This week at the library; or, Happy Holidays at the library!

Basically spent Monday through Thursday finishing weeding projects, shifting books, working on marketing and publicity, and packing up and cleaning my apartment.

Most exciting things that happened (or perhaps interesting would be a better word)

• Trying to explain to a patron that Facebook really isn't the ideal medium to look up deceased relatives and friends.
• Moving all our I Spy, Look and Find, and similar books into one section. Yay!
• Whilst weeding the picture books found a book talking about a kid "diddling" his cereal. Ah, the evolution of words.
• Also found a book featured Noah's Ark, only set in the 1960s and Noah takes all the animals into a big boat because no one will listen to him and stop pollution. When everyone finally cleans up the earth, he releases all the animals and they don't need zoos anymore, because when the big cats were fighting he told them to stop because they were behaving like people and now everybody loves each other! Oh, and they don't need clothes anymore - by the end of the book all the kids are naked.
• Realizing that I was supposed to be sending press releases to the local paper all last year - I thought someone else was doing it. Doesn't seem to have harmed our numbers, since we hit 8,800 in program attendance for the year!
• Warned middle schoolers about our new policy - if you get kicked out, your name gets written on THE NOTEPAD OF DOOM and your parents get called. Two boys told me "we're sixth graders. we don't do doom"
• This policy lasted two days, then we had ANOTHER meeting, realized it was completely useless (how do we get kids' names?) and it looks like we're just going to be turning away any large groups of kids that want to hang out at the library. There's an after school place staffed by church volunteers they can go a few days a week, otherwise they're just going to have to go...where? who knows? Somewhere else. I hate this, but there seems to be no other solution. I can't fix these kids' lives, I can't make their parents care enough to make after school care arrangements for them, so the best I can do is tell them they're welcome to study, read, and use the computers at the library, but otherwise they're not welcome. We don't have enough staff to offer free after school babysitting services.

Finally, on a lighter note, a few pictures of our new parenting and I spy collections and the reorganized shelves.

Concept books and new I Spy collection, with new titles displayed above, along with drying artwork and the Art Box

Close-up of the new I Spy/Where's Waldo/Look and Find collection

Board books - now putting new stickers on new board books and displaying them

Added more shelves so the board books extend all the way around (with  flu season decor above) don't look too closely - I just dumped all the extra board books on the shelf!

New Parenting Collection, with new titles displayed

[Friday - finally moved! This apartment is smaller, so....not much space to maneuver around books and stuff. Didn't hail, but that's about all that didn't happen. Note to self - 14 ft truck was not big enough, 3 guys I hired worked hard, but needed waaaay more than 3 hours, and I need more sleep.]