Readers advisory

Not being a fully licensed and tattooed librarian I nevertheless find myself doing a good deal of traditional, straight up reference work. I do not shirk this now quite common duty. In the first place, I am for the most part good at it. In the second place, sending people to the appropriate desk, due to the vagaries of lines and the notable distance between the service desks at my Library, generally falls under the category of patron torture. I only very, very rarely believe in patron torture. Lastly, I like this reference work, so I do it.

The vast majority of the reference work I do is direct, verifiable, and easy to be confident of. But there is one aspect of reference that I find murky, smoky, and open for a lot of interpretation. That is readers advisory. Not only is suggesting books a profoundly inexact science, but so often, when I am asked for suggestions, I am far removed from many of my best tools. I am usually asked for reading suggestions while shelving, distantly removed from computers and other people, and thus reliant purely on what I can happen to dredge up on the spot.

The first thing I do when I am asked for a suggestion is try to find out what the person asking has liked in the past. One has to have at least a general idea of the type of things people like in order to steer them to something they might, when face to face with it, actually want to read. If someone is a hardcore blood and guts fantasy reader, then In Watermelon Sugar might be a brilliant and twisted suggestion for them, but only if they'll read it, which I don't think they're going to do. Unfortunately, when I do ask what these people like, they invariably come back with a list of authors I don't like. This is where I get thrown off. Somehow it makes me get all librariany and official. They like Sandford and William Kent Krueger? Well, I have heard tell that people who like them also like Harlan Coben and Lee Child. I don't know what I'm talking about and I don't care because I don't care about those authors. The fact is that I don't care what the large system of recommendations says, and what I have realized is that those recommendation lists have never worked for me anyway. Any version of any "If you liked this try that" website or listing or program I always end up either hating or completely uninspired by. I believe my distaste for these things stems from their being powered by groupings and numbers and aggregations. You like the Beatles? You might like the Rolling Stones, so obvious as to be banal, but never powered by feverish passion. I don't want those lame and joyless recommendations. I want "You like Dick Francis? Well, sorry, there is nothing really like Dick Francis. We must accept it. Try the Horatio Hornblower books." I want insouciance and inspiration and adventure!

So here is what I resolve. I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books, spanning every genre, age range, general subject, and level of literary respectability, that I would recommend with overwhelming fanaticism. That's it. That's my list. I will find, request, shelve, and seek to acquire for people whatever they want, but I will no longer recommend anything not on my list. When someone asks what fantasy I recommend I will not take it to mean that they want to know what books in that genre are popular. No, I will pick the closest thing on my list of odd, acclaimed, and unacclaimed masterpieces to what the patron is asking for. They didn't ask me for some dead list. I will give them my recommendation. And I will be excited at the very thought of them reading it. They are in for a treat.

Reading as virtue

Working all these years at a Library I have experienced many a comment and reference to the idea of reading as ennobling and virtuous. And though I am strongly pulled by the desire to fawn over you for reading this, sing your virtues for struggling through my illuminating and visionary prose to elevate your humanity, I have some hesitations. It might have something to do with all these years spent in the thick of a very busy public library. My overwhelming impression, standing in the heart of this maelstrom of reading, is not one of Profound enricher of Humanity but more of the Circus part of Bread and Circuses. Even if we're talking about Proust, we are just talking about stories, which are basically entertainment. I'm not saying it's a waste of time, or worthless, or even not wonderful, but I do think the whole reading thing may have suffered a bit from having a cadre of the most eloquent, articulate, and beautifully spoken people in the history of the universe constantly shilling for it. Writers. And I think these writer people have been just a touch over invested in reading's stock. So we've all gotten a bit puffed up over it.  I see it all the time at the front desk. Someone proudly coming to check out a few books, presenting me with a little speech about loving books and how no one understands how essential they are anymore. "If only more people would read!" They exclaim, tsking at others and bathing in the beatific glow of their readerliness. I nod politely. I hope they enjoy their Swann's Way or, more likely, LaVyrle Spencer books or Post Apocalyptic Zombie Detective Story. Why shouldn't they. Stories are blood. Stories are essential. Stories make us human! Which, I am sorry to say, is a very good reason for tempering our pride.

One about making sense

Tom Clancy died, so it was easy and even likely, if one frolicked on the internet long enough, to run into this quote by him:

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. 

I did frolic on the internet and did read that quote. I thought it was a pretty snappy quote for a writer I bore no great respect for. Did I need to revise my opinions? Are Tom Clancy novels packed with pithy insights stored neatly amongst the military hardware? I decided to research. Oh no, not by reading Tom Clancy novels. My blog is on a very tight schedule. Even if those Clancy novels move adroitly along from one submarine chase to another they're still absolute bricks.  I read quotes.

 Leo Rosten:

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

Emerson:

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

And finally, Mark Twain said:

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

We have a hit! We have a hit! Man your battle stations! Full power aft!

So, did I just come here today to mock and criticize a guy who just died? 

Well, when you ask it like that, um, no, god, why would I do that? I came here to make some really important point. Probably. Just let me think for a second. I can't think with all this pressure! 

Okay, I thought of one. Or, um, here's the one I had all along. Thanks for your patience. 

My point is that I don't think the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. And I thought it might appear easy and churlish just to disagree with Tom Clancy. So instead I disagree with Mark Twain, Emerson, and Leo Rosten, which is not, generally speaking, some great recipe for wisdom. Nevertheless, yes, I disagree.

I think fiction works, and really all art, because of the overwhelming human compulsion to make sense of things. One might even say we are compelled to impose sense. The novelist does it, the reader of the novelist does it to the novel, and the blogger does it to the reader of the novelist reading the novel. And we do it to life. We do it with all our Gods and for the bests and with our interpretations of the world around us. We are inveterate creators of sense. Life and fiction stand shoulder to shoulder here. Life makes about as much sense as fiction and most of it's in the interpretation.

As Dr. Seuss said:

No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.

Or, as I might put it:

No matter what one does, someone always imputes meaning into books. 

Let it be my epitaph. I thought of it myself.

Give them what they want

No one has ever come to me at the front desk of my Library and ordered a corned beef sandwich, don't be shy about the mustard. Requests for obscure bits of a/v technology are about as exciting as requests for things we don't have gets, which is to say, not very exciting. "Do you check out slide projectors?" No. The request itself is far less odd than the decade in which it is happening. The other day someone asked if we had any typewriters. We never have had, but I used to hear that occasionally, almost regularly. However, at the time of this recent inquiry it had been so long since anyone asked for a typewriter that I hugged the patron, weeping, and started to sing Auld Lang Syne. 

The great majority of things people ask me for, that we don't have, are office related. We seem to have several hundred staplers up at the front desk, but no three hole punch. If you ask me for a paper cutter you're also completely out of luck. No cutting and punching of paper at my Library! There has always been in me the slightest, unexpressed, deep down touch of irritation when people ask me for these office services and supplies we don't have. "Do you have a fax machine?" I have heard that question a thousand times. I'm reasonably nice about it and try to offer helpful alternatives, but also I am thinking, almost unconsciously "Why would we have a fax machine, we're a Library!" What are these people doing coming to the Library to fax? We don't have a fax. And though we do have copiers, why on earth would they come to us for some complicated copy job. We certainly do not charge less than well equipped, vastly more full service stores. Enough already.

And then, one day recently, like the Grinch, when he was hanging on that precipice, poised for disaster, my heart suddenly grew. It grew three sizes.

What is a Library? If we think clearly and bravely, and our hearts are in the right place, a Library is half what we, the Library, say it is and what we can make it be. The other half of what a Library is is what the Library users want and expect it to be. If they're coming in every day going on about wanting corned beef sandwiches we should be thinking about how and why we might be able to and want to provide them, not doing that whole "Ugh! Patrons! This place would be perfect without them" thing. But they don't want corned beef sandwiches, they want a fax machine.

When did my heart grow three sizes? I think it was when I was at an office supply store with my wife. She was looking for something. I was dawdling, looking at things in a desultory manner when my eye landed upon a display of fax machines. They were $60. Sixty dollars! I had told a thousand people we couldn't help them because we didn't have something that cost less than three James Patterson novels. I had sent them off to pay $1.50 a page at some Fed Ex Kinkos because we didn't have a fax machine! With my new big heart I suddenly just felt bad for all those people.

Not long ago a person who works in a different Library system than my own was in and asked if we had a fax machine. When I gave her the rundown about how we didn't, she said, with a touch of awe "How do you get away with that?" The implication is that having a fax is really irritating. I am well enough acquainted with all the printers and projectors and computers and copiers to understand that a fax machine would be an additional, small, but irritating task. But like any person working in a Library who actually cares, any number of glitches and paper jams will be less irritating than saying "No." Because saying no, unjustified, is the most irritating task of them all.

Michael Chabon

No, Michael Chabon never came to my Library. But all his books have been here at one time or another. And they always seemed like just the sort I might like. So I've tried reading them, one after the other. I might even have finished Summerland, but without relish, and with a feeling of how it could have been better. I loved the movie of Wonder Boys and yet somehow never finished that book, though a description he has in there of addictive reading sticks with me from it to this day. And that's just it. It's not just the fresh, edging up into genre approach that appeals to me, but there's always something in the writing, somewhere, that gets something just right to me. And so I keep at it.

At my house we are now reading Manhood for Amateurs, by that same Michael Chabon. It is a collection of essays and, so far, I am seriously enjoying it. I might, all along, have been waiting for Michael Chabon essays. It is a real pleasure to find them. But there is also something just a tiny bit disturbing to me in them. They remind me of me, and of my writing, and of what I would write, only, well (suddenly my stomach kind of hurts), they're better.

Not long ago I became enthusiastically acquainted with the music of The Tallest Man on Earth. I mentioned it to a friend of mine, who I will not name because I'm weary of Marcus coming up in so many examples of things here lately, and this unnamed person who is definitely not Marcus yet again, looked ever so slightly pained, like he just remembered he had a toothache. It turned out there was something a bit too similar in what he was trying to do in music to what The Tallest Man was doing. He seemed to admire The Tallest Man, but his music also seemed to create a bit of feedback that made it hard for him to enjoy.

That's a bit of what I hear in Michael Chabon, a bit of feedback. But I kind of like it. Yes, it's not all roses, and forcing myself to use a word like "better" in reference to him is a bit like firmly grasping the thorn infested stem. But getting to see something similar, in some ways, to my own kind of writing, from the outside, as a pure reader, is really interesting. There is also something strangely nice about wandering over to the Amazon reviews and seeing a full range of opinions (about a quarter of them are three stars and lower) on what to me are just irrefutably (so far) really terrific essays. There are places where the perfidy of others can be helpful. A theoretical blog post by Michael Chabon might not get as high a percentage of disinterested readers as my own, but certainly we could happily share a core group of readers running for the hills by the third paragraph.  Also, I occasionally go out on feverish searches for blogs that are at least sort of like mine, mostly just because I want to read them, but I never have much success. I have so little success that I sometimes worry that I am competitively braced against them. I fear that maybe I secretly don't want to give up on feeling all that uniqueness. So going out and finding these essays allows me to just say "This is all I'm talking about." Of course, they're by a Pulitzer prize winner, so the matter can't be said to be fully resolved.

There are a few reasons I started writing this blog. Perhaps the biggest one is best referenced by a quote by Toni Morrison “It there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I don't think Michael Chabon erases that. It surely isn't my book that he's written, but it is some of what I want. Which is nice. And this, right here, is some of what I want too. Just telling you about it. There's room enough. The world is big.

Our friend the squirrel

Actually, the squirrels in our backyard don't look like this at all, but I found this picture by Red R out there on the internet and had to have it! He's just so chubby! (The squirrel, not Red R, unless Red R is the squirrel and this is a really nice selfie!). The tree actually looks a lot like our backyard tree though. Just saying, anyway...

Our friend the squirrel

I have a friend who sometimes comments here on my blog. You have to be pretty intrepid to comment here, what with the lack of response and everyone just sort of staring at your comment like it's in an aquarium or something- swimming around, back and forth, wondering how it got there, why everyone's looking at it and what the ocean is like. Being of a too nervous disposition to get all respondy to comments I nevertheless get pretty excited about them. "Look!" I cry to myself, inwardly, so as not to startle people nearby and make them think I'm crazy, "I got a comment!" It's a happy moment. It happens every two to five days, and sometimes it's because of Mdnez. No, Mdnez is not a squirrel! Don't worry. We're getting to the squirrel part. We're through with the aquarium part though, so we're halfway there.

Because Mdnez is an old friend I follow these enchanting photos he's always posting on facebook (if only he had a blog of them instead then I could show you!). He spends much time in some magic garden in some magic city in the south. There are exotic plants, a diversity of interesting animals, fascinating insects and flowers, a black cat, and just a lot to look at. But recently he had some harsh words for the squirrels. I think they were being disrespectful and wasteful vis a vis the pecans. I'm not sure. I am glad he is feeling his feelings. I even understand the anti squirrel sentiment, after all, I probably wouldn't be so keen on squirrels if they were serially misusing pecans in my yard. If I had pecans. Which I don't. I also don't have a lot of flowers. I don't have a black cat. No frogs. The birds are capricious. They'll visit and then, they just won't, for awhile. For insects we specialize in mosquitoes, yellow jackets, gnats and ants, but now that it's October it can get a little quiet with them too. Which, ultimately, brings me to my point. 

I really like to sit out on my back stoop and watch nature. I do not have a single harsh word to say against the trees, and really there's quite a bit to look at. But it's nice to see a bit of wildlife scampering around entertainingly every now and then. These days, most days really, a lot of the time, that's going to come down to squirrels. Squirrels and just about nothing else. The gray squirrel, Sciurus Carolinensis. They like our oak tree. They're almost cute. They're pretty interesting. For awhile there they were dropping stuff on our heads, but I don't think it was intentional. It was hard to tell. They're around a lot. Our friend the squirrel. Well, it's what we got. I'll take it.

Goldilocks in blogland

Every once in awhile I toss out one of my posts, or a link to it, onto some likely place on the Internet. If I blog about a fly (and me) and stumble across a thriving entomology website I might put a link there. It's a bit like fishing. Wait, it's a bit like fishing really ineffectively. Let's say I post a link on that entomology website. If it's a hotbed of activity, and I bait the link well, maybe 150 people will hit the link over to my site to see what's up. I probably lose more than half in the first glance, or first sentence. Some other mass of the remaining 75 drops off along the way. A few people make it through to the end of said essay. One person out of the 150 checks out a few of my other posts, and if I gather maybe ten or 15 of those singular people together from multiple subject specific linking expeditions (so, roughly, out of 1500 people) perhaps one of them might, sort of, if everything comes together really well, follow my blog regularly (Hi! I'm so sorry I analogized you to a fish!). I am not complaining.Well, I used to complain, but right now, not so much.

I have spent most of my life in the arts, painting, drawing, writing, cartooning, even a short bit of music. When I look around the culture it is filled with artists who have set the world on fire. When I look around at the sizable collection of all the people I have ever known who are, in some way, artists (which is a not insignificant portion), none of them have set the world on fire. None. These are really hard things to reconcile. I have had to use my scientific brain to get anywhere in understanding this. On one hand, famous, zeitgeist, magical, rich, artists are everywhere. On the other hand, in my world, they don't even exist as a freakish aberration. Do you personally know Lady Gaga? Are you Lady Gaga? No, but likewise, you never pop over for tea at Mary Oliver's house either. Why don't you? Because there are, like, 10,000 famous artists (I counted), and there are six billion people. As I figure it, extremely roughly, you will need to meet 600,000 people to meet one quite famous and successful artist. That's a lot of hand shaking and "How're you doing?" You better get going. If you want to be one of those famous artist people you are going to have to go through 600,000 reincarnation cycles. More if you're no good at staying in species. It could easily take you 39 million years!

So, here's the thing. I always thought I belonged in the famous artist category. But as I started to get a little space between my feverish desire to be a rich, acclaimed genius and just living, I started to develop the beginnings of an ability to look at all this in a more "How things are" instead of "How I want things to be." And I found something like this:

One post I wrote recently was about Bob Dylan visiting the Library. Lo and behold, among the many, many websites devoted to him there is one called Expecting Rain that is very prominent. So I plopped one of my links there under a category I invented called "Dylan in the wild." Within a couple days a couple hundred people went over to look at my little essay. How many read it, I don't know, but they went and looked. How nice. A small few of them left comments over on the Expecting Rain message board where it was posted. raging_glory said "Thanks, I enjoyed your interesting perspective." mjeff said "Sort of interesting." and Still Go Barefoot said "Yawn."

What would my assessment of the Dylan at the Library essay have been? I won't tire you out, but it would have included powerful agents and publishing houses pounding desperately on my door, 4 million hits in two days, and lots of fuss. It took me a really long time, for a number of reasons in my life, to come to terms with the fact that I am a highly biased and unreliable assessor. But beginning to come to terms with that also allows me to step out of the fray. Stepping out of the fray lets me see not only that I am not on the verge of setting the world on fire, it also allows me to see that the world is pretty wet. It allows me to see that Raging_glory, mjeff, and Still Go Barefoot are about what it is for me, with what I make, sometimes better, sometimes worse, and it allows me to care so much less. Furthermore it allows me to do what I do from a little bit better and a little more pure place.

Of course, I still do care a bit. I did, after all, go look at that message board to see if anyone had anything to say. And I still kind of hate Still Go Barefoot. "Yawn"? What an asshole!

And she is gone

A mighty legend of my Library is now gone. Retired. I feel wistful, nostalgic and strangely untouched. But I have one last story about her before all stories about her are strange reminiscences of other times. One last contemporary story, related out of the day to day to me, at the front desk, by a favorite co-worker who keeps a devoted finger on the pulse of my Library. I won't use the overly disdained G word. She is an Information Provider, just like me! Ahem.

At the service desk are black pads, RFID readers. If you put tagged items (which is to say all library materials) on them they will input things into our computers. It can be a bit annoying when patrons come up and put books on these pads because things start entering sort of randomly into our computers. It's a minor problem, but irritating. Most people know not to put items on these pads, but the people who don't know really can't be faulted. Unless you're pretty familiar with our technology or with new technologies in general, or are just really good at reading subtle layout and body language signs, it is pretty easy to figure that the black pads are just a sensible, even helpful, place to put your books. As staff we must temper or even dissolve our irritation with this understanding. Or not.

As the story goes, the legend, just in her last few days at the Library, so, last week, was sitting at one of the service desk computers when a patron came along for help. The patron placed a stack of books on the black pad. The legend swept the entire stack of books off her pad and onto the floor. The patron said "That was incredibly rude."

The legend replied "Well, it was rude of you to put your books there."

I can hear her voice in my head.

To those of you who quailed at the sheer ice in my "She is leaving" post I invite you back there now, with this sweep of her arm in your mind, and that farewell to the patrons comment to guide your way.

Breakroom Cafe

This is a non-scientific study.

Today we had a rather well attended retirement party for a long time co-worker. There was a potluck. I brought cappuccinos. How do you bring cappuccinos to a potluck?

1. You bring one gallon of organic whole milk.

2. You bring roughly a pound of finely ground organic fair trade Bolivian coffee.

3. You bring a little workhorse of an espresso machine, a Mr. Coffee pump espresso machine with a steamer that all works way better than it has any right to.

One and two I had to buy. Number three I keep all the time in the Library break room anyway, and use often.

The party starts. You make cappuccinos. Lots and lots of cappuccinos. In about an hour and a half I made 23 cappuccinos. Making this many cappuccinos led to more than a few jokes about opening up my own cafe. This made me say "Hey! Yeah!" and caused me to do the math. Twenty-three cappuccinos at $3.50 a cappuccino is $80.50. Two hours labor (counting half an hour added for clean up), no rent, no employees, about $15 for ingredients and I came out to about $33 an hour. Okay, so not huge, but as long as I had no rent or equipment costs I think I could get by. Of course the drinks would have to be free for that kind of sales volume around here, but, theoretically, if I operated out of the break room, applied for a State Coffee Board grant, worked 16 hour days, and begged at high traffic stoplights in my spare time, I could, with some small bags of unusual, locally sourced potato chips sold at a 400 percent mark up in massive volumes, make it all work. But it might be challenging. Which is why I have developed today a new sympathy for my local independent cafe owners. I think I'll also tip more.

The books I refuse to read

Now that banned books week is over I can safely discuss the tiny subsections of the written word that I just won't read. I think everyone has things, by disinclination, principle, or unconscious aversion, that they will simply never read. Among people capable of reading, these exclusion zones can be quite massive (everything other than road signs maybe, or, currently popular among phone/internet devotees, anything beyond the second sentence in any collection of text), and, alternately, among voracious readers, the exclusions can be very tiny. The teen librarian (Hi Marcus! Don't worry, I won't mention your name here!) has even devised schemes to push his reading boundaries, like reading a book from every shelf in the Library. I, likewise, have an ability, or compulsion, or feverish interest enough, to poke my nose into virtually any collection of text, at least for a few minutes. Nevertheless I do find odd little categorical pockets of things, for various reasons, that I just can't get myself to investigate. Whether naming them here drives me to break down these barriers or helps to solidify them remains to be seen.

1. Any large scale piece about cats written by someone who has also written similarly about dogs.

The last one I willingly read was, years ago, Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who also wrote The Hidden Life of Dogs. I liked both, but I just can't take it anymore. As a fierce pro cat, it's too emotional. I will not crack the cover of Cat Fancy Magazine when there is also a Dog Fancy Magazine. It's a loyalty thing. Pick one.

2. The books of Barbara Kingsolver.

Based on the hostility of people I respect, I do not read her books. When I express to other people my horror at myself for doing this they always reassure me I have done the right thing, reinforcing this strange exception to deciding for myself.

3. Romance novels involving "Highlanders"

Anyone involved in romance fiction in any capacity can tell you that about 20 percent of all "Romance" novels involve "Highlanders."  What are these Highlanders? I think they might be Scottish or something. I try desperately to get interested, to even just read a back cover, but everything grows fuzzy when I try, and somehow I suddenly have a Vampire Romance in my hands, or a magazine about pumpkins. So I read those instead.

4. Any book of politics from a "Centrist" perspective.

I avoid the direct discussion of politics here as my prose tends to develop fever blisters, therefore it would be for the best if I did not explain this. You must trust me that you should not ask. I hope you can understand.

5. Anything by any author who exceeds a cumulative quota of killing their characters.

All the works of Larry Mcmurtry and George R.R. Martin could be glued page to page together at this point and I would never know it.

Musical Chairs and Occam's Razor

There are two seats out at our Service Desk, two seats for two staff members. One is up higher, one is down lower. When it is my time to go to the Service Desk I'll take whichever spot opens up first, but if you want that spot enough, ask nicely and you can have it. If we arrive together for a shift you can chose because I don't care, and if you don't want to choose I will pick one. It is very simple and I am incredibly mellow and easy going. Ob la di, ob la da. I am the Zen master. All chairs are good. I can find joy in both of these nearly equal spots. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

So are we all sorted now? You have your spot? Yes. And I have my spot here. There is great, unbreakable, and magnificent harmony forever at the Service Desk. Om mani padme hum.

Now stay the hell out of my spot! Stay away from my computer! There is absolutely no reason for you to migrate. If I step away from the desk to solve one of our dear patron's problems, and I come back to the desk to find you helping someone at my computer I am going to look at you like you are a psychopath. Yes, a psychopath. That might sound like I am bringing a good deal of non Zen heat to the situation, but no, it is a simple issue of Occam's Razor.

Occam's Razor is a principle that gives greater weight to the simpler hypothesis in competing explanations. In short, the simplest explanation, with the fewest assumptions required, is the most likely one. Space aliens could have beamed into the Library, told you they have installed the secrets of cold fusion onto one of the three (yes, there are three!) Service Desk computers, but if it is not found in ten minutes it will self delete. This is a more complicated explanation for your abandoning the perfectly good and equal computer station you have chosen, and taking mine, than the explanation that says you are psychotic. Nevertheless this "aliens" explanation is, according to Occam's Razor, actually the second most likely. It is forced to go even stranger from there to explain the events.

This doesn't mean that some wildly complex explanation is not true. I'm all ears. Indeed I am eager to hear it. But until you present it, you can have both spots out there. You seem to want them. I'll be in the back, meditating. One does not obtain Zen mastery without practice, loads and loads of practice.

Reading comprehension is overrated

On the way to the elevators, sitting on the table for staff mailboxes, is an inscribed brick paver. I don't know what it's doing there, but we do have these same pavers, bought by patrons as money raisers for the Friends of the Library, out in the Children's Garden. They have little, usually Library appropriate, sayings on them, like:

Outside of a dog a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
-Groucho Marx

or

Leroy, I have always despised you and leave a record of it here where you will never visit, a library.
-Michael

The paver at the elevators, perhaps there awaiting its installation, said to me, over and over as I headed to the elevator:

It's not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend from wonder.
-by R. J. Palacio

And every time I saw it I thought "How strange." And every elevator ride I would muse on what exactly is "A friend from wonder." And each time I mused on it it became more strangely lovely to me. I want to be a friend from wonder! I want to do everything from wonder! Eat, breathe, clerk, write, think from wonder. Let me be open to all the great magic of the world, and let it flow through my heart!

Then, today, wheeling my cart of books to the elevator I saw that the paver did not say:

It's not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend from wonder.
-by R. J. Palacio

It said:

It's not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend. 
From Wonder.
-by R. J. Palacio

And I thought "Oh blah blah blah."



addendum: This is a true story. I did think these things, so I leave it as is, but I would feel lousy if I didn't add that I actually have, it turns out, read Wonder by R. J. Palacio and quite liked it. In the end I suppose the quote is okay too, despite my "Blah blah blah" reaction. Still, I'd take Groucho's over it any day.

You can't always trust a librarian's recommendation

I don't think of it as very much my nature to accord too much respect to others. I am by nature, wounds, experience, or some combination of the three, prone to a sometimes overly rich skepticism. At the ends of the fiction and genre fiction shelves, on what are called the end caps, are places to put featured books from our collection. I felt I was observing some of this skepticism by assuming whoever was in charge of putting those recommended books out there wasn't doing that good of a job, and that I should feel free to put an occasional book I love onto an open end cap space. Still, I never have replaced books out on the end caps. I always assumed they were there for a chosen reason, even if they sometimes seemed a bit random and not to my taste. And I always had a slight twinge of feeling like "Is this okay my putting my own choices out here? I don't want to mess anything up." Just a slight twinge.

Yesterday I was shelving in Science Fiction and the person either wholly or largely responsible for filling the end caps came back to show a patron something. The patron satisfied (hopefully), this librarian headed back to the desk, but on the way she randomly grabbed a book, without breaking stride, and placed it in an open end cap.

I was amazed. 

I am too innocent again. 

Here, I'll go find it.

Lawless Land
by Les Savage, Jr.

It's a western, in hardcover so a bit anomalous for the predominantly paperback western genre, not horribly greasy or worn. Sure, no one here at the Library has read it, but we at the Library thought you might especially like this one.

On the other hand there's this nice newish copy of The Eyre Affair that's just slightly more ideally sized for the spot...

Anoka County Library, Rainbow Rowell, and the road to censorship

It is a long story, well, too long for here. You can go here, to MPR, to see a sort of full story of this, but, almost briefly, I will try to outline it. A neighboring Library system to me, The Anoka County Library system, got together with their local public schools for a summer reading program. One of the books was "Eleanor and Park," a novel by Rainbow Rowell. A little parents group ended up complaining about it because there is swearing. I think they said "Oh my fucking god, there is so much fucking swearing in it!" No, they didn't really. Anyway, the School Board acted like these were reasonable, thinking people and apologized and took it very seriously, but we're not talking about them. We are talking about the Library system. Their big role was that they were bringing the author out for a talk with students. As this all sort of blew up, they withdrew the invitation. Or, here, this is how they put it:

 "The school district and the Anoka County Library system collaborated on the summer book program because we share the goal of encouraging young people to read. The district's media specialists selected the book and the library system agreed to fund the author visit. The county library was in the process of executing a contract with the author when we learned the book had been formally challenged by the parents of a student at one of our high schools. As a result of the challenge, leadership of the library concluded it would not be wise to finalize the contract and they chose to withdraw financial support for the visit. The author's visit would have occurred at the same time the school district was going through the challenge process. It may well have raised issues in the community that would have overshadowed and detracted from the purpose of the author visit, which was to give students the opportunity to talk with a writer about writing."



Presumably the leadership of the Library is Marlene Moulton Janssen, director of the Anoka County Library (director@co.anoka.mn.us). Apparently the Library Board was involved in the decision as well. I do not know if Ms Janssen has experience as a librarian or is merely an administrator, but her and the board's appropriate simple response to this situation was to continue to do everything in their power to book Rainbow Rowell, and have her come to their Library system, say they have no authority over what the School system chooses to do, and say all Librarians involved have acted impeccably and that they stand by all their choices and support the validity and importance of Rainbow Rowell's work. They should reiterate that they run a free Library. For extra credit they would have tied it into Banned book week, hosted additional speakers on this issue, and loudly announced the buying of more copies of the book to support the increased demand. It should have been an opportunity!

The simple termination of the contract process bitterly failed Libraries and librarians everywhere, and is hard not to see as an act of cowardice. It would not have "raised issues in the community that would have overshadowed and detracted from the purpose of the author visit, which was to give students the opportunity to talk with a writer about writing". It would have clarified and enriched them.  It is not enough for the public and librarians to bemoan censorship and put old books on their quaint "banned books week" shelves, but they need to speak out directly where and how these things happen in Library systems, with people like Director Janssen and the Anoka County Library system trying to play it real careful around the edges of censorship and so facilitating it by ascribing so much respect to it.

I know that a neighboring Library system invited Ms Rowell to speak, and I have heard she is "Shy" of Minnesota. I think the situation as far as Libraries are concerned can still be redeemed, but at this point would probably best be done by the greater twin cities Libraries consortium, called MELSA. They should be getting Rainbow Rowell up here for a week to talk in a variety of area Libraries and generally making a fuss of this as a learning opportunity and a watershed event, rather than waiting for it to go away, which means it will more likely play out the same way in the future.

The issue of censorship is, fortunately, not one that Librarians must contend with relentlessly in our culture, but, though smaller than some of their day to day issues, the line they draw against that censorship is possibly the most fundamentally important aspect of their job, and no amount of vigilant thoughtfulness on this matter is too much. Visibly and publicly standing ones ground on this line is not just the right thing for Librarians and Libraries to do, it is their job. Get to it.

author and thing that came with author picture when stolen from her website!

some Anoka Library, I have no idea why I am putting pictures in this post.

Marlene Moulton Janssen!

Is this book appropriate for 2 year olds? We just ask that Libraries keep it behind the desk or on one of the higher shelves.

Magic tricks of the clerks

I have discussed various coping mechanisms clerks use to navigate the despair strewn path of work life (examples here, here, and here), but today's list concerns itself with a more abstruse and amazing branch of clerk talents. For those non clerks among my readers I doubt you have ever before been swayed by my carnival musings on clerk life so as to give it all up and become a clerk. I don't blame you. But I am finally here to turn your head. Clerking, it turns out, is one of the very, very few paths out of muggledom that exists on the planet. Many people who have shown no indication whatsoever of supernatural talents find, after as little as three months of clerking, that they are now capable of strange feats that baffle those around them and cannot be explained by science.

Here is a short list of magical abilities I have personally witnessed and occasionally even performed at my Library:

1. Taking a cumulative half hour of break time, usually divided into two 15 minute segments, and instead dividing it into seven 15 minute segments.

2. The ability to work at the front desk for two hours with out ever actually going to the front desk.

3. The ability to complain about yourself by using another person's name.

4. The power to prove that the proverbial half full glass is actually only 47 percent full.

5.  The miraculous break room power to eat things that can normally not be eaten.

6. The ability to achieve religious-like transcendental ecstasies through things like a co-worker's sick day, free bagels and broken elevators.

7. The power to pass a year merely by blinking one's eyes.

Transit Processing

A patron walks into a Library (why don't more jokes start out like this, and, no, sorry, this isn't a joke). This person comes to me at the front desk because they want some item that's listed in the catalog with a curious, ambivalent status. Is it available? Can I procure this item for them?

The status is called Transit Processing and I am going to out it now. First I will say that there is incredibly little I will not out at the Library. I enjoy providing information, and it is part of our mission here, so I don't know why I'd withhold the truth even if the explanation involves describing a misguided Library policy and all its twisted and fascinating history, or perhaps having to describe a co-worker as "profoundly confused." The story of Transit Processing is barely a secret and not much of an outing, but here goes.

Technically Transit Processing simply means that the item has recently been returned and so is all caught up in one of the stages of our shelving process. This status was designed for the following reasons:

1. To keep patron expectations about immediately acquiring the item low.

2. To give staff easier plausibility in describing the item as "unavailable" as opposed to "a lot of hard work for me."

There have been an assortment of policy directives regarding this status since it was created, most or all of them saying that we are to tell patrons these items are unavailable and that we should not search for them. So, the only real official word that has come out on this status is that we should normally treat it as meaning unavailable.

But here is a thing I love about my Library. I don't know how many, but a lot of people working here will go look for that item for a patron because the general culture here is that doing right by a patron, if you can, trumps policy. It's not paradise here and this will not work out with the more jaded or lazy staff, but often enough it does win out. Even a person largely responsible for writing and emphasizing a rule like "We are not to search for the item" might, probably even will, when it comes down to an actual breathing patron who wants something, do the kind and human thing.

What about me? What do I do when a patron wants an item in Transit Processing?

I will try to find the thing. What else? We're a Library. If we are terribly busy I will make a very quick, concentrated stab at finding the thing and will generally look just a tiny bit longer than I should.  The hard part really is judging when to give up. Often enough these items are too deep in to be found in any reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately the longer I look the more painful it is to give up. If I can't find it I'll come out and put it on request for the person, offer sympathy, and reiterate what I would have told them before I started my search, that sometimes they just aren't findable amidst so much stuff.

But I am not perfect, and if I do find the elusive Transit Processing item I have to tell you that I generally force the patron to pay a price. The price they must pay is that if I find it they have to listen to the whole exciting story of my search.

"There were like seven bins full of DVDs and I was digging through them, but it seemed hopeless after awhile so I decided I had to give up, but as I was starting to walk away I saw this glint of a red letter against white brick, almost winking at me, way down in one of the bins I thought I had already searched pretty thoroughly. I almost kept going, but then some part of me thought 'you know, that's just the look of the cover of Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, and so I reached down and there it was!"

It's not really a classic anecdote, is it? Not a classic, no. But even then I can't resist adding, as I check out to them their well earned DVD  "I've seen this movie so many times I pretty much have it memorized."

"Really? It's good?" The patron replies. "I've never seen it. My friend said we have to watch this tonight."

And now they can.

Free Library, but limited resources within

Tension and expectation steals oxygen from the air and it feels hard to breathe. The Library opens in 30 seconds. The wall of people moves in tighter and tighter against the barricade doors. They adjust their packs and belongings tight to their bodies so as not to inhibit their movements. Eyes forward. No one wants to look at anyone else. Even that barest dash of human recognition, that possible grain of sympathy, could shave their competitive edge and soften their will to victory.

The space between people compresses, disappears. An eerie hush fall.

Please don't let there be another trampling today. That is all we ask.

The crowd as a whole breathes in like a single entity, both to allow the great Library doors to be rolled open, and to gather the last loose scraps of energy into itself.

The doors are rolled open.

Be strong of foot, but bear disappointment well. There can be but one victor today.

They seem to unwind in slow motion, but as they emerge into open space and arrange their free movement the race sorts out, and the speed quickly rises. Some unspoken code keeps them speed walking, but then someone hitches into a trot. The group tenses like it might burst into a run. And so they reach the stairs.

Run not in the Library. Keep your feet. Please, above all keep your feet!

The trotter subsides back to a walk as they hit the stairs. Pounding up them separates the strong from the weak. The belongings for a full day, strapped to bodies and in over sized packs work loose and drop down arms. Someone misses a step and touches down. They use their hands to propel themselves on. The race is not over yet!

The left turns are before you. Lean, lean your body. All you have worked for hangs in the balance now.

Three in the group have now bowed out, fallen behind on stairs and turns. All that is left is one straight run through the genre section. The group is so near that they surge. It is not running, it is surging. Arms and legs fly. There is a swirl of bodies, bags burst open and fly aside and then,

Quiet. Quiet. It is over.

One person, and one person alone, has claimed the comfy chair. The comfy chair is taken. The race is over. The winner will keep claim on the chair for all the 11 hours we are open. The losers filter off humbly, but not without hope. There are other chairs, for today, and for tomorrow? Who know, perhaps the comfy chair will be theirs!

It is not always the best joke that gets the biggest laugh

I was wandering out to the front desk to enter onto our waive sheet the 90 cents I had waived for someone while I was on the phone (that's 90 cents now that this Library will never see!). A patron was there and was handing a medicine bottle full of pills that she had found somewhere in the Library to one of my co-workers. That co-worker handed it to "C", who handles the lost and found. At that moment I said to C., casually, "Let's each take half and see what happens."

The patron erupted into raucous, genuine, long laughter. It was pretty gratifying. My two co-workers, who were in the midst of the usual polite, pale chuckles I'm oh so familiar with, caught the contagious laughter and so let loose some genuine laughter of their own.

I turned and headed to the back room while the laughter was still going. When you get lucky like that you don't want to push it.

As I emerged into the back room under the waning wails of laughter, many staff and volunteer eyes looked up to me enquiringly. I shrugged as if to say "Who knows."

Who knows indeed.

What have we learned from famous people

We have now completed Famous People at the Library week, and what a week it was! Sally Brown! Prince! Garrison Keillor's nephew! But it was not just a series of dazzling, glittery thrills in which we fawned excitedly over the most miniscule utterances and encounters! No! It was a rich learning experience.

Hmm? What's that? What did we learn? You mean the blog post is not over yet?

Ha, of course the blog post is not over! Here is what we learned:

1. Famous people want to be treated just like regular people, except when regular people aren't treated so well, which is surprisingly often, at which point famous people are open to suggestions.

2. Any blog post about a famous person will increase traffic to your blog in direct proportion to how famous the person is: Post about furniture: 46 views, Post about author Elizabeth Berg: 57 views, Post about Prince: 1,367,485 views.

3. Famous people venture into libraries so infrequently (presumably because they are rich enough to afford color televisions for their entertainment) that it can take decades for a Library blogger to accumulate enough stories for famous people at the Library week, and even then they have to make up half of them.

4. No matter how boring, insignificant, trivial and stupid you find a famous people story to be, there will come a time when that famous person will come up in conversation and you will be telling that story.

Kerri Miller at the Library

Kerri Miller hosts the late morning show on our local public radio station. She used to come to my Library occasionally and so I've interacted with her several times. I haven't seen her for awhile. People's patterns change. She might frequent some more local library. Her radio show has a strong focus on books, reading and authors, so I suspect she gets glutted with complimentary copies from publishers. That might keep her away more too.

When she was coming around and I listened to her show (which I still do) I would often compose things to say to her in my head. I once heard Noam Chomsky said something like that NPR should pay him for all the stress they cause him when he listens. Not to go too deeply into it, but I think that, in our deranged culture, to maintain an image of political neutrality, or that you're sort of mainstream, or just roughly unbiased, you must not say a long string of blindingly obvious truths while also treating a long string of lies with consideration and neutrality and as if their status is yet to be determined. My comments, composed in my head, generally came from this territory. It was satisfying to think them up before I changed stations to music, in order to bring my blood pressure back into safe ranges, but I knew they were not really points of discussion. When Kerri Miller came to the Library what I generally said to her was "Hi." I think it was for the best.

She always said hi back, as if she sort of knew me, which, with famous people, makes you feel almost like you're famous yourself.