (Meg Cabot)
11th grade reluctant reader sci fi, not too scary
Ready or Not (Meg Cabot)
how to use powerpoint (from a kid who couldn’t have been more than 6yrs old!)
The Elvenbane
Double Fudge
restrooms
JE’s
wireless? (no, sorry)
Shonen Jump Magazine
Jane Eyre
princess books (JE)
Anne of Green Gables
Full House Michelle series
Full House Season 3 DVD
Jigsaw Jones
phone?
do you have these in a bigger type size?

4 hours J, 2 hours A today. Lots of kids signing up for the summer reading program and finding the picture of Polly the Parrot that is hidden each week in a different spot. Had a lot of fun catching up with the other Sunday afternoon regulars since it seems like its been ages since I’ve had hours at this library.

Here are some of today’s questions/requests:

Pursuit of Happyness
CD Rom on trains
Memory stick issue
internet sign up help x3
log in problems
how do you log off
Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
How to Teach Your Baby Math
How to Teach Your Baby to Read
How to Teach Your Baby to be Physically Supurb
retaining walls
logic, critical thinking and semantics
endangered species encyclopedia
summer reading signups x8
I Spy Christmas book
delete a hold
Wiggles
Trickster’s Choice
Tin Tin
lost lady bug toy (found it!)
An Ideal Husband
wifi? (not yet…)
books in Chinese
schedule of hours
sheet music
En Vogue
Sloppy Firsts
En Vogue Song My Lovin (You’re Never Gonna Get It)
Bob the Builder DVD – Build it and they will come
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall
Nate the Great
Pokemon

3 hours J, 4 hours A today. Pretty quiet with the holiday weekend and the big downtown mushroom festival going on. Here are some of the questions/requests:

joke books
pictures of stomachs
famous buildings
tooth care
coloring sheets
trucks
police
princess books
snakes
siberian huskies
german shepherds
Garfield
books with Star Wars characters
Narnia
DMV info
other movies the girl from Runaway Jury is in
Johnny Cash CDs
what’s going on downtown?
silk flowers
who played the flather tht was killed in Runaway Jury?
Congressional Rep’s address
Kid Galahad

and a few more but I seem to have left the last page of notes at the library (along with the two books I had checked out, doh)

And Dad and Jane are here visiting and got to see my library and we ducked out for my lunch hour and checked out the mushroom festival.

Busy day at the library because of the ground-breaking and what-not. I was on the adult side all day (8 hours) and found out that I only have one more Saturday booked with them which is very sad because I absolutely love working at this library. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find other things to do with my Saturdays. I did get the opportunity to draft a proposal arguing for a MySpace profile about the libary which was fun to work on.

Here are some of the questions/requests from today:
Child Abuse and Neglect video
use laptop to print? (no, but if you have a flash drive that might work– it did!)
what is EDT?
help printing x3
use own paper in copy machine? (no)
how do you see the number in the catalog (you have to click on the title — I was remembering a great quote someone blogged yesterday somewhere about if people had to be trained to use Amazon or NetFlix, they’d be out of business… so why does our catalog have to be so darn non-intuitive?)
disk full, lost changes
city job postings?
Driving Miss Daisy
Sleepless in Seattle
Adrian Mole: the Cappuccino Years on CD
Music of the Sun/Rihanna
Cookbook/Missy Elliott
Curtis Brown CD
Korean DVD dramas with English subtitles (turned out to be much harder that I though, most were in Korean with Chinese subtitles! Ended up sending them to CU for Christmas in August)
St. Petersburg
Raggae music (under INT)
town map
modern art
abstract art
art techniques
Stephen King books and DVDs based on his books
Elvis Presley CDs
“walk slower!” (I apparently go to fast when taking people to the stacks)
tissue x2
Runaway Jury
cost of pianos (but they hung up on me)
Maine
CA gold rush
1982 Mercedes transmission repair manual
local driving directions
Children’s DVDs
The Sun Also Rises
Layer Cake (DVD)
Kafka
2 books off the Chinese book list
directions to address in downtown SJ
Hello! magazine current issue
paintball

At the last minute I filled in for a 3 hour shift tonight on the J desk (someone had jury duty). It was a pretty quiet night, but a few fun queries. Here’s some of the questions/requests:

WW2 google image from a site that was blocked (could still save it)
Newbury bookmark
reproduction
use phone x4
Da Vinci
Joan of Arc
Michelangelo
Renaissance
Bear’s Day
computer problems
Dinosaurs A to Z
Halloweentown High
harbor seals
Shredderman
flour and salt maps
topo maps of California
Viking Easy to Read Level 1 books
Argentina maps
Colorado Rockies picture books, etc (we found fun stuff for that one)

I thought it was pretty funny that they asked me today, because I had a really strange dream about the library last night…

4 hours A, 4 hours J. Weeded mysteries in between questions. Busy for some stretches but quiet overall (it was a gorgeous day outside). Here are some of the questions/requests:

book sale today? (no, first Saturday of each month)
new card not in Time Mgmt system
catalog computer? x3
Association (the musical group, sang Along Comes Mary)
Lizzie McGuire
1950s
WWE (not WWF) wrestling movies
computer crashed x2
can I download an application? (turned out to be a pdf of an application that she wanted to print, not one to download and run)
forgot pin x2
True Crime books
Elvis documentaries
Elvis country music CDs
author of Kay Scarpetti books?
help printing x2
check hold status
Sweet Home Alabama
build a volcano for science project
scissors
maps of our town and help making sense out of them
Three Little Hawaiian Pigs and the Magic Shark
Spy Kids
pandas
Castle in the Sky
foxes
plain paper
Narnia, book 1
Zack Files
confirm class visit — its not next Friday, we’re closed all day
do the printers print in color? no
AR list
coloring pages, more flower ones
Draw 50…
what instrument is on the coloring sheet? (i think it was a lute)
California Gold Rush
magickeys.com/books/color
Rosa Parks

mysteries I was tempted to take home while weeding but have too many books checked out already: Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia and Too Dead to Swing by Hal Glatzer.

Found while weeding:
2 receipts
1 amazon.com bookmark with the Groucho Marx quote about it being too dark inside of a dog to read

Here are some of the questions from 12-6 on the A desk (I finally found my notes and am adding these in a week late)

global warming
The Art of Loving
living wage
Escape from Freedom
Ranch-style interior design
Warren Buffett
the sequel to Terms of Endearment
Titan AE
scholarly articles arguing for Scott Peterson’s innocence (???)
postings for bulletin board x2
Clinton’s domestic policy
printing help
carport canopy reviews
interview strategies
Earth, Wind and Fire
Mortown DVD
gays in the military
readalives for A Breath of Snow and Ashes (tried Sarah Donati, recommended by a great article in Novelist, and a Revolutionary War mystery that looked like fun to him)
printer paper
World Journal
Lamaze DVD
Auditor-appraisal exam prep
cocaine
environment effects of titanium mining
CPR videos
Lions by Susan Schafer
Bill Nye
Zeus: Master of Olympus PC game
Tech Museum history
Jupiter

A nice mix today — 4 hours J, 4 hours A. Quiet in the morning but a busy afternoon with some major computer stresses (first the time management, then the print management). In between I selected new Easter books for next year (a huge number of popular ones are out of print though) Here are some of the questions/requests:

Ice Age
Chronicles of Narnia DVD (154 people on waiting list!)
country books on France (944)
returned book but still on their account
movies about frogs
printing problems
is D in?
Mary Kate and Ashley movies
Parent Trap
The Case of the Blue-Ribbon Horse
tax forms for an extension
what does “transit request” mean in catalog?
Wiggles
farming in Mesopotamia (great stuff in our Daily Life db)
UCLA catalog
Willmaker CD
Mary Higgings Clark – No PLace Like Home
help printing
how long a wait for a computer?
Malcolm X
tape
Full Metal Alchemist DVDs
Christian Rap
Like Water for Chocolate (under DVD Spanish Como for Como Agua Para Chocolate)
Queen music or books about the group
Blaine Larsen CD
are the disk drives broken on both computers or just the one with the sign?
another word processing computer?
check book on hold
tax table and forms
get rid of decimals in excel cell?
word wrap problems in Word
microfiche of 1906 papers?
got library card stuck in copy machine (our copy machine doesn’t actually take copy cards, and certainly not library cards, but she found a slot and tried)
major printing problems
patent books (had author’s name spell wrong though)
why is word capitalizing things for me? (don’t hit return, let it wrap itself)
Miracle Cure — the one copy in the system is unavailable
Lamaze DVD
found memory card
help setting up microfilm machine, looking for 1906 earthquake coverage in local paper (but couldn’t find any?!?!)

May 13th is the groundbreaking for the new building!

A lot of fun today on the desk — got to work on a cute craft project for the upcoming volunteer thank you party (little hands holding a thank you message), met a new intern and got to chat with her about life on the desk (and came away with some great restaurant recommendations from her), had a couple of good reader’s advisory queries, a long conversation with a fellow Connecticut-transplant, etc. Here are some of the questions/requests from the day (4 hours J, 2 hours A)

Caroline Cooney paperbacks
Earth Day picture books
self-check machine problem
Intuit taxonomy job — where should she look for candidates (I suggested SLA)
Buzz Lightyear (the kid was so excited you could hear him saying Buzz, Buzz, Buzz for ages after finding the book)
Elmo books x2 (and we didn’t have any)
Red Scarf Girl
poetry books like Silverstein
Magic Treehouse
SAT Prep
Powerpoint 2003 (they were all out, but there are two ebooks available so she was going to try them from home)
books on CD
confirm password on print mgmt question
Room Service (Marx brothers)
Teen biography section
Red Lexus with the door open
Beloved on CD
Snow Falling on Cedars on video
Age of Empires II
funny books for a 3rd grader
fantasy books, had read all the HPs, Redwalls, Pullmans, etc. Wouldn’t try Charlie Bone (my new fav), Gave him some Nix and a Pendragon to try
Lassie Come Home
Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy
mysteries for a third grader (didn’t want any of the fun suggestions I made though 😦 )
importance of movie sound effects
problem DVD return
how many computers do we have (about 21 on the adult side for people to access the internet from)