Volume Control

I'm not trying for a perfectly quiet library. I don't sit behind my desk, with my hair in a bun, cardigan, and glasses on a chain and shush people. (Well I do have a desk, wear my hair in funky ballerina buns and wear cardigans, but no glasses chain!) People can converse in normal inside voices. We've got ukuleles for check out and playing in the library. It's a fairly relaxed environment.

And yet still we require a limit to the chaos. I'd realized how bad it gotten when after a two hour desk shift during the afterschool hours I had ringing ears and a headache.

We average between 60 and 110 teenagers that visit the library during a two hour span afterschool every day. That's never going to be quiet. Sometimes no one person or group is noisy, there are just a lot of them. I'm of the belief that middle schoolers are naturally about 10 decibels louder than adults anyway.

We struggle a lot with headphones and music played over speakers on ipods, iPhones, and various other devices. I've ranted posted about this before. Today when I asked a teen to turn down his music, he expressed surprised that "no loud music" was a library rule. I reminded him that this is a library, and he explained that it was a "lousy library" because it's always noisy.

Can't win. If I ask him to turn down music, I'm mean. If I don't, it's a lousy library because it's too loud.

I've been looking at a number of ways to address the noise issue. When you just ask teens to be quieter/calmer, it's subjective and only effective for about 85 seconds.

My first thought was to get a decibel meter attached to a stop light. It's called a Yakker Tracker and has been effective in classrooms and school lunch rooms. Another librarian pointed out it would be extremely unfriendly to teens. A staff member thought they might see it as a personal challenge. True all that. Idea dropped.

My next idea was a portable decibel meter. (I saw them using one on Top Gear and that inspired me.) You can get a relatively decent one for ~$40. The advantage of a decibel meter is it gives me a scientific tool. It's no longer my discretion and face it we all have bad days when we're more sensitive and easily annoyed. The teenagers don't feel that I'm singling them out. It's SCIENCE! Who doesn't love science?

As I was perusing various portable decibel meters, I had a realization. (And I admit this should have come up a lot sooner.) I bet there's an app for that! Sure enough, I downloaded a decibel meter app and started using it immediately.

I consulted various decibel charts to see what an appropriate noise level should be. Finally I decided that a "dull roar" was less than 80 decibels at 5 to 10 feet away from the group of teens. A more ideal number would be less than 70 decibels at the same distance.

So far it is working really well for us. The teens see me walking around with my iPhone out and know what I'm looking at. The objective nature of it prevents them from feeling attacked. They often ask me how many decibels they are. It also gives me ammunition against adults who say it is "too noisy".

I'm happy enough with the app that I am considering purchasing the portable decibel meter for a tool for all staff to use.

So what is everyone else doing for volume control at your libraries?

Weird even by our standards

When you work in a public library long enough, you get used to a certain amount of crazy. Walking downtown in a major city (not Anchorage) and some companions were concerned about the homeless man yelling loudly at the air as we walked by. Please. I'm a public librarian, that doesn't even phase me. Bring on your best crazy. I've probably seen it before, if not worse.

But this week two events happened that are weird even by my jaded standards.

Unidentified white powder
There are few phrases in our modern era as scary as unidentified white powder. (Probably no cell phone service and the plane has minor mechanical issues are a close second and third.) I was in a meeting talking about spending grant money when my cell phone rang. Since it was the library, and my staff is extremely capable and only calls in emergency, I answered it. My youth services librarian explained that the women's restroom was a disaster zone (read: covered in diarrhea) and there was an unidentified white powder on the floor.

Everyone assumes different things for white powder. Most of the staff assumed drugs. Despite the fact that I had just finished drug awareness training that morning, I assumed anthrax. (Because I'm paranoid and watch too many news shows.) One staff member assumed rat poison. Regardless it wasn't safe for any staff member to get close enough to find out. Police department was called and the restroom locked. They determined it was talcum powder. Janitorial took care of the rest.

Despite the benign resolution, my staff handled it completely correctly. I'm not allowing any of my people to get close enough to smell the powder for fear that they would accidentally ingest some cocaine or rat powder or anthrax. Paranoia is the first step to safety.

Special delivery!
After lunch today, my staff handed me an air mail envelope from Australia. That's fun. There was a koala on the stamp! The addressing seemed to be done by a younger person (judging by the handwriting and smiley faces) so my initial guess was a student looking for a pen pal. The envelope was rather squishy for just a letter.

Please note for future reference that squishy very rarely turns out to be anything good.

There was a short typed note expressing that the author had always wanted to visit our country and was saving up to do so. But until then she wanted to have a piece of herself in all 50 states and had decided to mail some of her hair* to various libraries. (I'm paraphrasing.)

*My sister pointed out I'm lucky all she sent was hair. My sister is smart and perhaps even more paranoid than I am.

Folded up in the note was a small tulle bag of hair. Some of the hair escaped the bag and was loose in the letter. The sender requested I place the hair under the tree or in the sunshine. She did not require an email or confirmation of any sort that I had done this. (Though she did provide a phone number, but no request for communication.)

The sad thing is I kinda get why she did this. It isn't that different than the Flat Stanley project. I've happily photographed four of those around town since moving to Alaska. It just requires no photos and is a bit creepier. And I'm completely unclear on how she chose my library to do this.

I decided against photographing the letter for the blog, though not against blogging it. I'm still undecided about placing the hair under a tree. I probably will because what could it hurt? (Unless she is using it to introduce some sort of foreign parasite to Alaska. I'm not sure how a two inch packet of hair would do that though.)

Perhaps the universe is just trying to see how far they can push me this week. Or make me laugh. Or something.

Library Sanctioned Cupcakes

Searching emails for another issue, I stumbled upon these emails from two years ago. And they made me laugh. First there was an email from a coworker that she had found a box of cupcakes on top of the recycling bin by the catalog computers. She brought them into the library workroom then sent an all staff email with concerns about health and safety issues.

I immediately investigated because CUPCAKES! I then proceeded to write one of the best emails of my professional life:
There was a note on the box of cupcakes (which I saw when ***** brought them in) labeled “Free Cupcakes”. I am a cynical untrusting person, but I would not eat a cupcake left in a bakery box by an unknown person in the public library and obviously we don’t allow food on the public floor and we definitely don’t want people to think that this is a library-sanctioned box of cupcakes.

The rest of the staff concurred and the cupcakes were put into the dumpster.

It reminds me of a sequence from the amazing Unshelved by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes. Start here and read the next four.

So would you eat a cupcake of unknown provenance? I didn't.

No you may not have a pony

One of my jobs as library manager is to respond to patron comment cards. I email the patron a response directly (if they provided their email) and put the typed response up on the bulletin board. I have a love/hate relationship with patron comment cards.

I love that patrons have taken their time to share feedback with us.

I hate it when we have failed them.

I love it when they're praising us.

I hate it when I have to say no to a new service that they want. These are usually things that other libraries offer (ie fax service) that we don't or can't afford.

I love the ridiculousness of some of their requests. Some of the things they ask are completely out of the realm of possibility. They want me to do a major renovation to the building, stop the sidewalks from ever having snow (we're in Anchorage; we do get them shovelled, but some accumulation is inevitable), double my library staff, and so forth. I had one patron complaining because the library staff did not remember her personal email address password. Then there are the people who would prefer me to change basic human nature and stop the teenagers from congregating in groups. So far the requests have stopped just short of asking me to bend the laws of physics. But someday someone is going to ask that I make the sun shine for longer.

When I answer these comment cards I feel like the parent living in the middle of the city explaining to their urban child why they can not have a pony.

Keep It Positive

It's easy to focus on the negative, not just for librarians but for society as a whole. However I don't write a society-as-a-whole blog, I write a librarian blog. Too many of our behavior guidelines for patrons focus on the negative. You can't do this, you can't do that. Of course it is (usually) quicker to list the prohibited behaviors rather than all of the allowed behaviors. And that might be acceptable in policies but it isn't acceptable in daily staff behavior. (Oops, that's me focusing on a negative, let's try that again.) But there's a better way to deal with the public daily.

Focusing on the negative, the forbidden, the prohibited can lead to a combative atmosphere between librarians and patrons. They feel like we're always waiting to "catch" them doing something wrong and staff feels like patrons are pushing to see how much they can get away with. It's not fun, not fun for staff, not fun for patrons, not fun at all. This combative atmosphere can be true with any patron but seems to mostly manifest in our interactions with teenagers.

At my library, we're trying a different approach. Rather than focus on the negative behavior, we are encouraging a positive alternative. Here's a few examples:

• Instead of don't run, we say walk please!
  
• How many DVDs can I check out? Not only five but rather up to five!
  
• The sign could say: No Food or Drink Allowed! but instead it says: Food and Drink Free Zone: bottled water welcome
  
• Teens getting noisy and unruly? Don't tell them to quiet down, ask them to be a little calmer
  

Now clearly this won't work in every situation. Some behavior is egregious that it must be immediately corrected. (I have been known to order in no uncertain terms a kid to stop punching another kid.) However 90% of patron interactions can be handled with a positive twist. It's surprising how quickly this can change the tone of your library and improve the morale of everyone, patrons and staff.

What if it's in my pants?

Conversation I just had with a library patron, a regular. He's a 10 year-old boy who walks to the library everyday with his 12 year-old brother, uses the computer for as long as he can, hangs around other kids using the computers, and then goes home. They both have library cards, but they don't bring them. This means I log them onto the computers instead of them being able to do it themselves. It's not really a big deal except when they make me redo the reservation three times so they can sit at a specific computer. That led to this conversation.

Me: You know this would go a lot quicker if you brought your library card. You could log yourself into whatever computer you wanted.
Kid: What if it's in my pants?
Me: Your library card?
Kid: Yeah, what if it's in my pants?
Me: The pants you're wearing right now?
Kid: No, other pants.
Me: Like pants at home?
Kid: Yeah.
Me: Okay, tomorrow, before you come to the library, take your library card out of the other pants and put it in the pants you're wearing.
Kid: Okay, yeah.
Me: You're on computer #6.

I don't know if he was making a very lame 10 year-old boy attempt to embarrass me (it's in my pants!) or he was just confused. Either way, a slight failure to connect.

And then I taught a 40 year-old man how to double click. Yep. A day in my glamorous life as a neighborhood library manager.

Pre-Marketing is Confusing

There is a certain segment of the population that finds pre-marketing confusing, and this segment is larger than you would expect. Thus when they see an advertisment for a book, they immediately come to the library and ask for a copy. Now as soon as a book is put on order by the library, we can place a request or "hold" for you on that book. So that when we get the book, you'll already be on the list. This doesn't mean we have the book yet. And thus the confusion begins.

Of course you heard that Sarah Palin's book is coming out. Naturally we're already getting requests; they started the day after the announcement. So the conversation goes something like this:

Confused Patron: I'd like Sarah Palin's book please.
Patient Librarian: That won't be out for six weeks, can I place a request for you?
CP: But they were talking about it on the news.
PL: That is because it was just announced, but it won't be available for another six weeks.
CP: But they were showing it on the news.
PL: The cover art has been released so they can show the cover, but it is not available yet. Can I place a hold for you?
CP: But I saw it in Barnes and Noble!
PL: I believe you saw a poster advertising pre-ordering the book as it won't be available until Nov X. (at this point I'm usually pointing to the bolded release date on the amazon.com screen) Can I place a hold for you on the book for when it does come out?
CP: And how long will that take before I get the book?

And on we go. I have this conversation dozens of time whenever a new hot book is released, or getting ready to be released for either kids or adults. Recently (and by recently I mean for the last four months), I've been having this conversation with children about Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney, the fourth book in a very popular series which I promise is not going to be released until October 12th. No your friend didn't have it, they had an ad for it in the back of the last book, no you didn't see it in Barnes and Noble, you saw a poster, yes I'm sure, no I'm not trying to keep you from getting the book.

I feel sorry for these people. Do they go to the movie theater and demand to see a movie right now that won't be released for weeks? (But I saw it on TV! But they showed it on Letterman!) It seems like a tough way to go through life if you don't understand pre-marketing.