The Clerk Manifesto

If you can come up to me at the front desk of my library, ask me a full question, and come all the way to the end of it before I start a...

There is little advantage to working out at the front desk with the absolute worst of your co-workers. You will not only have to do your o...

Someone that I can't remember surely once said that the artist creates what they long to see in the world and yet cannot find. If no ...

You have probably noticed that just lately the blog posts around here have been really, really good. You are no doubt wondering just what...

Here I am with an hour and a quarter to pass in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Linden Hills. It's certainly one of the Twin Cities...

I like a bit of elbow room when I am wandering around town. My particular, and possibly peculiar, taste runs towards dense, well popula...

It is a well known but rarely mentioned secret that libraries are, well, er, international. International . You know, International . Yo...

When you walk into my library I give you the benefit of the doubt.  I assume you are not there to steal our almost, but very much not q...

Yes, I occasionally joke about a devotion to slackerdom at my job. I am keen on occasional discussions and confessions of on-the-clock no...

I was on my accustomed long morning walk. I had already reached the far side of the river. I had crossed both my bridges. There they were...

What do you want from a customer service clerk? Friendly? Yes, yes. Good. Accurate? Right, excellent. Their mistakes can make you pay ...

I usually find it enjoyable solving the patrons ' small computer and Internet problems. There are a few automatic, recurring ones th...

One of my colleagues showed a small family to the back room of the library. We are not above conducting impromptu tours of our glamorous ...

After nearly two years of blogging the clerkmanifesto I have become aware of how I am both extremely well suited to it and extremely poor...

Random notes from the library: It's almost like twitter around here today! 1. An old man called to renew a book. I asked him f...

    Just in case you don't get to all the comments on my blog, there was quite an active discussion on a recent post. I smashed my ...