There are many series swirling around this blog, some of which I've forgotten and may never continue, some that roll around pretty regular like and are all lit up and easy to see, and some that sort of disappear into the fog and then suddenly reappear way closer than you
AH, AH! TURN LEFT! TURN LEFT! TURN RIGHT!
BRAKES! BRAKES!
Are you okay? Whew, that was a close one. We almost crashed into it. We almost bit the farm!
What did we almost crash into? One of those series thingies. Sorry, I thought we were still a couple hundred hours away from it. The safety procedures for blog imagination needs a lot of work!
What series? Oh, just park here and we'll walk over and take a look.
This series is "How a clerk copes", where we look into the various coping mechanisms that clerks employ to deal with the indignities, tedium and toil of clerking. Last time we discussed the "extreme pleasantness" coping mechanism, which is a, well, extremely pleasant coping mechanism. And it made me think of today's coping mechanism: fake extreme pleasantness. Fake extreme pleasantness is not quite so pleasant. Oh no, not so pleasant at all. The adjective I actually think of for this is "unhinged", but people use what they can to get by.
In this coping mechanism the person exerts a willful cheerfulness. I think it's a kind of saying "I am happy. I am happy." endlessly and in everything. I get the impression that people employing this coping mechanism may, sometime in the far past, have hoped to make it so by saying it, but when they get to me at my job that hope is long gone and all they're trying to do is drown out everything and anything that might disturb them. Unfortunately the longer that happy lid is on the pot, the more everything trying to get out seems like something to disturb them and the happier the lid has to be. The pressure grows immense inside and the pot itself starts to come apart. Weird things leak out the sides. The person gets disconnected. You end up with the sort of clerk who tells you bad news as if it's good news, might profoundly commiserate with you over miniscule trifles that don't bother you at all, and will answer your questions incorrectly about half the time. If you're a co-worker this person may occasionally ask you a semi-personal question in a very focused way and then pay no attention to the answer. Mostly though this person will have few social interactions in the workplace.
So I have to say this is a very messed up coping mechanism. Indeed, it's a tragic coping mechanism. I am getting rather sad just writing about it, but does it work as a coping mechanism? I don't know. Sort of? I mean, looking at the couple of co-workers I've had who were heavily into this coping mechanism, they seemed to walk around in a sort of buzzing pleasant fog, checked out of reality but still nominally functioning. Terrible at their job, yes. And they definitely need real help, but, barring that, is this coping mechanism all that keeps them from becoming an axe murderer? It seems possible. It seems very possible.
Of course it could be leading them there as well.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Can you judge a book by its cover?
A couple posts down from here I said I was going to be scientifically (ever so vaguely) testing some old adages and proverbs and such, particularly ones with a library connection. I took so long to say what just took a sentence to recap that I had to wait to start the first one. Well, the waiting is over. Today we are testing "You can't judge a book by its cover."
First we have to have a few ground rules, not, actually, so much because we have to have ground rules, but mostly because I'm just crazy about ground rules. Did I say we have to have them? I was kidding. But we are having them. Also, they're kind of scientific.
Ground rules.
1. We take the saying mostly at its word, so, when it says "book" we're just dealing with books here and not the wider wisdom we may take it to suggest. "Cover" is the outside, front, back, and spine. The "can't judge" part we must become reasonably looser with. Anyone can judge anything! It's humanity's favorite pastime! Of course you can judge a book by its cover. You can also judge it by the day of the week! So we understand it to mean you can't judge well, or accurately, or fairly, and it is this proposition we will attempt to test.
2. I will take for our test subject the next book, entirely randomly, that comes down the automatic check in machine belts that meets the following criteria: I must be able to check it out (it can't be on hold for someone). It must be basically unfamiliar to me, something I'm fairly certain I have never opened before or read in some other form. It must be a book (no DVDs or CDs). No picking or choosing. Whatever comes, comes.
3. Without opening the book I will make as many reductionist, summary judgements of the book as I can. When that is done I will open the book and read as much as I can stand. Then, with knowledge of the insides of the book I will see how I did judging from the cover. Of course, this takes as an assumption that you can judge a book by its contents. I guess we'll reluctantly have to go ahead with that assumption.
We begin:
A novel I was unfamiliar with came but was on hold for someone. Catch 22 and, I think it was a George Orwell book, came next. I read those, or at least part of the Orwell. Then, our ground rule acceptable guinea pig arrived, only, it's not a guinea pig, it's Leo, the Snow Leopard!
The book:
Leo the Snow Leopard the True story of an Amazing Rescue Told by Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff, and Craig Hatkoff. Textwise it also says on the cover "From the #1 New York Times Bestselling Authors of Owen and Mzee" The back cover text where I was hoping for a lot of clues is a bit disappointing. It consists of three collections of websites; Turtle Pond Collection Websites, Wildlife Conservation Websites, Scholastic Websites. The book is mainly a dark green with a bit of yellow and light blue. It's a picture book size, slightly off square towards the horizontal. The cover is dominated by the title and a picture of a snow leopard cub looking earnestly at us (and cutely!). He's lying down in some untended sort of wild grassy environment. The picture is more about a nice shot of Leo than being a great, eye-catching picture. There is also a picture on the back cover of a man with a greying mustache/light goatee holding a little snow leopard cub. The day is overcast. Plains of some sort are behind the man and snow leopard, and then a wall of Mountains.
Okay, now I'll try, but suddenly I'm very nervous about getting it all wrong! I like to be right!
Ahem.
1. This is the story of Leo, a snow leopard.
2. It will be told in a fairly modest amount of text, with big pictures featured heavily.
3. It wont be amazing, but it will be a little sad, and cute too.
4. Leo's parents (or Mom really) will have been killed by poachers, most likely, or a more natural tragedy (although, sadly, people killing stuff is about as natural as it gets!).
5. Committed to wildlife and nature conservation people will be heroes along with, subtly, some kind of wildlife organizations, but the focus will be kept as much as possible to Leo's personal experience.
6. Leo will be plucky and intrepid.
7. Leo will find his way to people in an unusual way.
8. Things will be touch and go but Leo will come through.
9. There will be lots of ways you can learn more about snow leopards, animals, and Leo.
10. The pictures will be efficient in a documentary style, but nothing special beyond that.
11. Leo will come to a happy end for himself, though it will be touched with the difficulty of a world not so congenial to snow leopards out there. But there is hope.
12. I am thinking it wont be really so happy an ending since Leo will end up in a zoo or something. But there is a small chance we get an ending where Leo gets to go back to the wild, which would be happier. So give me more points for the Zoo ending, if it happens.
Okay, that's enough. Now I have to read the book! I was pretty happy when it turned out my random selection was a book that would take about five minutes to read. After I read the book I will say how I did on each of my 12 points listed above.
Here we go.
1. This is the story of Leo, a snow leopard.
Yes, basically.
2. It will be told in a fairly modest amount of text, with big pictures featured heavily.
Yes, though it was all a bit more talky than I expected. I was picturing four or five lines of text per 2-page spread. This is more a continuous text with a couple paragraphs per 2-page spread. Pictures thing is totally right on.
3. It wont be amazing, but it will be a little sad, and cute too.
Yes, definitely not amazing, cute and sad was a stretch, but it was certainly meant to be.
4. Leo's parents (or Mom really) will have been killed by poachers, most likely, or a more natural tragedy (although, sadly, people killing stuff is about as natural as it gets!).
Yes, Leo was an orphan! No poachers mentioned. The cause of death of Leo's mom was completely unknown.
5. Committed to wildlife and nature conservation people will be heroes along with, subtly, some kind of wildlife organizations, but the focus will be kept as much as possible to Leo's personal experience.
Yes, except, if anything, I undershot this and the authors didn't mind veering away from Leo's personal experience and getting really into the conservation people and there is nothing subtle about their slavish worship of wildlife conservation organizations.
6. Leo will be plucky and intrepid.
Yes, Leo does everything right and comes through each situation well.
7. Leo will find his way to people in an unusual way.
Yes, Leo is found, young and helpless, all alone by a goat herder who takes him home to his family.
8. Things will be touch and go but Leo will come through.
Yes, Leo gets ill and dehydrated and wildlife rescue people come in and solve all his problems.
9. There will be lots of ways you can learn more about snow leopards, animals, and Leo.
Not really. I mean, there's extra information in tighter text at the end of the book, but that's part of the book and it doesn't really offer resources other than the back cover web sites.
10. The pictures will be efficient in a documentary style, but nothing special beyond that.
Yes, very much so.
11. Leo will come to a happy end for himself, though it will be touched with the difficulty of a world not so congenial to snow leopards out there. But there is hope.
Yep, he ends up at the Bronx Zoo, where supposedly he will have snow leopard babies that will help the endangered snow leopards everywhere. Though how fathering more imprisoned snow leopards helps them is beyond me.
12. I am thinking it wont be really so happy an ending since Leo will end up in a zoo or something. But there is a small chance we get an ending where Leo gets to go back to the wild, which would be happier. So give me more points for the Zoo ending, if it happens.
Bingo, yes, zoo ending, though the authors seemed to think it was pretty darned happy.
How did I do?
For all my accuracy I did fall a little short on just how crappy I think this book is. I thought the hard realities of real conservation would have featured at least a bit, and I thought it would hew a bit closer to Leo. Still, in the end, I have to say that my judgement based on the cover was very fair and accurate, and I'm going to have to decide that "You can't judge a book by its cover" is wrong. You can, with pretty good accuracy sometimes.
So, our quasi scientific result:
You can indeed judge a book by its cover!
First we have to have a few ground rules, not, actually, so much because we have to have ground rules, but mostly because I'm just crazy about ground rules. Did I say we have to have them? I was kidding. But we are having them. Also, they're kind of scientific.
Ground rules.
1. We take the saying mostly at its word, so, when it says "book" we're just dealing with books here and not the wider wisdom we may take it to suggest. "Cover" is the outside, front, back, and spine. The "can't judge" part we must become reasonably looser with. Anyone can judge anything! It's humanity's favorite pastime! Of course you can judge a book by its cover. You can also judge it by the day of the week! So we understand it to mean you can't judge well, or accurately, or fairly, and it is this proposition we will attempt to test.
2. I will take for our test subject the next book, entirely randomly, that comes down the automatic check in machine belts that meets the following criteria: I must be able to check it out (it can't be on hold for someone). It must be basically unfamiliar to me, something I'm fairly certain I have never opened before or read in some other form. It must be a book (no DVDs or CDs). No picking or choosing. Whatever comes, comes.
3. Without opening the book I will make as many reductionist, summary judgements of the book as I can. When that is done I will open the book and read as much as I can stand. Then, with knowledge of the insides of the book I will see how I did judging from the cover. Of course, this takes as an assumption that you can judge a book by its contents. I guess we'll reluctantly have to go ahead with that assumption.
We begin:
A novel I was unfamiliar with came but was on hold for someone. Catch 22 and, I think it was a George Orwell book, came next. I read those, or at least part of the Orwell. Then, our ground rule acceptable guinea pig arrived, only, it's not a guinea pig, it's Leo, the Snow Leopard!
The book:
Leo the Snow Leopard the True story of an Amazing Rescue Told by Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff, and Craig Hatkoff. Textwise it also says on the cover "From the #1 New York Times Bestselling Authors of Owen and Mzee" The back cover text where I was hoping for a lot of clues is a bit disappointing. It consists of three collections of websites; Turtle Pond Collection Websites, Wildlife Conservation Websites, Scholastic Websites. The book is mainly a dark green with a bit of yellow and light blue. It's a picture book size, slightly off square towards the horizontal. The cover is dominated by the title and a picture of a snow leopard cub looking earnestly at us (and cutely!). He's lying down in some untended sort of wild grassy environment. The picture is more about a nice shot of Leo than being a great, eye-catching picture. There is also a picture on the back cover of a man with a greying mustache/light goatee holding a little snow leopard cub. The day is overcast. Plains of some sort are behind the man and snow leopard, and then a wall of Mountains.
Okay, now I'll try, but suddenly I'm very nervous about getting it all wrong! I like to be right!
Ahem.
1. This is the story of Leo, a snow leopard.
2. It will be told in a fairly modest amount of text, with big pictures featured heavily.
3. It wont be amazing, but it will be a little sad, and cute too.
4. Leo's parents (or Mom really) will have been killed by poachers, most likely, or a more natural tragedy (although, sadly, people killing stuff is about as natural as it gets!).
5. Committed to wildlife and nature conservation people will be heroes along with, subtly, some kind of wildlife organizations, but the focus will be kept as much as possible to Leo's personal experience.
6. Leo will be plucky and intrepid.
7. Leo will find his way to people in an unusual way.
8. Things will be touch and go but Leo will come through.
9. There will be lots of ways you can learn more about snow leopards, animals, and Leo.
10. The pictures will be efficient in a documentary style, but nothing special beyond that.
11. Leo will come to a happy end for himself, though it will be touched with the difficulty of a world not so congenial to snow leopards out there. But there is hope.
12. I am thinking it wont be really so happy an ending since Leo will end up in a zoo or something. But there is a small chance we get an ending where Leo gets to go back to the wild, which would be happier. So give me more points for the Zoo ending, if it happens.
Okay, that's enough. Now I have to read the book! I was pretty happy when it turned out my random selection was a book that would take about five minutes to read. After I read the book I will say how I did on each of my 12 points listed above.
Here we go.
1. This is the story of Leo, a snow leopard.
Yes, basically.
2. It will be told in a fairly modest amount of text, with big pictures featured heavily.
Yes, though it was all a bit more talky than I expected. I was picturing four or five lines of text per 2-page spread. This is more a continuous text with a couple paragraphs per 2-page spread. Pictures thing is totally right on.
3. It wont be amazing, but it will be a little sad, and cute too.
Yes, definitely not amazing, cute and sad was a stretch, but it was certainly meant to be.
4. Leo's parents (or Mom really) will have been killed by poachers, most likely, or a more natural tragedy (although, sadly, people killing stuff is about as natural as it gets!).
Yes, Leo was an orphan! No poachers mentioned. The cause of death of Leo's mom was completely unknown.
5. Committed to wildlife and nature conservation people will be heroes along with, subtly, some kind of wildlife organizations, but the focus will be kept as much as possible to Leo's personal experience.
Yes, except, if anything, I undershot this and the authors didn't mind veering away from Leo's personal experience and getting really into the conservation people and there is nothing subtle about their slavish worship of wildlife conservation organizations.
6. Leo will be plucky and intrepid.
Yes, Leo does everything right and comes through each situation well.
7. Leo will find his way to people in an unusual way.
Yes, Leo is found, young and helpless, all alone by a goat herder who takes him home to his family.
8. Things will be touch and go but Leo will come through.
Yes, Leo gets ill and dehydrated and wildlife rescue people come in and solve all his problems.
9. There will be lots of ways you can learn more about snow leopards, animals, and Leo.
Not really. I mean, there's extra information in tighter text at the end of the book, but that's part of the book and it doesn't really offer resources other than the back cover web sites.
10. The pictures will be efficient in a documentary style, but nothing special beyond that.
Yes, very much so.
11. Leo will come to a happy end for himself, though it will be touched with the difficulty of a world not so congenial to snow leopards out there. But there is hope.
Yep, he ends up at the Bronx Zoo, where supposedly he will have snow leopard babies that will help the endangered snow leopards everywhere. Though how fathering more imprisoned snow leopards helps them is beyond me.
12. I am thinking it wont be really so happy an ending since Leo will end up in a zoo or something. But there is a small chance we get an ending where Leo gets to go back to the wild, which would be happier. So give me more points for the Zoo ending, if it happens.
Bingo, yes, zoo ending, though the authors seemed to think it was pretty darned happy.
How did I do?
For all my accuracy I did fall a little short on just how crappy I think this book is. I thought the hard realities of real conservation would have featured at least a bit, and I thought it would hew a bit closer to Leo. Still, in the end, I have to say that my judgement based on the cover was very fair and accurate, and I'm going to have to decide that "You can't judge a book by its cover" is wrong. You can, with pretty good accuracy sometimes.
So, our quasi scientific result:
You can indeed judge a book by its cover!
Friday, June 7, 2013
A blog post ten times greater than any other blog post ever!
I was reading Booklist magazine at lunch today because I couldn't find anything nearby that was more interesting, and really, the Sci Fi/Fantasy issue of Booklist was an easy choice for me over Sports Illustrated for Kids or Sew Beautiful or Boating. Huh, I didn't know we still carried Boating. So, reading through a thicket of mild, Booklist praise I quickly found my way to a shiny, hopeful two page spread of "starred", upcoming sci fi/fantasy books. Before long I was knee deep in superlatives. There are like, 11 absolute must reads, just in this genre, apparently coming out in the next month and a half. I cried out "Who is responsible for all this hyperbole?!"
I was alone in the room so no one answered.
This forced me into a reflective mode. I mused and there found my answer. I am responsible for all this hyperbole! I'm addicted. I gotta have it. I crave it! There are hundreds of trillions of books out there! How can I settle on just one (or seven) to take home and find time to read. If I stumble upon two books that seem like they both might be particularly satisfying to me and one of them has three "starred" reviews, while the other only has two "starred" reviews, I am absolutely going with those three stars. But wait, what if the three starred one is merely described as "deeply exhilarating." This sounds tepid compared to the two star's jacket burner of "life changingly beautiful". Plus, Ursula K. LeGuin is very pleased with the two starrer. That should count for something since Ursula K. LeGuin is the greatest Science Fiction writer who ever lived, ever! It's a praise arms race, and to absurdly mix my metaphors the race is to my arms and the praise is the heroin I inject in them. If someone I really trusted would just say that one of these books is ten times more entertaining than anything they've ever read in their life, I might feel like I've really got something worth taking home here. But without that I am full of doubt. And these books are heavy. I am paid to truck books all over the place in the library, but back and forth to my house is just uncompensated labor. I need assurances. I can't just keep reading Jasper Fforde books and The Wee Free Men over and over again. Great as they are though, a zillion times better than almost anything else.
It kind of makes me wonder what they write about in Boating magazine.
I was alone in the room so no one answered.
This forced me into a reflective mode. I mused and there found my answer. I am responsible for all this hyperbole! I'm addicted. I gotta have it. I crave it! There are hundreds of trillions of books out there! How can I settle on just one (or seven) to take home and find time to read. If I stumble upon two books that seem like they both might be particularly satisfying to me and one of them has three "starred" reviews, while the other only has two "starred" reviews, I am absolutely going with those three stars. But wait, what if the three starred one is merely described as "deeply exhilarating." This sounds tepid compared to the two star's jacket burner of "life changingly beautiful". Plus, Ursula K. LeGuin is very pleased with the two starrer. That should count for something since Ursula K. LeGuin is the greatest Science Fiction writer who ever lived, ever! It's a praise arms race, and to absurdly mix my metaphors the race is to my arms and the praise is the heroin I inject in them. If someone I really trusted would just say that one of these books is ten times more entertaining than anything they've ever read in their life, I might feel like I've really got something worth taking home here. But without that I am full of doubt. And these books are heavy. I am paid to truck books all over the place in the library, but back and forth to my house is just uncompensated labor. I need assurances. I can't just keep reading Jasper Fforde books and The Wee Free Men over and over again. Great as they are though, a zillion times better than almost anything else.
It kind of makes me wonder what they write about in Boating magazine.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
The Clerk Manifesto FAQ
Hey, I have either barely started a FAQ for this blog, or I have completely finished one. There is no in between! I was thinking it was a work in progress, but it looks kind of done too. Maybe I need more questions? Anyway, I am rolling out for you the first phase of my FAQ, just, you know, so you can see it and stuff. Why a FAQ you ask? I just think it could be useful to orient people to my blog, then make them a little dizzy, and then reorient them.
What do I get if I go to clerkmanifesto.com?
Wisdom, distraction, entertainment, and a small amount of allowable radiation poisoning from your monitor or device. Plus prizes!
What offerings are there for my kids on clerk manifesto?
Important life lessons in disobedience.
What is clerkmanifesto.com?
A website mostly made up of words, with daily posts on libraries, books, working and life. The truth will be hidden in nonsense and nonsense will be hidden in truth, like a puzzle game with super easy puzzles that make you feel clever!
Huh?
Oops.
Is clerk manifesto pro library or anti library?
Clerk manifesto is so pro library that even the Librarians call me mad! Mad I tell you. Ha! They call me mad, but they are the ones who are mad!
Will I like clerkmanifesto.com?
Your response to this FAQ is probably a fairly reliable indicator, along with your feelings about kittens and happiness and the stars in the sky. What say you to the stars in the sky, hmm? Yes, or no?
What do I get if I go to clerkmanifesto.com?
Wisdom, distraction, entertainment, and a small amount of allowable radiation poisoning from your monitor or device. Plus prizes!
What offerings are there for my kids on clerk manifesto?
Important life lessons in disobedience.
What is clerkmanifesto.com?
A website mostly made up of words, with daily posts on libraries, books, working and life. The truth will be hidden in nonsense and nonsense will be hidden in truth, like a puzzle game with super easy puzzles that make you feel clever!
Huh?
Oops.
Is clerk manifesto pro library or anti library?
Clerk manifesto is so pro library that even the Librarians call me mad! Mad I tell you. Ha! They call me mad, but they are the ones who are mad!
Will I like clerkmanifesto.com?
Your response to this FAQ is probably a fairly reliable indicator, along with your feelings about kittens and happiness and the stars in the sky. What say you to the stars in the sky, hmm? Yes, or no?
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
A book in the hand
I have been struck by how many of our old adages and aphorisms have to do with books, reading and libraries. There's "You can't tell a book by its cover" and "A book in the hand is worth two in the bush" (Duh! Water damage!). "Judge not lest ye be judged." is, of course, about library work but interestingly applies to other things as well. "The longest book begins with a single page" was so popular it was stolen and retrofitted by the travel industry, and I know there's more, buy my mind is blank. The well has run dry. But "When memory fails the Library is there to catch you." So I went and got a book on aphorisms, adages, proverbs and sayings, and I found these:
A book that remains shut is but a block. (I like this one.)
A fancy cover doesn't make a fancy book. (Doesn't this sort of depend on you definition of "fancy"? If it's really 'fancy' and not 'good' I've got to at least demur enough to say a fancy cover is at least a pretty good indicator of a fancy book.)
Books breed like flies and die as fast. (Oh, burn!)
He who throws boomerangs should learn to duck. (Oops, I think I've drifted past the "Book" section and entered the "Boomerang" section. Did you ever notice how many of our old adages and aphorisms have to do with boomerangs and kangaroos?).
Anyway, I looked up the meaning of "adage" and came up with... An adage is a short but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long use. This made me wonder how true these are in practice and I decided to try testing some of these in the real world to see how they hold up. Can you judge a book by its cover? I don't know for sure without scientific testing, but since "A brief account is the best account" and "A blogger who blogs too long may not blog when tomorrows blogging comes due" I am thinking I will commence with this project on a blog post to come. All of the flowers that bloom tomorrow, are in the seeds of today.
A book that remains shut is but a block. (I like this one.)
A fancy cover doesn't make a fancy book. (Doesn't this sort of depend on you definition of "fancy"? If it's really 'fancy' and not 'good' I've got to at least demur enough to say a fancy cover is at least a pretty good indicator of a fancy book.)
Books breed like flies and die as fast. (Oh, burn!)
He who throws boomerangs should learn to duck. (Oops, I think I've drifted past the "Book" section and entered the "Boomerang" section. Did you ever notice how many of our old adages and aphorisms have to do with boomerangs and kangaroos?).
Anyway, I looked up the meaning of "adage" and came up with... An adage is a short but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long use. This made me wonder how true these are in practice and I decided to try testing some of these in the real world to see how they hold up. Can you judge a book by its cover? I don't know for sure without scientific testing, but since "A brief account is the best account" and "A blogger who blogs too long may not blog when tomorrows blogging comes due" I am thinking I will commence with this project on a blog post to come. All of the flowers that bloom tomorrow, are in the seeds of today.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
If I Were King of the Library, The 5th Decree
What I am now mandating as an addition to this will be called The Useful, Strange, and Interesting Things Library. As odd as it sounds at first this has more precedent in our nation's libraries than you might think. My system has checked out painting and sculpture reproductions in the past. AV equipment was not unheard of in the olden days. We currently check out bike locks and energy meters, and I know of libraries that will check out telescopes, dogs, tools, seeds (yes, plant them, grow them, harvest, and return new seeds at end of season!), cake pans and people (yep, it's called the living library and started in Copenhagen, it's about exposing you to different kinds of people). The only thing I don't commonly see is a tying together of a variety of these things in one place, thus my USIT Library (I made an acronym!). Here's how it will work:
1. Because this will not be a large collection we will not be unduly concerned with unconventional sizes of items. If we only have 30 or 40 or 50 things here we can handle a bike or a really nice sled or a banana tree or whatever.
2. I'm thinking something like a $25 to $350 spending range for items. I'm sure you could get a unicycle for that, or juggling clubs, or an incredibly nice piece of jewelry from etsy.
3. These are one off things and can have their own distinct checkout periods, late fees, return processes, and grouped elements.
4. This gets a committee too (like the local library did). The committee is made up of randomly chosen volunteers from staff and regular volunteers. They can buy however they want within their annual budget, majority rules. I would even encourage buying used if it helps stretch our dollars. They can also solicit donations. They are responsible for maintaining the health of the collection.
5. As this library has an actual acronym (USIT) we will be going rather more in the direction of supporting use and towards weeding unused things than we might with some of the regular collection. Nevertheless, experimentation, variety, and lower levels of technology (tech is okay, just, I want to counter it's easy appeal in this situation) are strongly encouraged in the buying process.
So it is decreed this day, etc. etc.
The King
Monday, June 3, 2013
A Pontificate of Blog Posts
The delightful and irritating crows were active in my front yard yesterday, and the phrase "murder of crows" kept sort of rolling in my mind like mild, Lake Superior waves. This happens when I see geese too, "gaggle of geese, gaggle of geese". I've always found this convention of grouping terms strangely appealing and have occasionally found myself irresistibly applying them to the social/professional groupings at my job. Today I decided to see what small list I could put together for you. These are rather on the cutting side (as befits the "gaggle" and "murder" inspirations), and I wonder if it would be possible to do a more friendly list sometime too. I'm not sure it would work.
Anyway...
A seclusion of computer operators
as in "Oh yes, there is a whole seclusion of computer operators working on the internet problem, but we haven't heard a thing about whether it will be fixed anytime today."
An entitlement of Administrators
as in "We had to move the quilting group to the kid's room because an entitlement of administrators is having a high level lunch meeting there this afternoon."
An imitation of Architects
as in "There was a very well respected imitation of architects that designed our building to look a lot like the Ridgedale Library."
A doze of Librarians
as in "Most of our doze of Librarians is working on collection development, but if you lightly nudge one of them they will help you."
A confusion of Patrons
as in "There is a rather large confusion of patrons that can't find the rental DVDs. What do you think, bigger signs?"
A delusion of Managers
as in "A delusion of managers has come up with an 11 point plan to improve staff morale."
A wander of Shelvers
as in "No, I don't know why there are so many unshelved carts here, we have a whole wander of shelvers working on it."
A bitter of Clerks
as in "I think he's over with that bitter of clerks complaining about the phones, or the schedule, or something."
I think there would be an endless array of alternates if you feel like weighing in below.
Anyway...
A seclusion of computer operators
as in "Oh yes, there is a whole seclusion of computer operators working on the internet problem, but we haven't heard a thing about whether it will be fixed anytime today."
An entitlement of Administrators
as in "We had to move the quilting group to the kid's room because an entitlement of administrators is having a high level lunch meeting there this afternoon."
An imitation of Architects
as in "There was a very well respected imitation of architects that designed our building to look a lot like the Ridgedale Library."
A doze of Librarians
as in "Most of our doze of Librarians is working on collection development, but if you lightly nudge one of them they will help you."
A confusion of Patrons
as in "There is a rather large confusion of patrons that can't find the rental DVDs. What do you think, bigger signs?"
A delusion of Managers
as in "A delusion of managers has come up with an 11 point plan to improve staff morale."
A wander of Shelvers
as in "No, I don't know why there are so many unshelved carts here, we have a whole wander of shelvers working on it."
A bitter of Clerks
as in "I think he's over with that bitter of clerks complaining about the phones, or the schedule, or something."
I think there would be an endless array of alternates if you feel like weighing in below.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
How a Clerk Copes, Your Guide, Part 2
I started a series about clerk coping mechanisms way back when. It feels like about, oh, 2 years ago, if I had to guess, but was actually just a little over a month ago, which just goes to show that "blog time" is nearly as strange as "clerk time". Actually, I'm pretty sure that the issue is that time itself is deranged, prone to practical jokes that are rarely funny, is needy, and with the tendency common in those with profound self esteem issues only responds well to those that ignore and disdain it. Yet time cleverly hides all of that behind a carefully crafted illusion of evenness and dispassion. I fall for it over and over, like I do weather forecasts or enthusiastic praising quotes on the back covers of books.
Anyway, where were we? I was really just telling you that I have another in the Clerk Coping Mechanism series. Perhaps you don't remember that series because there was only one and it was so long ago? Here is for refreshing your memory if you like. But briefly, it has to do with how in the psychologically stormy world of clerking a clerk must develop various traits and methods and abilities that help protect them from the crashes of thunder, sudden bolts of lightning that incinerate their co-workers, and drenching steady rains that fall, metaphorically, for weeks on end in the workplace, flooding everything knee deep and causing hideous blooms of fungi to fuzz over nearly every surface as the deep gloom of despair pervades the traumatized staff.
Did I get carried away again?
It is my way.
Today's coping mechanism is... Extreme Pleasantness.
No, this is not fake extreme pleasantness, which, it strikes me, will be a very fun coping mechanism to write about sometime in the future. No, this is the real deal. The person employing this mechanism has a way to discuss any topic with interest, laughs easily, listens to others, and glides through problems lightly. This person can complain with you if absolutely necessary (though probably with a lightening touch) and is not oblivious to the reality around them, but, even if you're feeling cranky or aggrieved, somehow you will more likely find yourself discussing vacations, or food, or movies with them happily instead. There is something bright and sunny about this person, but naturally so, and in a freely including way. How is this a coping mechanism and not just personality, you might ask, or, er, I would like you to ask, so I can say the next part I wanted to say, but make it like I'm just innocently answering a question? Well, I'll tell you, since you asked.
Roughly half of this person's work time is spent pleasantly chatting. That's quite a lot. Especially when one considers that virtually no one ever faults this person. While it is possible for this person to fall afoul of a manager, their ratio of "not working" to antagonizing anyone is as close to perfect as most clerks can get. Indeed, it somehow rarely even occurs to anyone that this person is not working a lot of the time. Each conversation is read as a one off and these are rarely added together because this person makes each one seem so natural, so part of the flow of working, of moving from one place to another. This person is never avoiding work, merely being naturally sociable and friendly. This person, at least deep down, knows that the 20 hour work week is right and true, and has found a way to make that balance with the sad, real world reality of a 40 hour work week. They do it by being extremely pleasant.
And they are indeed extremely pleasant. And they are clever too, in an extremely pleasant way. This is a great coping mechanism, but hard to pull off. It's not for me. Mostly I'm just really happy if there are one or two people around working this angle. It's always good for the place.
Anyway, where were we? I was really just telling you that I have another in the Clerk Coping Mechanism series. Perhaps you don't remember that series because there was only one and it was so long ago? Here is for refreshing your memory if you like. But briefly, it has to do with how in the psychologically stormy world of clerking a clerk must develop various traits and methods and abilities that help protect them from the crashes of thunder, sudden bolts of lightning that incinerate their co-workers, and drenching steady rains that fall, metaphorically, for weeks on end in the workplace, flooding everything knee deep and causing hideous blooms of fungi to fuzz over nearly every surface as the deep gloom of despair pervades the traumatized staff.
Did I get carried away again?
It is my way.
Today's coping mechanism is... Extreme Pleasantness.
No, this is not fake extreme pleasantness, which, it strikes me, will be a very fun coping mechanism to write about sometime in the future. No, this is the real deal. The person employing this mechanism has a way to discuss any topic with interest, laughs easily, listens to others, and glides through problems lightly. This person can complain with you if absolutely necessary (though probably with a lightening touch) and is not oblivious to the reality around them, but, even if you're feeling cranky or aggrieved, somehow you will more likely find yourself discussing vacations, or food, or movies with them happily instead. There is something bright and sunny about this person, but naturally so, and in a freely including way. How is this a coping mechanism and not just personality, you might ask, or, er, I would like you to ask, so I can say the next part I wanted to say, but make it like I'm just innocently answering a question? Well, I'll tell you, since you asked.
Roughly half of this person's work time is spent pleasantly chatting. That's quite a lot. Especially when one considers that virtually no one ever faults this person. While it is possible for this person to fall afoul of a manager, their ratio of "not working" to antagonizing anyone is as close to perfect as most clerks can get. Indeed, it somehow rarely even occurs to anyone that this person is not working a lot of the time. Each conversation is read as a one off and these are rarely added together because this person makes each one seem so natural, so part of the flow of working, of moving from one place to another. This person is never avoiding work, merely being naturally sociable and friendly. This person, at least deep down, knows that the 20 hour work week is right and true, and has found a way to make that balance with the sad, real world reality of a 40 hour work week. They do it by being extremely pleasant.
And they are indeed extremely pleasant. And they are clever too, in an extremely pleasant way. This is a great coping mechanism, but hard to pull off. It's not for me. Mostly I'm just really happy if there are one or two people around working this angle. It's always good for the place.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Coming Back
It can be hard to come back to work after a long string of days off. It's not that you forget anything, or missed anything, it's more of a vertigo feeling. I walk in that door and it's like the whole library world is something as seen from the clouds. Why is everyone so mad at everything? How can anyone care so much that Hydra, the terrible clerk, did something terrible again? It is Hydra's nature. And all this whirring, half-applied energy everywhere, don't you see those beautiful trees out that window, flowering thickly in white? All these books will get shelved eventually and they're just getting checked out again when they do. Just breathe everyone. Learn from me. I have walked in that door a zen master. Am I to empty a bin, answer the phones, go to the front desk? Why not, they are all good.
It's actually a very lovely eleven seconds.
This is followed by a prolonged painful period of time, much like when, after your foot falls asleep, it needles as it comes awake again. I estimate there is about ten work hours of this. From my recent return after six days off I was upstairs shelving. I'd been back at work for ten hours and eleven seconds of very little joy. I stopped at the interior glass windows that take in a wide view of the library in action. I looked on the library from not quite so high up and was all of the sudden suffused with love. This place, open to anyone, full of interesting things to do and see, safe, comfortable, free. And I work in the machinery, in the walls of it, greasing it, replacing cogs, facilitating a hundred kinds of flow, in my element. Peace. I felt peace and happiness and understanding. Not some perfect version of it, just a feeling. I go downstairs and am mad at a dozen things, and it's just a different side of the same coin, all made of feelings too. And, god, I am way too tired and the day goes on forever, but fortunately I can take a break in about 20 minutes. And I am back.
It's actually a very lovely eleven seconds.
This is followed by a prolonged painful period of time, much like when, after your foot falls asleep, it needles as it comes awake again. I estimate there is about ten work hours of this. From my recent return after six days off I was upstairs shelving. I'd been back at work for ten hours and eleven seconds of very little joy. I stopped at the interior glass windows that take in a wide view of the library in action. I looked on the library from not quite so high up and was all of the sudden suffused with love. This place, open to anyone, full of interesting things to do and see, safe, comfortable, free. And I work in the machinery, in the walls of it, greasing it, replacing cogs, facilitating a hundred kinds of flow, in my element. Peace. I felt peace and happiness and understanding. Not some perfect version of it, just a feeling. I go downstairs and am mad at a dozen things, and it's just a different side of the same coin, all made of feelings too. And, god, I am way too tired and the day goes on forever, but fortunately I can take a break in about 20 minutes. And I am back.
Friday, May 31, 2013
How I Read
There is still maybe a tiny triumph for me in finishing a book. Perhaps it is a holdover from my early years of reading. Back then I had some culturally communicated sense that all those pages were an accomplishment and a virtue. I think the shift away from that started with The Lord of the Rings, read at age 13, when all of a sudden I was involved with a book so long that they had to split it into three books, and yet all its page numbers were forced to resolve into something puny under the enthrallment I felt for the narrative. Indeed, it was the first time I encountered the horror of page numbers passing by, like vacation days or bites of ice cream or blog post sentences. So since then I have been growing ever further from the idea of reading as virtuous. I don't think I need it to be virtuous. I just like it, or I'm addicted to it, or I need it to breathe or to escape. Actually it turns out there are a lot of open questions regarding motivation here.
But becoming friends with a particularly voracious reader who gives me a constant flow of recommendations, and also writing so much about books (and getting a growing list of recommendations here) has made me think more about what kind of a reader I am. I have been enjoying the term omnivorous, but many other descriptions, some perhaps more accurate, come to mind. There's gluttonous, indiscriminate, mercenary, and mercurial. I am delighted to try and strip all valuable content from a book through a use of book flaps, the epigraph, a page and a half at the start and then a couple random paragraphs. I'm more comfortable than I ever have been with reading 27 pages and thinking it's really good and never picking it up again. Of course the library is a treasure box and mostly I've adapted well to all these books promising the world. I open them up and if it becomes clear it's all lies I am equally delighted to despise the book. I can be very open minded, but sometimes a little hate is good for the heart. Wise people will tell you differently. Who knows, they could be right. You might want to test both. I love finding bits of knowledge I can pack into the shelves under the stairs in my brain. I can usually find it if you need it, but it will invariably be spindled. I enjoy reading thousands and thousands of books every year, but clerking and blogging can be time consuming so a lot of the time I stick to just reading the back cover, or the about the author, or a series of reviews on amazon. I especially enjoy it when someone tells me about a book and I can say "I won't read that." and they offer to synopsize it for me. It takes a minute and is almost as good, though usually it's much easier to get this kind of run down with movies or TV shows. But I also fall hard for books and read them over and over through the years. I love second reads because all that tension about whether I'm going to love it is replaced with a more languorous joy and anticipation of things I only vaguely remember but know I'm going to love.
And that's about it. Mostly I was thinking if someone's going to be raving to you about The Eyre Affair or Birthday of the World and Other Stories a little context for it all can be nice. Knowing when you can disregard someone's book suggestions can be as helpful as getting a really likely recommendation. Of course, it's always a good idea to check out the back cover anyway, and the glowing quotes, and the author photo, and the first paragraph, and the epigraph, just, if you can.
But becoming friends with a particularly voracious reader who gives me a constant flow of recommendations, and also writing so much about books (and getting a growing list of recommendations here) has made me think more about what kind of a reader I am. I have been enjoying the term omnivorous, but many other descriptions, some perhaps more accurate, come to mind. There's gluttonous, indiscriminate, mercenary, and mercurial. I am delighted to try and strip all valuable content from a book through a use of book flaps, the epigraph, a page and a half at the start and then a couple random paragraphs. I'm more comfortable than I ever have been with reading 27 pages and thinking it's really good and never picking it up again. Of course the library is a treasure box and mostly I've adapted well to all these books promising the world. I open them up and if it becomes clear it's all lies I am equally delighted to despise the book. I can be very open minded, but sometimes a little hate is good for the heart. Wise people will tell you differently. Who knows, they could be right. You might want to test both. I love finding bits of knowledge I can pack into the shelves under the stairs in my brain. I can usually find it if you need it, but it will invariably be spindled. I enjoy reading thousands and thousands of books every year, but clerking and blogging can be time consuming so a lot of the time I stick to just reading the back cover, or the about the author, or a series of reviews on amazon. I especially enjoy it when someone tells me about a book and I can say "I won't read that." and they offer to synopsize it for me. It takes a minute and is almost as good, though usually it's much easier to get this kind of run down with movies or TV shows. But I also fall hard for books and read them over and over through the years. I love second reads because all that tension about whether I'm going to love it is replaced with a more languorous joy and anticipation of things I only vaguely remember but know I'm going to love.
And that's about it. Mostly I was thinking if someone's going to be raving to you about The Eyre Affair or Birthday of the World and Other Stories a little context for it all can be nice. Knowing when you can disregard someone's book suggestions can be as helpful as getting a really likely recommendation. Of course, it's always a good idea to check out the back cover anyway, and the glowing quotes, and the author photo, and the first paragraph, and the epigraph, just, if you can.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
All Miracles and Nonsense
In a recent post I mentioned coming across a book whose title I shall herein paraphrase as A lot of famous authors, many of whom I have managed to never hear of, write about old books they either think too few people admire and read, or that made some weird huge impression on them that they understand probably wouldn't mean much to anyone else. I half read, half skimmed the whole book. Cumulatively the authors gave off a very strong objective sense about what literature is. I was rather overwhelmed by all this objective seriousness and their deep valuing of books that sounded strangely uninteresting and often bleak. Overcome by their lucid understanding and forceful objectivism I had to hide whimpering under a lot of pillows for many hours. As tempting as it is to rail against the lot of them I cannot. For, alas, I am as awfully prone to bombastic, earnest, objective appraisal as the worst of them! "This is the greatest this" and "This was the foundation of all this" stuff, statements I feverishly believe, but have also, frankly, made up. It's not science here. Everyone is making this stuff up. Some people are magnificently knowledgeable and clever and sound like God, but it doesn't change the making it up part. And so I resolve to try and keep in mind that this is art we are talking about. And while art is easily in the top two most magnificent things humans engage in, it is also the silliest. So says the dark squiggles that transmute into a voice in your head.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
If I Were King of the Library, the fourth decree
But now that the gates are thrown open let's think about what to add. What public libraries don't already have Kids and Mysteries and Non Fiction? We've taken care of that basic, automatic stuff. Now is the time to spread our wings. Libraries are for flying! (Well, at least once in awhile, maybe like the Spruce Goose.) My third decree got us going on one of these extra libraries, the staff curated one, where vulnerable books are protected and the collection is driven by personal staff love. Now, by Kingly decree, I open another library within a library. The Local Library.
The Local Library will be a special collection made of books and media created or produced by people of the State within which the library lies. Strong priority and preference will be given based on how close to the library the author/creator lives and/or works. No preference whatsoever, though, is to be given to professionally produced, conventionally published material over entirely unreleased and homemade material so long as the homemade material meets minimum construction and reuseability standards. I'll move to the copious fine print and details for the rest.
1. All submissions are chosen by a jury based on their subjective opinions of quality combined with the localness of the submission.
2. The jury is to be made up of six people meeting monthly. Staff and local community members are both eligible to serve on the committee. Members are chosen by lot from those volunteers and serve for one year. Jury members must recuse themselves from judging items produced by people they know.
3. Submissions are open to anyone in the state and must come in a set of five that are reasonable facsimiles of each other. They must meet minimum standards of size and durability for circulation. Selected materials will be purchased by the library in their sets of five at a price standardized by type (book, DVD, CD, etc.).
4. Each chosen item will be assigned a supporting juror who will be responsible for writing an erring on the side of honesty frontispiece note explaining why the item was chosen and just how local it is.
So it decreed, this day etc. etc.
The King
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The Lake Effect
I feel... interested in everything. One might say that this makes it difficult to become very knowledgeable about or good at any particular things. And I think it is very true that to deep down excel at something, to thrive at something, we must give ourselves over to it, accept it and ourselves in it. For most of my life I have believed "should" is some major part of this equation, but the more I believe there is no necessary virtue to excelling other than joy or satisfaction or fulfillment, the more "should" drains out of it. We cannot choose what to do in this sense, only discover it and let ourselves take to it in our natural deep down way. This seems all very easy, I think, when applied to other people, but not so much when applied to ourselves. When I follow any of the thousands of seductive threads of who I might be and what I might accomplish and do I don't really have to let go of any of those myriad possibilities because I pursue that one through choice and will and effort. I have a control and so at any time I am free to start any other choice, any other thread. I am free to write my journey. But, to inhabit myself, to follow the light that leads into the deep woods, that makes me a creature of the wind, the follower of a never before walked path. It makes me me, just one thing, no threads, no varied futures, just one thing, for all time, a thing I can know nothing about ahead of time and that I cannot finish.
And so what can I excel at if I am going to be so omnivorously interested? I have given over the chase. And yet giving it over I lately find that everything I get interested in I put carefully in a glass jar. And I bring them back here. I line them up in their dozens and dozens in the sun. And I start to wonder that this, this, is it.
And so what can I excel at if I am going to be so omnivorously interested? I have given over the chase. And yet giving it over I lately find that everything I get interested in I put carefully in a glass jar. And I bring them back here. I line them up in their dozens and dozens in the sun. And I start to wonder that this, this, is it.
Monday, May 27, 2013
If you take the time there are lovely things to find
Sometimes, shelving, I read a bit. But fairly speaking I can't read too much. I have to shelve. So I take the fascinating little book I find (and they are especially fascinating when I can't content myself with reading them!) and set it in some quiet corner of my cart. Then, when I am finished with my shelving, I look over my little pile and admit that I'll never have time or inclination enough to actually read them, and I put them back. But sometimes I can't bear to put them back and have to take them with me, check them out, and sometimes even take them home. Sometimes I read more of them, sometimes I don't, but rarely are they so compelling as they are fresh found on the shelves, with every sentence read of them done on borrowed time.
Here are three books to be taken home from my last sweep of shelving:
Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission edited by a bunch of people. I guess the subtitle tells all. This book is at first glance so exactly what I am thinking about and it's so fascinating out of the gate that I think I better read some of it. My two fears here are that this book is going to go totally high brow (the list of authors suggests that to me along with my random page openings), and that I'm going to end up searching out, requesting from far afield, and reading a paltry two paragraphs of 24 different books. Actually, that doesn't sound so bad.
A Place in the Woods by Helen Hoover. This interests me because it's a book about jumping off to live in the wilds. I like where it jumps off from, both the era of the 50s and 60s, and the Lake Superior north woods where it all seems to take place. The book is maybe from 45 years ago, has nice drawings and, at first glance, pleasantly undated prose. When I went to stay on Lake Superior I was wishing I brought this book with.
Listening Point by Sigurd Olson. This is another north woods book. If you're not familiar with Sigurd Olson let's call him the John Muir of the north woods, instrumental in making Boundary Waters a National Park and, curiously, in making Point Reyes a National Seashore, or something like that, I don't know the story behind it. Anyway, my interest here is similar to the previous book. I'm reading a lot of nature/adventure writing and liking it. But the big appeal for this book is that it's rather special as a book. Fairly old for our library, it's a special Centenary of the State of Minnesota edition (so published in 1958), signed by Sigurd Olson and Francis Lee Jaques (the illustrator). Something about that physical brush with a different time, history, men dead for decades now, makes me want to give it at least a little bit of a go. Autographs make me go all woozy.
I've been meaning to write about the curated collection, but find myself taking care of that by continually nibbling at the edges of it. Here are three accidental finds of mine. I don't really know how good they are yet, but I do know they are mostly older and not so famous and popular that they couldn't be shipped off to the pound. We got some new program here that can make you up a list of things that haven't circulated for a year (or whatever). I don't entirely hate the program. I'm sure it's useful too, but I don't trust all the librarians with it. I find I am more interested everyday in chestnuts, hold overs, and lost treasures, and I think the balance is thrown off with this stuff already. But even in a suburban library only 60 or so years old there's a little old magic out there. And it's a joy to find.
Here are three books to be taken home from my last sweep of shelving:
Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission edited by a bunch of people. I guess the subtitle tells all. This book is at first glance so exactly what I am thinking about and it's so fascinating out of the gate that I think I better read some of it. My two fears here are that this book is going to go totally high brow (the list of authors suggests that to me along with my random page openings), and that I'm going to end up searching out, requesting from far afield, and reading a paltry two paragraphs of 24 different books. Actually, that doesn't sound so bad.
A Place in the Woods by Helen Hoover. This interests me because it's a book about jumping off to live in the wilds. I like where it jumps off from, both the era of the 50s and 60s, and the Lake Superior north woods where it all seems to take place. The book is maybe from 45 years ago, has nice drawings and, at first glance, pleasantly undated prose. When I went to stay on Lake Superior I was wishing I brought this book with.
Listening Point by Sigurd Olson. This is another north woods book. If you're not familiar with Sigurd Olson let's call him the John Muir of the north woods, instrumental in making Boundary Waters a National Park and, curiously, in making Point Reyes a National Seashore, or something like that, I don't know the story behind it. Anyway, my interest here is similar to the previous book. I'm reading a lot of nature/adventure writing and liking it. But the big appeal for this book is that it's rather special as a book. Fairly old for our library, it's a special Centenary of the State of Minnesota edition (so published in 1958), signed by Sigurd Olson and Francis Lee Jaques (the illustrator). Something about that physical brush with a different time, history, men dead for decades now, makes me want to give it at least a little bit of a go. Autographs make me go all woozy.
I've been meaning to write about the curated collection, but find myself taking care of that by continually nibbling at the edges of it. Here are three accidental finds of mine. I don't really know how good they are yet, but I do know they are mostly older and not so famous and popular that they couldn't be shipped off to the pound. We got some new program here that can make you up a list of things that haven't circulated for a year (or whatever). I don't entirely hate the program. I'm sure it's useful too, but I don't trust all the librarians with it. I find I am more interested everyday in chestnuts, hold overs, and lost treasures, and I think the balance is thrown off with this stuff already. But even in a suburban library only 60 or so years old there's a little old magic out there. And it's a joy to find.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Another from the North Shore
How proudly I titled my other North Shore post with "Where I did not go to any libraries." Ha! Here I am in this lovely house made by Frank Lloyd Wright's draftsman (the story in my head is that he made it to retire to or something, but I'm starting to think that is a figment of my imagination). A fire is burning and the sound of it mixes with the waves of Lake Superior breaking on the stone shore in the deep dusk. I wander one more time around the house. Art books here, El Greco, a bunch of unpromising looking ones on drawing (Frank Lloyd Wright's draftsman owned Idiots Guide To Drawing?). I go visit that complete set of Anthony Trollope to make a rough guess as to number of pages (14,000). I'm seeing other Trollope books around too, biographies and an autobiography duplicate so I figure that the owner must really have been a fan. One bedroom downstairs has a big and very miscellaneous collection. Harry Potter is there in a complete set along with an attendant group of turn of the century pop (Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler etc.). The upstairs bedroom has what looks to be maybe a small standard Young Adult collection circa 1923. I've never heard of a single one of these books, tried to read one, and quickly stalled out. In the hall is a small Shakespeare set, a 150 year old (or more) Bible, an encyclopedia set from the 40s or 50s (bought for $35 as a used bookstore chain). Out here by the fire there are more sets, this of great short stories or The Classics (I'm too comfortable to get up and find out which, but both are around here somewhere). There are several stacks of Frank Lloyd Wright books, picture books, biographies, studies, none too scholarly and none too new, but all appropriate because the house is about as close as it gets to a Frank Lloyd Wright house without being one. Also on these shelves are a couple of smaller varied classics mixed with older books I have no clue on. This is where there's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that looks like it could be a first edition. But I know just enough about book collecting and editions to know that that's super unlikely, likewise with a Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm. I read some of Kipling's American Notes standing here and it was entertaining for five or ten minutes (he came here because he was mad about the Americans' chronic copyright violations!). And there's really so much more I could catalog here, but really, what I'm trying to say with all this is that in addition to all the beautiful house, incredible lake and I'm-on-vacation stuff, I am also in a library. Not a public library, but a library all the same. A lot of times when I see books in someones house it's mostly just books that have collected instead of been collected, and there's some of that here, and there's misguided choices and stuff that just had to be for show, but neat stuff as well, and relevant and useful. And it's nice to see, too, even if it means it's also one more busman's holiday for me.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Notes from a North Shore trip where I did not go to any libraries
1. Has anyone looked into the possibility that the tops of pine trees are actually little communication towers that allow the trees to chat back and forth amongst themselves? You could scoff "What could pine trees possibly have to say to one another." but I don't think anyone reading my blog would say anything like that. Nevertheless I answer our fictional scoffer with this: On an average day at my library I spend at least an hour (cumulatively) discussing the weather with people and yet none of us are even outside! We hardly even go outside! Pine trees are outside all the time. It stands to reason that they discuss the weather. They do it with the little towers they grow at their tops, and they would love to discuss other things too, but they simply do not have the time. There is too much weather to discuss!
2. Driving, I crossed what seemed to be at least two exits for the "Soo Moose Trail". It led me to this aphorism: You can soo moose, but they never show up in court.
3. I am sitting in a beautiful, wide, and wedge shaped room that points out at Lake Superior. Twenty-two large windows comprise the whole of this wedge and I sit up near the prow with a view of a scattering of pines (who are chatting about the weather) and of so much wild, fresh water that my brain keeps having to struggle to believe it. It turns out I really like this feeling of my brain struggling to believe something because it is too obviously and too greatly true. And all I need to do is look at the lake, and there it is.
4. As I walked in and toured through what surely must be the most beautiful house I have ever stayed in what I mostly noticed were the books. "Oooh!" I thought to myself "He (referring to some former, hypothetical, deceased (?) owner) had a whole set of Trollope!" I have never read a single line of Trollope, but in my mind's eye I was settling down to read, over the course of the next two nights, all 14,000 pages of Trollope. That's no doubt what I'd be doing now too if I hadn't been suddenly seized with the terrible need to tell you about it, and the moose, and the pine trees, and all that water, which cannot be, but is.
2. Driving, I crossed what seemed to be at least two exits for the "Soo Moose Trail". It led me to this aphorism: You can soo moose, but they never show up in court.
3. I am sitting in a beautiful, wide, and wedge shaped room that points out at Lake Superior. Twenty-two large windows comprise the whole of this wedge and I sit up near the prow with a view of a scattering of pines (who are chatting about the weather) and of so much wild, fresh water that my brain keeps having to struggle to believe it. It turns out I really like this feeling of my brain struggling to believe something because it is too obviously and too greatly true. And all I need to do is look at the lake, and there it is.
4. As I walked in and toured through what surely must be the most beautiful house I have ever stayed in what I mostly noticed were the books. "Oooh!" I thought to myself "He (referring to some former, hypothetical, deceased (?) owner) had a whole set of Trollope!" I have never read a single line of Trollope, but in my mind's eye I was settling down to read, over the course of the next two nights, all 14,000 pages of Trollope. That's no doubt what I'd be doing now too if I hadn't been suddenly seized with the terrible need to tell you about it, and the moose, and the pine trees, and all that water, which cannot be, but is.
Friday, May 24, 2013
On the way to shelving
It is so rare that I see something interesting on all the internet computers people are living at in the library. And while it would be super nice to see someone reading my blog, or manipulating massively complicated screens of pure code, what I reliably see is people playing addictive and simple games involving colored balls, email accounts full of spam, TV shows, bureaucratic looking forms, and shopping, shopping and shopping. So it was with great pleasure that I walked by the upstairs internet computers just now and saw a screen full of strange, multicolored, whirring spheres. It wasn't a game. It was too good for that. It was maybe astrophysics? Biology? Something surely in the sciences, but maybe the mad sciences? I can't entirely discount that it was some sort of alien communicating device. All the aliens I imagine are big library users, or employees, or whatever. But it could have been some homeless person working something out that will win them a Nobel Prize in 3 years. I don't know. I didn't ask. It's a library. I just mind my own business.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Fulfilling My Part in the Third Decree
A couple of days ago I posted my third decree of "If I were King of the Library" which you can read here, or just scroll your way down. Briefly it decreed that each library worker gets to pick five items for all time, copies of which are kept in circulation forever in a special library within a library. There is more detail if you'll venture to that post, but I bring it up here only to say that I have picked my five choices. I may refine it a bit before it's all finalized and locked in, but this is my list. It's numbered because I really like numbering things, but it's not in any order or anything. And remember, it won't be a list of my most recommended items, rather one of slightly more obscured or downright vulnerable recommended items. And yes, I love them all.
King of the Schnorrers by Israel Zangwill
I practically created this whole decree so I could choose this book about a master beggar. I consider it foundational to all of modern comedy. Super entertaining too. And it is on the edge of disappearing.
On the Beach (a CD) by Neil Young
It's a little odd to me because Neil Young is not remotely in danger of being forgotten. But this album strangely seems to fall so far into the lower ranks of his canon that it feels half lost. It is my absolute favorite of all his albums. I'm not sure there is any guitar playing I have liked better anywhere and it is all fantastically depressing, ferocious, and lovely.
Fishwhistle by Daniel Pinkwater
I strongly considered here his The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, but my feeling is that Fishwhistle was gravely under appreciated from the start, and is more particular and more on the cultural precipice. These are some of my very favorite short, comic memoir essays ever.
Summerhill, A Radical Approach to Child Rearing by A. S. Neill
Here is everything I needed to know about freedom. Summerhill is still the only kind of school I really believe in and the philosophy of my Library Kingship owes much to Summerhill. Is it disappearing? We don't have it, and I would throw every single book in our whole system related to education under the bus for three copies of Summerhill. I might even like doing it.
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
I struggled mightily with my fifth choice, but now that I have chosen I feel even more solid about it than many of the other choices. For one, I really needed a woman author. Really. Seriously. Two, I needed a romance because romance saved my life, plus, awww, love. And three, I just so unreservedly and uncomplicatedly love it. It's just purely a joy to me to read.
What would you choose? Now is the time to comment. C'mon, at least just give me one. We have a library to fill!
King of the Schnorrers by Israel Zangwill
I practically created this whole decree so I could choose this book about a master beggar. I consider it foundational to all of modern comedy. Super entertaining too. And it is on the edge of disappearing.
On the Beach (a CD) by Neil Young
It's a little odd to me because Neil Young is not remotely in danger of being forgotten. But this album strangely seems to fall so far into the lower ranks of his canon that it feels half lost. It is my absolute favorite of all his albums. I'm not sure there is any guitar playing I have liked better anywhere and it is all fantastically depressing, ferocious, and lovely.
Fishwhistle by Daniel Pinkwater
I strongly considered here his The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, but my feeling is that Fishwhistle was gravely under appreciated from the start, and is more particular and more on the cultural precipice. These are some of my very favorite short, comic memoir essays ever.
Summerhill, A Radical Approach to Child Rearing by A. S. Neill
Here is everything I needed to know about freedom. Summerhill is still the only kind of school I really believe in and the philosophy of my Library Kingship owes much to Summerhill. Is it disappearing? We don't have it, and I would throw every single book in our whole system related to education under the bus for three copies of Summerhill. I might even like doing it.
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
I struggled mightily with my fifth choice, but now that I have chosen I feel even more solid about it than many of the other choices. For one, I really needed a woman author. Really. Seriously. Two, I needed a romance because romance saved my life, plus, awww, love. And three, I just so unreservedly and uncomplicatedly love it. It's just purely a joy to me to read.
What would you choose? Now is the time to comment. C'mon, at least just give me one. We have a library to fill!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Blog housekeeping and real live entertainment!
HI. No highfalutin library philosophy today. Today is just notes on my sidebars over there (yes, yes, off to the right, huddling against my printer for comfort. You can't see my printer? Well then, what's to the right of your screen?). And then we whisk you off to literature (no, you don't have to go). So it's either a slow day on the blog or a heavy one, depending on how you look at it.
First, our inaugural feature of 'What's the free food in the break room' has either been eliminated or put on sabbatical. This may be because no one brings in any interesting free food anymore. I'm hoping that has nothing to do with my occasionally inadvertently referring to it as poison. I meant it affectionately. You may also notice my increased use of the space right to help organize my copious blog posts. These things multiply like tribbles! Some of them I don't even write, they just spawn! Anyway, the people willing to actually talk about my blog with me seem pretty comprehensive oriented and use the phrase "need to get caught up" or "am all caught up". But in my unceasing optimism I see millions of new readers, and I am thinking maybe some links to thematic groupings of posts will be of use to them. Finally, I have posted up the second Wiki story, which one can probably fathom without reading the first, though the first is up there too. It can all be found through the 'Short detective stories' link at my entertainment hub over there on the right, next to the...oh, just, to the right. Anyway, to help you along with this I am putting the start of the story here. Just try it. You don't have to click the continue link at the end of it. It'll be good for you! There is a special kind of high fiber in this story, and omega nine, which is three times as powerful as omega three.
Wiki and the Dog that Barked
Wiki Magenta was a detective, but detectives need cases and cases can be very hard to come by. Solving, so effectively, the case of her own being robbed was impressive enough to Phoebe and I, but not the sort of thing with a lot of future to it. Wiki allowed herself to be carefully introduced to kids around the neighborhood and even had a couple of my friends over. She inspired more awe and respect than outright affection, and when the information was quietly made available that she worked, at a small, sliding fee, as a detective, it did not inspire the derision and skepticism nearly anyone else would have engendered. Nevertheless, it did not either get her clients. Few people, and perhaps even more so kids, think in terms of detectives as useful tools in life, and an extraordinary resource such as Wiki was outside of the normal conception. She had to be learned.
My and Phoebe's summer was coming out
way better than I had any hope. On the one hand there was the
perfectly enjoyable standard stuff I had every reason to expect. I
had a long little league season with a team that had its act together
and a shot at state glory, and the aimless adventures of the
neighborhood kids and the long bike rides with longtime buddies James
and Keith. My dad, head chef at one of the best restaurants in the
city, liked to whisk Phoebs and I off on strange culinary experiments
around town for the education of our palates (Phoebe went at this
with more gusto than me, but I loved the different cultures and
strange people we got to meet more than the things people managed to
do with the fat of geese). My mother, an avant garde composer
(meaning no disrespect, but this means she made music you likely
wouldn't recognize as, well, music), saw to our arts entertainments
when she had a chance (this was interesting, but something closer to
hard work than to the experience of seeing the latest Star Trek
movie). But whereas in past summers there was a large chunk of
leftover time spent spacing out in front of screens or asking people
what they wanted to do in a desperate and futile hope that they will
say, first, anything possible, and second, something actually
appealing, this summer, instead, nearly obliterating that chunk, was
Wiki.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
If I were King of the Library, the third decree
The problem that I find myself repeatedly slamming into around my cities various public library collections is twofold. One, I find a distinct lack of guiding passion. Loved items surely circulate thickly in the collection, but they remain unemphasized, unprotected, and undifferentiated. Two, librarians are fine when it comes to buying "New" items because every device of popularity and capitalism is geared to it. Stocking the classics is handled almost as well, especially if they are old enough and classic enough. But there is a middle ground here that I consider the soul of a library collection. It consists of half classics, lost classics, and the truly great books that 25 years or 40 years or 100 years on have been buried under the constant shower of new books. Ever so steadily, from age, wear, abandonment, and the ceaseless occlusion of new things, these simply erode out of our library systems and our cultural consciousness.
The King is here to save the soul of the library, and here is the decree to do it.
Every person who works for the library gets to choose five items of any currently circulating type, and a minimum of three copies of each of these will be kept and maintained in the collection for all time. These items will constitute a special collection all housed together, a library within the library.
There is loads of fine print and details that go with this.
1. Items are vested only among employees who have worked more than five years. If someone leaves before five years their choices are not protected and can be weeded or allowed to fade away.
2. Staff is not required to fill their quota of choices, but choices are non transferable.
3. Staff are entitled to remove their choice at any time, but not to replace it.
4. After the fifth year of employment staff is allowed one new pick at each new full year of employment.
5. All choices must be accompanied by an explanation of why the item was chosen. This will be prominently featured along with the staff member's name and the origin date of the choice.
6. Staff are urged to consider things that aren't already very safe on the regular shelves, but if they want to spend a choice on Pride and Prejudice that's up to them.
7. Staff has to formally attest to loving each item they have chosen. This will be done by signing their name to a front piece in the book that says "I affirm that I have chosen and love this book (or cd or whatever).
So it is decreed, this day, etc. etc.
The King
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