Last Harbor Library Blog 3: It's what we do!

This is the third post in the blog of The Last Harbor Library.

The first post concerned our blogger, Nate, being instructed to write a blog, for the library, by the imperious leader of The Last Harbor Library, Amelia Browning. The post can be found here.

The second post is too complicated to explain and is recapped a bit in today's post anyway. It is here.

Explanation for this blog within a blog can be found here.

Last Harbor's blog as a separate, but only barely fleshed out at this time, entity, can be found here. 

It's What We Do!

In my last post I collected a stray library patron to provide cover for me as I headed off to report on exactly what your Last Harbor Library staff was up to on a cold, midwinter, midweek afternoon. It is all part of my plan to differentiate our library blog from other library blogs by giving you a no holds barred look at the behind the scenes operation of our library. Other library blogs like to keep you appraised of exciting events at their library. We have no exciting events, thus my alternate approach.

To help us along on our tour I have pictures. I start with my hijacked patron, Kent Carlson:

I said all I could manage to say about Kent in my last post, so I'll move right along to the first co-worker I encountered, Beth Selly, a Library Page who I asked to cover the front desk:

Beth, when we found her, was in the back room with the only cart of unshelved books in the library. It wasn't full. There were about 18 books on it. She could have shelved them in five minutes, but was using them as a kind of cover, much like I was using Kent as cover to pursue my real agenda. Her real agenda was to read. She was reading The Face of Battle by John Keegan. I asked her to watch the desk for me and she agreed nicely enough. She brought her cart and book to the front desk. She said "Hey, Kent." And never, at any point during any of it, did she stop reading The Face of Battle by John Keegan, which, it turns out, is an esteemed book of military history.

Next up was Librarian Assistant Linda Howe. She was leaning against one of our massive pillars and sketched a distracted wave at Kent and I with her cell phone. Here she is:

She was on her phone giving detailed instructions about everything to her elderly father. Her elderly father seemed to be endeavoring mightily not to understand a single one of them.

In the staff offices we found our Computer person, Lila Twofeather animatedly recounting an episode of the TV show Louie to Programs Manager (not TV programs!), Jay Sobanski:

I think you may be starting to get the idea, so I will run through the rest of the list a bit more quickly.  

Vicki David, Librarian, listening to jazz, complicated jazz I am not sure I understand as music.

Clare Tompkins, Student Worker, eating a bag of pretzels very slowly and with great concentration.

Mike Dahlberg, Janitor, messing about with his phone.

That was most of our staff. Of course, there was one person working who I have not accounted for here, so Kent and I headed upstairs to check on her. Amelia Browning, Head Librarian, was at the librarian's desk, engaged mysteriously with massive ye olde library sorts of volumes, a pencil, several ledgers. She looked up at us.

"Kent here, and I, have toured the entire library" I said. "Other than myself, not a single staff member is doing a lick of work, though they all seem fairly contented."

"And what exactly is the work you are doing?" Asked Ms. Browning.

"Blogging." I replied. Kent snickered.

"Well, write it up." Ms. Browning said as she waved me away with a backhand gesture of her hand.

And so I have.

-Nate

Blog of the Last Harbor Library: five reasons

This is the first post of the blog within a blog of The Last Harbor Public Library. For details concerning this project consult here. You can also view this fictional blog over on its dedicated site, here. I will be double posting.

 

The imperious leader of our library has instructed me to write an official blog. This is that blog, the blog of The Last Harbor Memorial Library. Our head librarian, benefactor, and local tyrant, Amelia Browning, who issued these instructions, is pictured above. Seized with initiative I have leapt to work on this blog and from this moment on intend to keep you fully informed as to every unimportant thing that happens here at the library. Perhaps you are wondering if I am approaching this blog in the proper spirit, if this is what Ms. Browning had in mind to represent The Last Harbor Memorial Library, the finest library on the viciously cold and nearly abandoned shores of Lake Superior. I don't know, but I will grant you that it would perhaps be fair to present to you the discussion of my instructions so that you can decide for yourself.

"Nathaniel?"

"Yes, Amelia" A frown at my response. Perhaps she would prefer to be called Ms Browning. Perhaps her wrist was bothering her.

"I'd like you to start one of these "blogs", for the library." She said "blogs" like it was a word that did not belong in her mouth.

I regarded her. "Why is the head of one of the most technology averse libraries in the country suggesting I write a blog?"

"I am not technology averse. We have the Internet." She said, waving a disdainful backhand at our barely enough share of computers.

"You loathe them."

"They are useful tools. Nothing more."

"A blog?" I asked.

"We need to communicate better with our next generation." I believe Ms. Browning considers there to be only two generations. I, at 40, belong to the inscrutable, immature one. "Library Journal speaks well of them and I thought you would be suitable for this endeavor."  Aha. Library Journal magazine has a biblical like authority with Ms. Browning. Unless she doesn't agree with what they have to say, in which case whatever article is involved ceases to have ever existed. Why the "Every Library should have a Library Blog" article made it to the biblical side of things is the subject of this initial blog post.

"Okay." I said cheerfully.

 She looked at me with suspicion and headed towards her accustomed information desk to decide whether the latest Booker prize winner was of adequate quality for our library. But before she got very far she stopped, turned, and said "Try to put in a good word for Literature, Nathaniel."

"Will do ma'am." I said, tipping an imaginary hat.

And she was gone, if about 70 feet away can be considered to be gone.

Because our library is privately endowed, overstaffed, and pretty well empty due to Winter and our unpopular commitment to quality in our circulating materials, I have had a great deal of time to consider the mysterious reasons behind this blog request. Fortunately I feel free to give full reign to my imaginations here because Amelia Browning will never, ever actually read this blog. Which, of course, is part of the curiosness of why she would ask one to be written.

I have come up with five reasons.

1. She is ready to make some compromises in the battle for Literature, so long as she needn't dirty her hands.

2. Like one of Bertie Wooster's aunts she feels I need improvement and engagement.

3. She has occasional fits in which she is under the illusion that our library is "With It" because we have the Internet and carry Catcher in the Rye.

4. She thinks that despite the fact that our library, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is the most famous building of any kind on Minnesota's North Shore, a National Landmark, and virtually the only tourist attraction in our town, people are so immersed in their Internet that they have yet to hear of it.

5. She has not the faintest idea of what a blog is, and has decided to bluff her way through.

Whatever her reasons The Last Harbor Memorial Library now has a blog. You should be able to find it on our website as our website is so threadbare it will be easy to pick out. You can also follow us, by email, if you fill in the box to the right. I must go now as I have a patron to help. No, my mistake. It is just Lawrence, who has confused our Frank Lloyd Wright building with the True Value Hardware store once again. Still, I believe my assistance may be required.

-Nate