Category Archives: Librarianship

Book groups, Librarianship, Library events, Storytime, Teaching

Friday wrap-up

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It’s been a busy week, as usual…

Monday was my second toddler storytime, and it was SO much fun!  I’m still using Judy Nichol’s book as a guide (the newest edition arrived at the library for the children’s office professional collection), and I chose her “Bears” storytime this week.  Despite my concerns about learning and presenting “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” I was able to pull it off, and we all had such a great time with it.  As Jim put it, I actually got out of my own way, and tapped into my inner storyteller. 

At this point, I’m not yet limiting enrollment to the toddler storytime, but it’s clear why Nichols recommends that approach.  Three families arrived late, and at different times, and the flow of the storytime was definitely interrupted by those late arrivals.  Perhaps in the future, once this storytime is better established, I’ll be able to require pre-registration and on-time attendance, but I am working in a small town with a limited number of toddlers, and I want to be accessible and open to all.  It’s a puzzle, one that I’ll have to work out over time.

On Tuesday, I hosted two book groups at the library.  Continue reading Friday wrap-up →

Librarianship

On my plate

Here are the things that are on my plate at the moment (and today will be a busy day, as I catch up after being out sick for two days – some bug that totally took the starch out of me, but I’m feeling better now):

– Cultural Council grant applications: they’re due on October 15, and I’m trying to firm up a few things with my performers of choice before completing the applications

– the October calendar needs to be printed:  My portion of the calendar is ready to go, I’m just waiting on one item from an adult group that meets at the library.

– planning for the spring performers:  I’m actually almost all done with this, but am waiting to hear back from a couple of performers.

– summer reading planning:  I have some thoughts on who I’d like to schedule for this summer, and it would be awfully nice to get the summer all planned before Halloween…

– continue to study up on infant and toddler storytimes: the more research I do on these storytimes, the more excited I get about how fabulous our storytime program will be once I’ve fully implemented the changeover and become comfortable with the new formats.

– research prices on the supplemental materials needed for the “Mother Goose on the Loose” program: this program includes some great hands-on, multisensory materials, like bells and rhythm sticks and scarves, so now I need to look into how much these items will cost.  It’s a one-time expense, essential to the success of the program, but I don’t want to overspend.

– and, of course, the ongoing project of reading book reviews and ordering. 

Busy day ahead!

Etc., Librarianship

My cranky side

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Here’s an example of my cranky side:

We have a large collection of Lauri puzzles at the library – great simple puzzles that are made out of foam rubber, so they’re easily cleaned and have bright colors. 

Mostly our library patrons just have fun playing with them, then put the puzzles back in the cubbies under the window seat.

But sometimes a library patron will take apart the hardest Lauri puzzle, the carousel horse, decide that it’s too difficult, and leave it in a jumble of pieces on the coloring table and strewn across the floor in front of the window.  This makes me cranky.  Very cranky.  I mean, really.  If you can’t do the puzzle, at least be gracious enough to bring it over to your lovely, very friendly children’s librarian, and say “Ooops!  Bit off more than we could chew here!  Got to run, can’t finish it!  Sorry!”  That librarian would smile and say thank you and take the opportunity to wash the puzzle pieces before reassembling it.

It’s a different matter when the charming children’s librarian has to crawl on her hands and knees, sometimes while wearing a short skirt (can you say “awkward”?), to search for the puzzle pieces.  Then the puzzle goes to live in the children’s librarian’s office for a day or two.  If you can’t play nicely with the toy and put it away when you’re done, then it will be taken away for a period of time. 

I’ve become my mother, haven’t I?

Children, Librarianship

Where to begin?

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I kept hitting the snooze alarm this morning.  Not because I really wanted to sleep any longer, but because I wanted to delay the start of my day.  Last week, while on vacation, I realized that I could easily retire now, and spend the remainder of my days in blissful slothfulness. 

Why is that?  I know I love my job, and logically I know that I would be bored out of my mind if I didn’t work at least a bit.

So here’s why: tomorrow is the first day of school in the town where I work.  The summer reading program has barely finished (in fact, I just started the summer bookplate process yesterday), and school is about to start again.  Summer was so busy that I didn’t have a chance to pre-plan the fall storytimes like I wanted to, and school is about to start again.  The children’s room was crazy busy all summer, so much so that often I had a hard time breaking away to use the restroom, and the kids will be back in classes tomorrow.

Lisa, the reference librarian, was looking a bit haggard and stressed yesterday; in my post-vacation bliss,  it took me a few minutes to figure out why, then I did.

School starts tomorrow.

On a typical day last spring, Lisa or Nicole (who is on maternity leave at the moment) could count forty students up in the reference area, sometimes playing guitar in the study rooms, sometimes sneaking food, sometimes playing computer games, sometimes studying quietly.  Lisa’s role in the after school hours is to retain decorum and a semblance of silence in the reference area and the rest of the second floor.  I get far fewer students down in the children’s room, probably because it’s an enclosed space and I can see all indiscretions from my desk, but I too have a role in the after school hours: room monitor.  I try to keep the kids quiet (ha!), amused, and under control, and I try my best to do so without causing them to leave the children’s room and go up to the reference area.  Most afternoons I feel like a substitute teacher during a free study period.  In good weather I’ll assign the kids a soccer ball and tell them to go outside and play for a bit until they can come back and be quiet.  In bad weather I make a show of loaning them one of the “good” board games, and sometimes I even give them permission to play the game in the story room.

There’s not much time left in these after school hours for planning storytimes and ordering books.  Oftentimes I end up doing that work in unpaid hours at home or early in the morning before the library opens. 

So you can see why the start of school makes me a bit quesy.  I love the kids, but we need a better solution to the over-crowded, under-behaved, after-school set.

Now the second cup of coffee is in my belly (good thing I have a bottle of Tums in my desk at work) and I’m sufficiently jazzed up to get ready for work.  Maybe I’ll have time today to plan a gazillion storytimes.  Hmmmm.  I’d better wear my pink flowered shoes to get me in the mood.  And you can be sure that I’ll enjoy this last day of peace before the storm breaks.

Children's book reviews, Librarianship

Still catching up…

Just a quick post today; I’m still catching up on those reviews that got backlogged during our move and transition to the new library, which is putting a serious damper on my ability to write blog posts (unfortunately, there’s only so much time in a day).

Last night I was actually feeling pretty good about where I stand with those reviews, after I polished off the seventh issue of Publisher’s Weekly for the day.  And then Mary, my boss, who has also fallen behind in this review-reading process, came into my room with a stack of about TWELVE PW‘s that she had just finished, and passed on to me for my turn with them.  Whooops – negative balance.

Let me just say one thing before I immerse myself once again in those reviews:  I’m looking forward to authors writing books that are NOT part of a series.  We have so many different series now in the children’s room that it’s a lot of work to keep track of them all.  And there’s also the burning question of whether buying the first book in a series means that you must buy all the rest of the books in that series (especially if the first book doesn’t circulate much). 

And now back to catching up…

Children's literature, Librarianship

Catching up

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I’m working a split shift today because of tonight’s movie night, and have decided to make use of the few in-between hours to catch up on my review reading.  My goal is to wade through all of those un-read review journals before I go on vacation in two and a half weeks – a worthy goal, to be sure, but perhaps an unachievable goal.  We’ll see.

As I said to Lisa yesterday, I’m spending my entire monthly budget, and I’m getting all the best books out there, as well as keeping up with new volumes in the many, many series that we’ve committed to at the library.  I don’t feel that I’ve missed out on any books…but then that stack of review journals stares at me. 

Perhaps the real issue here is that the internet has changed the way book buying happens.  I read many children’s literature based blogs which keep me up to date on current great offerings, and also tap into many “best books” lists.  I also pay careful attention to the books that my library’s patrons request, watching for reading trends that I see in those requests.   In addition, I’m lucky enough to work at a library that has a review feature in the online catalog, so if I hear of a book that sounds interesting, I use our catalog to check the reviews that have been written about it. 

In addition to these online resources, I make periodic trips to my local independent bookstore, the fabulous Concord Bookshop.  There I can find books that don’t necessarily appear in review journals, yet have great merit, and I am able to thumb through the books to make my own judgement about them.  Last Sunday I scribbled the titles of many terrific books in my pocket calendar,then took the calendar to work and looked up reviews of all those books online.  I also picked up a BookSense flyer, the children’s edition, and systematically went through and looked up each of those books.  Several of the BookSense recommended books received excellent reviews from VOYA, the Horn Book magazine, Booklist, etc. 

My technique seems to be working, if the case of Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins is any example.  I perused Collins’ website months ago and preordered the book so that it was on our library shelves on the earliest possible date.  For about two months, we were one of only three libraries in my region to have the book; I even purchased a second copy because my library’s patrons were clambering to have it.  Clearly my system worked, in this instance.

So what I’m getting at is that I’ll still keep plowing through pages of print copy, and I’ll catch up on all those reviews, but there are now so many other ways to find great books.  I suspect we’ll all have to modify the way that we search for books in the coming years.

Librarianship

And what happened on Friday?

Friday was a blissfully quiet day.  Blissfully quiet.

In fact, I was able to do some book ordering, and to spend some time figuring out the website of our new book vendor.  The state has chosen to go with a different primary vendor for books this year, and I need to kick my old brain into gear and get used to the new vendor’s way of doing business.  It’s hard to change my ordering ways, and I’ll definitely be slower the first few times that I use the new site.  But no complaints, really; in fact, the new vendor offers some features that may end up being extremely useful ordering tools.

And when I wasn’t ordering books on Friday, I was finishing my preparations for Saturday’s Harry Potter party.  Which will be an entry for another day. 

Librarianship, Summer reading

Swimmingly

After a few rough patches in the first week of using the e*vanced Summer Reader software, we’ve finally hit smooth sailing with the summer reading logs.  I had to make a few adjustments (book reviews are no longer required from the children who use the online log, sadly) and had to learn the ins and outs of the software, and, most importantly, had to learn how to accomodate the kids who didn’t want to use the online log.  But it’s all working now, and in the long run, I think it’s substantially easier to operate than the traditional paper clock-face summer logs.

And the statistics are fabulous.  Now I can run reports and see the distribution of hours read – the concentration is in the rising fourth grade population – and really get a sense of which kids are intrigued by summer reading, which are enthusiastic, and which could give it a pass.   I can run reports on prizes awarded, total number of hours read, number of kids registered: you get the idea.  I can also read the book reviews that the kids have written, and get a sense of what the most popular books are at this moment. 

All of these statistics will help me to do my job better, help me to do next year’s summer reading outreach, and help me to plan a truly phenomenal summer reading program for next year.  If you’re a children’s librarian and haven’t tried this software out, or if your region/state doesn’t yet offer the software, do investigate it.  It’s a terrific tool and makes our job easier.

Librarianship, Library move

Caught up?

Could it be?  Is it possible?  Has it happened?

For the last two and a half months, I’ve felt more than a little behind, the way I used to feel when running track races in high school (clearly I never made varsity).  Pant, pant, pant.  Can’t quite catch up. 

After being closed for a month for the library move, then being swarmed with business in the new building, then the preparations for the summer reading program – well, my office looked like a combination of a storage area and dumping ground.  Not good.  And my hyper-organized self was miserable.  All I wanted was to get rid of the piles of books and catalogs and reams of lists that were stacked on my office desk.  It didn’t seem too possible.

But then there was yesterday.  I got in a half hour early (I love getting to work early now…I must be aging), and by Renee’s arrival in my room at 1, I was actually caught up.  Well, ok, my office was clean.  I’ll be fully caught up by the end of next week.  But most of my to-be-done piles are taken care of, and it no longer feels like I’ll never be caught up.  So now we have our fabulous new building, AND the rhythm of my work is starting to fall into a manageable pace.  Aaaaaah.

Librarianship

What is…

…a children’s librarian?

What is it that we do each day? 

This time of year, I feel a bit like the cruise director on the Happy Reading Ship (I’m not knocking this role, by the way -  it’s a lot of fun). 

Come September, I’ll feel like Serious Book Ordering Lady.

By November, as school projects are in full swing, I’ll be wearing my Children’s Reference Question hat.

Some afternoons, after school, I feel like the school’s Adjunct Guidance Counselor as I help kids with school problems and social interactions.

Tuesday mornings at 10:30, through the school year, I’m a Singing Fool leading rounds of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and other youthful hits.

Grumpy Friday evenings at closing time, I’m the Who-Elected-Me-To-Clean-Up-After-Your-Child? Lady.

But mostly, I’m really, really happy, and never, ever bored.  The children’s librarian from Maynard came to visit me and my library on Thursday, and at one point he announced with great passion and vim:  “This is the BEST JOB IN THE WORLD!!  I LOVE being a children’s librarian!!!!” 

I totally agree.