Once upon a time

Today, I told my staff. I did not cry. It is not good-bye quite yet.

Three months ago, I finally decided enough was enough. I was no longer able to function as an effective branch librarian half-time, 20 hours a week. I kept thinking it was 40 pounds of mud in a twenty pound sack. The overflow was painful to me. I felt it was unfair to me, to my staff, to my public (mini curtsey stage center). I was always and evermore behind, rushed, slightly off, speed limping across the branch with my cane. Quick, over to new books, over to reference, over to fairy tales.

If it has escaped anyone, being a branch librarian is very physical. It is very difficult to do without picking up or pushing around 40 pounds at a time. I mean, really, reshelve reference two books at a time? Replace old editions with new editions. Then find the previous edition that has been circulating for the last year, and swap them all out, from their top and bottom shelf locations. A long time ago, I noticed how the heaviest books always find the least convenient locations.

(No, no, no time. Slog through that book truck filled with ce. nice, shiny, bestsellers, only read once. However, some are 2003, 2004, 2005. Too old to add to our overflowing shelves! Except wait, might need to check some ISBNs in the database. But, no, no time. The November book order! Overdue!)

I kept thinking I could make it work. This job, these three years, is the best and happiest I've had in my give-or-take twenty-two years in library land. So sweet, so pretty, so nice in every way, shape and form. I love this job, this place, these people.

But finally, I soul searched enough. Three months ago, I told my boss, I cannot do this, physically. You need a 40-hour a week librarian. (I should mention that scheduling 16 to 20 hours a week of substitutes was quite a management feat, all by itself.) It was intensely painful to say I could not do something. I was severely overtired, attending physical therapy twice a week, with doctor appointments filling up many of my half days "off." I think "I can do it" is the mantra branch librarians live by. But I got a doctor's note, and said I can't do it.

The administration has created a job for me at headquarters. What do you do with a halftime librarian who can't cart around books, or walk or stand very long? It took them two months to figure it out. I won't be working in a library. SOB. Our headquarters is in a warehouse converted to office space, in the middle of a light industrial park, with lots of other county departments. It's not pretty. There are nice people. Wouldn't you know my best friend in the system is being transferred from HQ to a branch the same time I'm moving? Happy new years everyone.

Contemplations from a tepid shower

I could write an entire post about tepid showers, but that would be for a different blog. Actually, I thought it was more a poem. Now I'm trying to swing the lens a different way.

About seven weeks ago, I requested a transfer from my happy, beautiful branch to the modified warehouse next to the morgue in a government light-manufacturing park, aka "headquarters". I requested the transfer because even working at twenty hours with a devoted staff, branch librarianship is too much for me. Sob.

Books are heavy. They need to be touched. Heaved, pushed, placed in ordered, ferried about. I love them, but my neck, shoulder, and arm do not. Giving a program requires standing, talking, interacting, walking, ferrying more stuff about. My legs are often tired before I finish the breakfast dishes. I like doing programs.

I like library customers and their questions. Even the one that brought in a list of 24 titles this week, that required researching in the OPAC. the catalog client, the local consortium, a nearby large public library, and last but not least, ILL. Of course, I quite enjoyed the research, but not putting his info in all the different forms.

So this morning, for the first time since 1989, I considered not being a librarian. No, I can't come up with some other skill that will pay me over $20 an hour. Let alone been offered a job doing one. Some dream job where I sit at a desk and lift a phone occasionally. Which is not available in my corner of library land.

I was offered Hobson's choice on Thursday, if that's the right terminology. A) Demote to a position that doesn't exist, doing the same thing I do now at a larger, busier branch, located in a shopping center. This is an unfunded position. B) Demote to a position for which I'm not qualified, essentially web development. My web skills are very rusty. However, I spoke to the supervisor yesterday, having told myself I could learn what she needs. It's a 30-hour position she hopes to fill at the state library conference in a few weeks. She's looking for someone with a portfolio of web work, including podcasts and video casts, XTML, RSS, CSS, Unix, screencasting, Dreamweaver, CMS, webinars, Skype.

I know what all of those are, but I have no portfolio. I'd hire a recent library school graduate in a heart beat over me, if I were her.

Grumble. I have more and better 2.0 experiences than this supervisor, who I think is afraid of interactivity. I have dusty blogs, flickr, twitter, a close relationship with my daughter based on chat and Skype, still some Internet friends who drop a non-email line occasionally. I'm still a member of LITA Blogs, Wikis, and Social Software IG, aka BigWigs. Plus I know some bigwigs! Have met them face-to-face--movers and shakers. But facts are facts, I've done bupkis since I became a branch librarian.

So big f-ing what? On to the third non-option. C) Stay where I am, trying to keep the 40 lbs. of mud in a 20-lb. sack without a mudslide. Then, somehow, my boss will get another 20-hour librarian to serve as co-branch librarian. That doesn't even seem to in the realm of the possible.

Basically, the local government body for which I work has been saving money, i.e., half my salary, for the last five months. They saved almost the whole caboodle the previous four months. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how that all worked. I get the message the actual library part doesn't have the money for these theoretical 20-hour positions. I get the weird message that "reasonable accomodations" are something that I need to work out. I get that I'm supposed to be involved in discussions, but don't they get to come up with some possible solutions?

A sentimental mixed bag

I know I've been a poor excuse for a blogger. I keep waiting for something upbeat to report. I am finally returning to work half-time next Monday, after being out on disability since February. I know it is commonplace in our culture for people to wish they didn't have to work. I think that goes against the librarianly grain. We like our jobs, in the main. It is so not me.

I have felt a keen sense of injustice. I was finally working in a beautiful (if small) facility, with a wonderful staff, and terrific administration. I had some great programs planned. So what happens? Somebody else gets to enjoy it. But I am over my pouting.

I am a little nervous about whether or not I will be of any use. I've been studying the bestseller lists. I've been doing crossword puzzles to sharpen the so-called wits. Do I still know Dewey? What if I have to do a lot of weeding? Can I lift a ton twenty pounds at a time? Then there's the handwriting! I have a left side tremor, and of course, I am left-handed. I can just write clearly enough to make out stuff for myself. The branch calendar will take two people. Will I ean the salary? My boss tells me she will be happy if I just sit and answer the telephone. But I won't. I LIKE to flit about. But I've been resting and napping to the nth degree. We shall see.

I have to put in a squibble about another death. I worry this blog could become my own version of celebrity death watch. But Bo Diddley was a man. I remember seeing him open for the Clash. I also saw him in a weird senior citizens show in Florida with Chuck Berry. He was a giant. When my apartment in NYC was burglarized in the early 80s, I tried to explain to the cops the importance of the LP on the turntable when it was stolen. It was a Chess label of Bo. I've looked for it for years, and never found it. I have most of the songs in Itunes, but I still have the album cover waiting for its mate.

LOC 2.0?

"The Working Group envisions a future for bibliographic control that will be collaborative, decentralized, international in scope, and Web-based. The realization of this future will occur in cooperation with the private sector and with the active collaboration of library users. Data will be gathered from multiple sources; change will happen quickly; and bibliographic control will be dynamic, not static."

On top of that LOC now has a flickr account! It must be irony. No, agony. No, sarcasm. Parody? Librariany?

Can it all have actually become cool? No, it must be an aberration...

I am not a stripper AND/OR the Annoyed Librarian

Library 2.0 owes it all to a stripper. | LISNews

I may be the last to jump on a bandwagon, but not the least...

Nonlibrarians (and I know you are out there), just ignore this post. And thanks for reading...

Resistance is futile

Web 2.0, the machine is using us, form is no longer related to content...

My very first YouTube link. Welcome to last year, again. A little scary, this video by an anthropology professor, but fairly interesting ideas, even if some of them have been around far longer than 2.0 ideas.

Nowhere near as scary as Blogger insisting I change over to one of my gmail accounts for log in and to change over to their new, no longer beta Blogger. But I held my breath and did it. So far, it's not all that different. Being able to add tags is the biggest change I've noticed. Let's see if I can index my own posts with any consistancy or logic! I muddled around in the template a little, but didn't make many changes. It looks like they still expect me to put on my html hat ocassionally. Unfortunately, it's stuffed all the way at the back of the closet, wrinkled, dusty, faded, sad indeed. As I endlessly tell my PC Basics students, use it or lose it.

Agh, I've lost all my blog jewelry! Blogger swore they would save it. Now to find it and bring it home!

I did dust off LibraryThing a little. I still have some resistance to adding library books to "my library", but I still want some kind of a way to keep track! Now I swear I am going through all the 2006 posts so I can finally compile my "best of" list, just in time for the Grammys? Oh found a new-to-me blog via Rochelle, I think. May even add it to my blogroll is the dust on my Bloglines doesn't set off too much digital asthma.