Cafe Hitch-hike

2004-03-23

A Librarian's Cheap Thrills

Or, "All you ever wanted to know about the library but were afraid to ask."

While at the pub.lib, I saw a book cart at Mon Cheri's desk filled with brand spanking new books! With the eagerness and curiosity of a 5-year old, I pitter-pattered to the cart to see if any of my recommended titles were ordered:

Quirkyalone, by Sasha Cagen
You deserve healthy love, sister! by Dr. Grace Cornish
Mommy Myth, by Susan Douglas & Meredith Michaels.
Giantkillers : The Team and the Law that Helped Whistle-Blowers Recover America's Stolen Billions, by Henry Scammell.
The Pecking Order, by Dalton Conley.

They chose my selections! (Jumping up & down) Yippee! I'm the best librarian! I also love the smell of new book-paper! Aaaahhhhhhh!

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The pub.lib has been clumsily migrating to a newer integrated library system (ILS). The ILS is the thing that has your contact information, library card number, and the catalog of books. Sometimes the ILS has stored all the books you've checked out, but it all depends on whether or not your particular library chooses to do that and most of them would rather not... trust me, there's a lot less of Big Brother watching over than you give us credit for having. Anyhow, the library was closed for a couple days for training. We were goofing off with searches:

SEARCH BY KEYWORD: Cujo; Kama Sutra and Video; Kama Sutra and Sound; Fetishism; Submission;

We were also taught how to create a "block", that is, we keep track of when people were misusing the internet (watching porn, in chatrooms, flaming).

BLOCK: Kee-Kee Nightengale (the name of my boss's cat): #1 - Chatting online with squirel. #2 - Vandalism; clawing the computer. #3 - Viewing kitty porn, bad cat!!

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I was at the campus McDoogle's for lunch today and a lady approached me with a smile. She recognized me from the pub.lib. Maybe I better start behaving myself if people recognize me? Hahah, well, we do not have to work with the legal and moral restrictions as teachers. We don't have the status of loco parentis, that is, an adult who acts in place of a parent when kids are around them. My professor told us that we could be strippers by night if we wanted to and not get fired. We can do all kinds of things and no employer had a legal right to fire us over what we do in our personal life. That was nice to know. Really, really nice to know.

The nice thing about being a librarian is that you are like teachers given free range. As long as you follow the norms of your library, you otherwise can say, do, and be the kind o librarian you want to be. You can be a goth librarian, but as long as you do the job and do it well, you're in the clear. You can be a grouch, extravert, introvert, however you are and choose to be. And of course, you share what you know, try to help people find what they need, and hopefully they learn something. If they don't learn something from what they get in the library, then maybe they can be amused or entertained...

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