This week at the library; or, It's finally stopped snowing and we're selling t-shirts, so it's officially summer

Monday

• Back to work! Was completely thrown off by being asked actual reference questions this morning. Whaaa??? Also had a staff meeting, but nothing exciting happened, even though one of our staff is on the Digital Signature Task Force, a name which makes me very giggly.
• For Make it and Take it we made "lion mane masks". Basically, I put out paper plates, feathers, jewels, yarn, and scrap paper and we created. Had a group of older kids suddenly appear, plus my usual 7-9 girl group and we made some marvelous creations (and an unbelievable mess with the feathers, which I made my aide vacuum up afterwards)
• Random library thought - everyone is excited about Kindle coming into Overdrive, and yeah our patrons will love it. BUT. Unless our standards get changed, it's going to kill us. We aren't allowed to count ebook checkouts as "circulations" and we have certain numbers of materials we must have, which doesn't include ebooks. It's time these standards were changed! Especially the magazine requirements. I'm going crazy replacing magazines since they are cancelled constantly - no sooner do I request a new title, than it goes online only or out of business altogether. (and then the teens steal all the new issues, as happened today, and...)

Tuesday

• Vacation. For no particular reason except I had one more vacation day and had to use it before May 5th. I was going to clean out my "garden" which consists of some pots on my little porch and whatever plants I sneak in around the edges when no one is watching, but it was alternately rainy, windy, and cloudy all day. So I quilted and mooched around and then went up to the library to give blood for our blood drive.

Wednesday

• Looooong day today! I was supposed to have a preschool group at 9:30, so I showed up a little after 9, but they cancelled due to the rain, so I went back home and finished making curtains for my kitchen window. Then I came back around 12:30 and had a preschool group come in at 1:30. They had a tour and then we read stories, There are no cats in this book, I'm a Shark, Argus, and Planting the Wild Garden and we made butterfly puppets. Then at 3:30 I did do it yourself face painting with our Messy Art Club (some kids did more than their faces, but I told them they couldn't paint anything that required the removal of clothing). Then I was on the desk until 8 and...don't really remember the evening, other than I felt sick. Yay.

Thursday

• I had another preschool visit during preschool storytime. We did the same stories as Wednesday, except we "read" Clap your hands by Lorinda Cauley instead of Planting the Wild Garden. This was a younger group and rather wiggly.
• We had our Royal Wedding Party at 12:30. I wasn't really doing anything for it, just providing space and some extra craft materials. Miss Pattie and several of our circ staff and a couple other volunteers did all the work and we had 75 people! Pictures, if you're interested.
• Various other crisis arose and were averted and summer is looming ever closer. And I dreamed that night that I had interviewed at another library and our director was begging me, begging me I tell you! to stay. Heh heh heh. But then I somehow ended up hitchhiking all over Chicago with an elderly woman who didn't speak English, so...yeah...dreams.

Friday

• Staff Development Day. A speaker from our city insurance talked about generation gaps etc. We went to Barnes and Noble for a look at the Nook and purchased one for our library, which we plan to circulate (we're circulating a Kindle right now). My own thoughts - the new color Nook is pretty cool and I would like one to use with NetGalley and to check my LibraryThing when I'm in bookstores. Maybe in a couple years when it isn't as likely to become obsolete. As far as the "interactive" children's books they promote, I am personally not in favor. In my opinion, kids do not need more screen time and distractions from text and image with little moving blips and parents do not need another excuse to tech-nanny their kids (the "read aloud" function really annoys me). However, I have many opinions not widely shared by the general populace, which is why there are Barbie movies in our dvd collection, suffocatingly cute encouragements towards helicopter parenting in our picture books, and Twihard slop on our teen shelves. Working in a public library is about literacy, education, and community, not shoving our personal opinions (however backed up by research they may be) down peoples' throats. But I am NOT using the color Nook in storytime! Yech! Oh, and we stopped by the biggest library in our larger consortium, Racine, to check out their renovation (sorry y'all, I'm not really impressed, although your carpet is nice) and I spent about an hour cutting hands on their die cut machine. Will have to go back and cut the other 600 I need later on...