goblin cartoons

I’m sure I have been guilty on occasion of complaining, “I didn’t go to library school to do this!” I know I’ve heard coworkers say something similar. This being something that at the time seemed trivial and simple, nothing like what we studied in grad school: clearing printer jams, unclogging toilets, sorting donated books, cleaning up vomit, chasing horny teenagers out of secluded bookstacks, and so on and so on. I went to library school and studied reference materials, collection management, cataloging, theories of information. I got a Master’s degree, for crying out loud! Surely such tasks as these are beneath me, right?

Well, here’s the thing. I went to library school to make libraries my career. And sometimes library work is clearing printer jams, unclogging toilets, sorting books, cleaning up vomit and harrassing horny teenagers. That work isn’t beneath me, it’s all part of the job, regardless of how much student loan debt I’ve racked up, regardless of what letters I have after my name. The abstract ideals and ethics of librarianship are all well and good, but if printers are jammed, toilets are overflowing and there’s puke on the floor, nobody gives a good goddamn about successful reference transactions.

And this is beyond libraries. Whatever job you have, whatever amount of schooling you have, work sometimes involves crawling around in dust and grime, cleaning up other people’s messes, doing repetitive and boring work, doing work that, in all honesty, a trained chimp could do. It’s all important. None of it is trivial. And if you think some work is really beneath you…well, I’d say you need your diaper changed and a new bottle of warm milk, because you’re clearing not mature enough to handle adult labor. You’re insulting the good people who regularly do such work. To riff off of Oscar Wilde, some of us are looking at the stars, but we are all in the gutter. And we all need to do our part to keep the gutter clean.

The future of library technology is here! SMS services? Facebook apps? iGoogle widgets? Bah! You may as well ask for a steam-powered velocipede! My place of work, the Johnson County Library, is premiering its new technology initiative for patrons: the brain chip!

Welcome to Tomorrow. It’s an exciting place.

A year and a half ago, at my former place of work, a coworker and I came up with the idea of ripping off the St. Joseph County Public Library’s subject guides wiki to replace the HTML pages we had that provided web links to users of our web site. I was appointed head of a “wiki task force,” presented a proposal to the Web Committee and library supervisors, got everything approved, recruited reference staff, and started the ball rolling.

Unfortunately, I completely underestimated how much work it would take, how much I would need to get everyone else on board, how much training and advice staff would need–basically, I underestimated everything, and the project stalled and slowed down before I left to come to my current job.

But I’m very happy to say the project didn’t die, and the Olathe Public Library Subject Guides wiki has officially gone live! It’s in the basic, starter stage right now, but I expect it will grow at a nice pace now that it’s up and running for the public. Check out the wiki and let them know what you think in the comments on their blog.

It was one year ago today that I began working at the Johnson County Library. I blogged about my first day, saying it was “a very good day.” I’ve had many more good days since then, and it feels as if I’ve worked here for years–in the best possible sense. Sure, I have my frustrating days, my cranky days, days when I’d rather be somewhere else, doing something else. But all in all, after one year together, the attraction and support is still mutual and still going strong.

When I was given my library’s teen website as part of my web content responsibilities, I was signed up for the library’s Gaming committee. The Gaming committee has already put on one gaming tournament for teens, and the second one is this coming Friday. It will be my first time working at a gaming event at MPOW. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be liveblogging the event, posting updates (and maybe even pictures) to our teen site. So, if you have nothing better to do on Friday afternoon (noon-6, Central Time), check out JoCoTeenScene for updates on the great Johnson County, KS Guitar Hero III tournament.

UPDATE: I’ve been told we have 136 people registered for the event, people being put on a waiting list, and have had other patrons ask about just coming to watch the tournament. We’re getting a lot of interest in this event, and I think that’s just swell!

A position in my department has opened up, so if you or anyone you know is qualified and interested in working with a group of buttkickingly cool people in a dynamic library system, get those applications in!

The Promotions people at MPOW decided they wanted to offer patrons a free CD of recorded storytimes before Thanksgiving, with the idea that parents could put the CD on and keep the kids entertained during a long car ride to wherever they were having Thanksgiving dinner. Discussion and planning followed, readers were solicited from our Youth Services staff, and thanks to the digital media and coding savviness of my teammates, today saw the premiere of…

…the Johnson County Library Online Storytimes!

We’re offering a fairly small number of CDs at a few of our libraries, but every track of the CD, read by our talented staff (including one story read by yours truly), is available on our children’s website for downloading. You can also subscribe to the Online Storytimes podcast through Feedburner and iTunes. If we get enough positive responses, through postcards and an online survey, we’ll continue with the online stories. I’m feeling pretty good about it, and I think we’ll get enough good feedback to keep the podcast going.

Check ‘em out and let me know what you think. (“The Tortoise and the Hare,” read by my friend and teammate Dave, is one of my favorites.)

I don’t usually post the results I get from these internet quizzes, but I rather like this one (which was found on a coworker’s blog):

I’m a Talent!

You’re a risk-taker, and you follow your passions. You’re determined to take on the world and succeed on your own terms. Whether in the arts, science, engineering, business, or politics, you fearlessly express your own vision of the world. You’re not afraid of a fight, and you’re not afraid to bet your future on your own abilities. If you find a job boring or stifling, you’re already preparing your resume. You believe in doing what you love, and you’re not willing to settle for an ordinary life.

Talent: 64%
Lifer: 21%
Mandarin: 59%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

The sum of the equation is this: I love my profession, I love my current job, and I have to admit, if I won the lottery, I wouldn’t quit my job.

I love that I get to work with people who think great thoughts and want to put them into action. (That would be the blogger, not Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken’s speech is great, too, and I encourage everyone to watch it, but I don’t work with him.)

I haven’t done a formal count or anything, but my gut tells me (sotto voce) I posted more about the fun things I did on the job at my former place of employment than I post about the place I currently hang my derby. I’m not interested in posting all the gorey details of my job now, but I am happy about what I do (and still pleasantly amazed I get paid to do it), and I’d like to say a little something about some of the things I’ve done recently. Let’s have this post be something of an omnibus edition or highlights reel then, shall we?

Part of my original plan for JoCoKids was to have fun activities for kids on the site, including coloring sheets. The head of Youth Services doesn’t like coloring sheets. She doesn’t like them a whole lot, and I think she raises some good points: they generally aren’t all that educational or creative (the crayon equivalent of eating popcorn, you might say). My argument, however, is that children generally expect coloring sheets at the library, getting them from a friendly librarian creates a positive association with the library, and children will strike up conversations with other children around coloring sheets–it’s like a kiddies’ singles bar. I put forward this: if we’re going to give out coloring sheets anyway, why not give out original coloring sheets that tie in with our library and website? The Youth Services Manager saw my point. We discussed it further, and out of our conversations came another idea: I made some sketches of coloring sheets that invited people to add their own ideas, facilitating imagination as well as coloring inside the lines. I was given the go-ahead, so with the technical assitance of one of my teammates, I made “official JoCoKids” coloring sheets, some featuring the cartoons on the site and some featuring original drawings with blanks for kids to fill in, and posted them on our Fun Stuff page. I was working the Youth Services desk at one of our branches the other day and put out some of the new coloring sheets. Later that afternoon, I overheard a little girl say to her mother, “Look, Mommy, they have coloring sheets. Oh! They have really good coloring sheets!” I’ll fess up, I kvelled a little.

On Friday, I learned the author Madeleine L’Engle had died. Like many people, I love her Time Quartet. I also got to meet her and hear her talk when I was a freshman in college. I put forward the idea of writing a news item blog post and putting it on our main library website. Not only was I told it was okay, I was encouraged to make it a front page item. I quickly created a graphic I thought was suggestive of L’Engle’s most popular series (since I wasn’t sure I’d be able to quickly find an image of her unencumbered by copyright), wrote a personal post about her, her novels, and her death, and posted it to our site.

I’m really having the time of my life, and knock on wood, this is only a nibble of the nifty things I’ll get to do.