This week at the library; or, Fortifying Myself for the Coming Struggle

Programs

• Stuffed Animal Sleepover

Random Commentary

• A long time ago I did programs the week of July 4th, but no more. Attendance is, to put it mildly, spotty, my colleague isn't available because the school district office is closed this week, and I really, really need this break in the middle of summer reading! Not that it is a VACATION which every other patron seems to think "oh, are you enjoying your week off?" To which I mentally reply "If I had the week off, I wouldn't be here!"
• The one program I do is the stuffed animal sleepover - kids drop their animals off on July 3, I stay with one other staff member after hours and take pictures, then they can pick up their animals on Saturday and a souvenir picture on Monday. I also make a cute slideshow. I used to do it on Picasa, but recently took all our pictures off since that's going to be retired in favor of google+ I think, then I spent some time angsting about what to use instead, then realized it's NOT A BIG DEAL plus I HAVE AN ASSOCIATE. So I dumped the whole thing on her and she did a test slideshow in Prezi of the old pictures which turned out well. Woo! I also, as I was waking up Tuesday morning, had an entirely new idea for the photos so how it ended up going...
• Beforehand I put together the form for a souvenir booklet and die cut tags.
• People dropped off 47 animals on Thursday July 3rd and the staff made sure they all had tags with their name and the child's name.
• After we closed at 8, my aide and I stayed late and I got a volunteer (previous coworker) - they took photos, I added them to the souvenir booklets and printed one for each kid. The pictures were done by 9:30, but the stupid printer stopped working (stupid was not what I called it) and I didn't leave until almost 11 because I had to save each file individually so I could print them later if they didn't all come out overnight. I also uploaded a few photos to Facebook. Printer was still going when I left...
• Saturday I came in early to finish arranging all the animals back on the shelf, match up all the booklets, and make sure everything had printed. It hadn't, and then I couldn't get it to print on my desk computer...I finally got it to work though.
• My associate will do the final slideshow on Monday.
• Added a sort of program at the last minute - someone brought over a bunny for us to read to! Really sweet, hopefully she will find a home soon - around 30 people dropped by to read to the bunny, pet her, and learn about bunnies!
• Other things I did this week - monthly report, planning programs for the rest of July, thinking about next year, and I gave my associate most of the week off and then some other staff were gone so I spent most of the week on the youth services desk and/or the information desk. Lots of work on starting to schedule fall outreach - 2 schools scheduled so far and one new remote collection! Our cataloger (she buys teen fiction) and I were disappointed that the teen circulation didn't go up after we moved the area this month, so we're thinking about what kind of signage, displays, etc. we want to add to promote the collection.
• And then I get an email saying my flight to ALSC Institute has been changed....to times that will make me miss half the conference. WHAT THE HECK. I am so mad and upset about this. I detest traveling, I hate flying, and it's like....it's just...I have no words. I ended up emailing a local travel agent for advice, spending a lot of time on the phone before going to work on Saturday (missing breakfast) (and did I mention I hate phone calls with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns?) and canceling my entire ticket. They said they would refund it, but I am doubtful after seeing some of the things online about fees etc. I still have to rebook the flights to times that will work. If I could make this my last airline flight ever, I would.
• And then I worked Saturday. Half the computers were down, which made for a quiet day. I do not troubleshoot computers on Saturdays (they've been down for most of the week anyways and there's nothing I can do to fix them). And one of my little girls came in with a UNICORN BIKE HELMET. The world is better now.
• I spent a lot of this week really thinking about next year. I want to cut back...somewhere, but I also feel kind of unhappy with dropping my preschool storytime. Attendance has gradually dipped from an average of 35 to 20, as more and more kids go to preschool and 4K, and my colleague does offer a lot of storytimes, but I'm just unsure about dropping it totally. Then again, if I go to an irregular schedule, will people come at all? I'm doing more outreach but....I just feel like I'm doing very few programs. I keep stopping and reminding myself that last I checked we have the highest attendance and number of programs in the consortium - it's not really something I have to worry about - but I guess I just have a bad case of librarian guilt. Then I try to actually plan the fall and...between outreach and ALSC Institute and some actual time off, I'm not sure I can fit in preschool storytime anyways! This is the schedule I'm thinking of for the fall:
• Monday
• Morning - once a month playgroup (Pattie), once a month Moms with multiples (Pattie)
• Afternoon - my off-desk time
• Evening - my evening on the information desk, 2nd and 4th Mondays Pattie does Tiny Tots evening storytime.
• Tuesday
• Morning - once a month 3 kindergarten outreach visits (1 remote collection). Pattie does 2 toddler storytimes weekly. Youth desk if no outreach.
• Afternoon - youth desk
• Schools can schedule visits to the library if I don't have outreach
• Wednesday
• Morning - I'm gone for quite a few Wednesdays - 2 in Sep and 2 in Oct. I threw in a couple We Explore Art and Stories and am anticipating scheduling monthly outreach visits here as well and opening this morning up for schools to come visit.
• Afternoon - monthly outreach visit, youth services desk, Wii gaming for middle schoolers on the 1st Wednesday of the month
• Evening - monthly Teens on Screen (run by cataloger)
• Thursday
• Morning - Books 'n' Babies with Pattie, 3 outreach visits monthly, Youth services desk if no outreach.
• Afternoon - 12-2 on the information desk, after school clubs (theoretically I work 9:30-5:30 on Thursdays. In actual practice it's more like 9-6 but that's not that bad)
• Schools can schedule visits in the morning
• Evening - 1st and 3rd evening is family game night with Pattie
• Friday
• Morning - no pgms 1st Friday of the month (major parking issues). Pattie does a monthly We Explore series (science right now and for the foreseeable future). Monthly We Explore Art and Stories. Two theater/puppet performances scheduled this fall - one for the big 4K site (80+ kids) and one for the closest kindergarten (80+ kids).
• Afternoons - if I have an afternoon program, I don't do a morning program. I'm thinking of a Wimpy Kid party in October, but that's it for the fall.
• Fridays are wonky because I often get scheduled to close on the information desk if I don't have a morning program, or if I'm working Saturday I take a half day. There is desk time in there somewhere usually.
• Saturday
• Pattie is planning a community baby shower which will kick off the fall programming semester and which I don't have to do much for but I'll try to be there that Saturday and we always end with our big holiday program, Santa's Kitchen.
• Other programs and projects
• Paws to Read (winter reading program), still have one school with 3-4 classes to schedule, visits from the two closest elementary schools, may or may not resume Tail Waggin' Tutors
• Finish Neighborhoods project, possible large-scale weeding (if we go to RFID), plan outreach more intentionally - am thinking of morphing some of those into nonfiction type storytimes that would eventually become similar to Abby the Librarian's Preschool Labs. Finally finish that stupid lexile project, write a grant to expand the children's garden Pattie started this summer.
• Personal projects - Cybils, ALSC Institute, finish recataloging and organizing my personal library

What are the kids requesting and reading? A sample

• Disney books for a small child (I mostly have Disney Princesses and he wasn't too enthusiastic about that, but there were a lot of books in that tub so I'm sure he found something)
• Very specific request for mysteries with a number of parameters. So far I've met this, but I'm running out of ideas
• Beginning chapters for a boy who doesn't like anything scary. He really liked the Boris books by Joyner which I recommended previously. I gave him Nolan's Down Girl and Sit, Hooey Higgins, Zapato Power, and Guinea PI.
• Books about snakes
• National Geographic animal books
• Thea Stilton
• Cupcake Cousins (checked out so I gave them Cupcake Diaries)
• Smile (checked out so I gave them Babysitters Club graphic novels and Amelia Rules instead)
• Critter Club
• books about World War II for young kids
• books about geckos
• Stink series (complicated b/c there's too many!)
• next book in the Olympians/Pegasus series by Kate O'Hearn
• Jewel Kingdom - placed on hold, we don't own this series.
• Monster High - I do occasionally get requests for this and so far have resisted buying it - it feels more teen, but all the girls asking for it are much younger. I already own a ton of Barbie and without more requests I'm not going to add this. It looks too much like Bratz to me.
• Books like Gilligan's Island because I like that show. This one I will admit completely stumped me. I thought of Lost Island of Tamarind, but it was checked out. Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom, but that isn't really similar. I offered Here where the Sunbeams are Green and she loved the cover and then all her friends demanded "books like that" so I handed out Violet Wings and Fern Verdant and the Silver Rose, but they were all really too long for the kids so they didn't end up taking them (they were part of a school group).