Five Things on a Friday

Five signs that your work life is becoming all consuming, creeping into other aspects of your life, and generally making you one of those people who aren't invited anywhere because you can't talk about anything except libraries.

1. As you walk into the church building, you pull your work ID/lanyard over your head. You've begun to feel a bit naked without it.
   
2. You answer your personal phone with, "Hello blahblahblah library, this is blahblah."
   
3. You can't get into your house and it takes you far too long to realize that the library key won't open your front door. (We have about 4 keys for the library, I peered at the key to make sure it was the right one that opens my office door and tried about three more times to open my home door.)
   
4. You tell random children in Target to "walk please" and they listen to you.
   
5. You answer a reference question at a hockey game and find yourselves doing readers advisory in the stacks at Barnes and Noble.
   

Camping Out At The Library

Opening a new library is crazy. Crazy fun, crazy busy, crazy weird, just crazy. And I crazy love it. Rather than tell you another woeful tale about current problems, I'm going to tell you fun stories about opening up the new library.

I was hired rather late into the project, actually just over a month before the library opened. Overseeing it before then were the library's development director, the associate librarian (para-professional) for this branch (and we'd had multiple staff members cycle through that position), the project manager for the city (for the facility stuff), branch manager of a neighboring branch, contractors and building types, and other assorted library personnel. It was explained to me that if anything seemed inconsistent or missing it probably was, this project had been in a lot of different people's hands. (Or as the development director said, we've lost a lot of soldiers in this fight.)

When I took over, the associate librarian had been bouncing around branches and only spending part of her time at Mountain View. She and I started working full time at the library (still closed) to get it ready. We were the first official occupants and the building wasn't quite ready for us. Have you ever spent time (serious 40+ hours a week time) in a not quite finished building? It can be fun if you approach it with the right attitude. Like camping there are some inconveniences (in camping lack of running water and a pillow top mattress top my lists) but some great benefits (unlimited time with those you love, great scenery, fresh clean air, s'mores) that make it worth it.

Some of my favorite little things that popped up and made me feel like we were camping out at the library.

Incomplete Furniture
The first few weeks we were here, we didn't have all of our furniture. In particular, we lacked office chairs. I was sitting at my desk in a very ergonomically unfriendly chair bought for the patron floor. Between that and hauling boxes, my back ached every night. It really made me appreciate my office chair when it finally came.

No Janitorial Service
Why pay for janitorial when you have only a few people in the building? We followed camp rules and "packed out what you pack in". That meant that every day I took my trash from lunch (or even any used kleenex) home with me and threw it away there. Considering my recent woes, I'm might be doing that again.

No Office Supplies
We didn't have any of the basics. Every trip to the main library, I'd pop my head into a different department's supply cabinet and "requisition" a few basics. And by a few basics, I mean I took literally 3 ink pens from one department, 2 pads of post-it notes from another. Let me tell you how fun that first trip to the office supply was store - a stapler of my very own! With plentiful staples! But no matter how good and thorough your list is, something will be missed or not bought in a plentiful enough of a quantity. Plan on a second trip about two weeks later.

No Bathroom Supplies
Our janitorial contractor provides the bathroom supplies so before they started, we were bringing in our own toilet paper and paper towels.

No One Knows Where You Are
We weren't a brand new library, just a library in a place that hadn't been a library in 20 years, so out of most people's working memory. And our building didn't have a library sign. (Still doesn't, that's a different story.) Every conversation or delivery required a detailed description of the building even though we're on a well known corner. I like to say that with no sign, I'm operating a stealth library, a ninja library if you will.

Wildlife sightings
Much like the woods really belong to the moose and bears and we're just visitors who must play by their rules, a new but not yet finished building really belongs to the contractors. The guys in hardhats need to cut power halfway through my epic masterpiece of an email? That's their prerogative. I'm sad whenever civilization runs off wildlife, but rather happy when completion runs off contractors. Of course my library has been open 5 months and they're still showing up trying to fix things and make them work right. (Today they came to play with the heat settings and repair a blown hydraulic door hinge.) Perhaps we're not totally out of the woods yet.

Christmas Knitting

Time to brag about what I did for Christmas knitting this year. (And yes I know that this is supposed to be a librarian blog, but I've decided it shall be a librarian blog with occasional forays into craftiness.)

Baby Blankets!
I made these great star shaped baby blankets and matching elephant amigurumis for two babies that were born in December. I did two sets in different shades of blue. All were crocheted and a lot of fun, though by the end I was really really bored with endless rounds of double crochets on the stars. Technically these and the elephants were crocheted not knitted.

Little elephant:

Yarn: Lion Brand Baby Soft - trying to break the acrylic habit; Pattern: Lion Brand's Amigurumi Elephant; also used some small safety eyes

Star blanket:

Yarn, see above; Pattern: Baby Starghan

Wrapped up with some board books and ready to go to their new homes:


Patriotic Rag Rug
Using the same star blanket pattern with a few modifications, a p crochet hook and inch wide strips of flannel fabric, I made a rag rug for my military roommate who really liked it. Matches the red, white, and blue, stars and stripes decor really well.

(Yes, it isn't finished in that picture. I gave it to her unfinished because I wanted to know how much bigger she wanted it before I bought more red flannel. What you're looking at is the point at which I ran out of fabric.)

Flowered Headband for a Friend
I made this fun flowered headband for a friend who kindly welcomed us into her house and her family on Christmas Day. It's perfect for keeping your ears warm without smooshing your hair.

Yarn: Stitch Nation - Bamboo Ewe (found this at JoAnn's but it's a great yarn with natural fibers); Pattern: Flowered Ear Warmer

And then I made one for me:

Same Pattern, Yarn: Rowan Lima

Another Headband/Earwarmer
Continuing on the headband earwarmer trend (which makes sense when you live in Alaska), I made a ribbed one for another friend/former roommate.

Pattern: Calorimetry, Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed Aran in this lovely blue/gray/tweed that I didn't photograph well

And that concludes what I knitted people for Christmas.

Five Things on a Friday

I feel the need to be random today, or maybe today has forced randomness upon me. Plus I really like lists with five things on them.

1. The garbage was not picked up today. The recycling was which proves that the carts were in the correct place and accessible. I almost cried when I saw the full bin. Fortunately a quick call to solid waste services (during which I was polite, professional and persistent) fixed the problem within minutes.
   
   
2. We've had a bicycle in our lost and found (well in the security guard's office which is really a converted storage room) since the first week of October. I wanted to walk it across the street to the salvation army thrift store, but the library has a policy about bicycles in lost and found. So we'll be contacting APD today.
   
   
3. When I called Solid Waste Services and introduced myself, "Hello this is Elizabeth manager of the Mountain View Branch Library," the very nice man on the phone said he'd seen me on TV talking about the library and I was doing a wonderful job. He also had a fantastic Irish accent. It completely made my day. (Well that and the tempura I had for lunch - broccoli is still healthy after it's been deep fried, right? All Japanese foods are automatically healthy, right?)
   
   
4. So many of the kids and teens come into my library wearing very weather inappropriate clothing. I'm bundled up like the little brother from A Christmas Story everytime I go outside; it's Alaska, it's cold. I don't know if these kids aren't wearing appropriate clothing because their parents can't afford it or because they're middle schoolers. Both are equally likely in this neighborhood. All I know is I keep getting sympathetically cold just looking at them.
   
   
5. A few days ago a very nice elderly lady asked if it was okay if she took some books from the "Men's" cart. I thought she meant one of the men who works here who was shelving so I nodded. Except that no one was actually shelving at the time. Then I noticed that this sign had flipped upside down. (Correct first, flipped second.)
   
   So take heed. The brand new books that come in and get tossed on a cart for everyone to peruse - they're now gender specific.

Have a good weekend!

More Ranting on Garbage

Another week, another 32 emails and phone messages about garbage. We've had our issues in the past with garbage not being taken out on holidays that fall on Thursday (for Friday pickup) such as Veteran's Day or Thanksgiving. We got that worked out, mostly. And this is important because we have those silly little rolly bins. If they're full, they're full. We can't throw away more than fits in those cans. So missing a week can be a problem.

Now I know this, and I'm just a librarian. One would think that if you owned a janitorial company and were successful enough to have received the city's contract, you would definitely realize the importance of timely garbage removal, doubly so if you were in the habit of leaving notes for me complaining about the building's rodent problem. (Working on it, almost solved, haven't seen any evidence of him in weeks but I don't want to get over confident.) And yet it is not a consistent process.

For the last two weeks our garbage has not been picked up. The solid waste department has these super fancy trucks that can grab the rolling bins and dump them making the whole process more efficient. It only works if the bin is on the curb with three feet of clearance on every side. If it isn't, they leave you a little green tag explaining the problem. (I think there was one week in my neighborhood when only one person's garbage got picked up, but we learned from our mistakes.)

The week before Christmas I woke up from a dead sleep at 2am worrying about who would bring the garbage in (this is when I realized how bad the crazy was). We're closed on the "Eves" (Christmas and New Years) which fell on Friday (bring in garbage day) this year. Fortunately we have staff in the building (since our holiday pay was only good for the actual holiday, you had to take leave to get the Eves off), and they brought in the trash. Unfortunately when I checked my email from home on Christmas the staff member sent me a message letting me know we had lots of garbage and a friendly (and holiday appropriate) green tag of warning. No three feet of clearance.

I left a note for janitorial reminding them about that issue (though they'd been in the same meeting I was where the rules were explained). On New Year's Eve when I brought in the garbage, it was still full. No tag this time though. A quick call to Solid Waste (to give you a clue, I have the number of our representative on a post-it note right beside my desk) revealed the problem. The janitors were pushing the garbage can all the way back into the dumpster enclosure* and the trucks couldn't get to it.

The head of janitorial (who works for the city and oversees the contractors) showed up all on his own today. We talked through it, he called the contractor and all should be well for this week's pick up. Because the only reason we're not drowning in garbage is we had two shorts weeks due to holidays. I'll let you know how it goes on Friday if anyone is reading still by then.

*One of the reasons we didn't initially order a dumpster is we were concerned about building an enclosure around it as required by city law. We do have a dumpster pad though. One fine day I heard hammering, but I'm opening a new library and used to that. I looked outside and saw men building me a dumpster enclosure around the dumpster pad. I called the project manager and head of facilities. They were both surprised, but I have a general rule against arguing with men with power tools and so let them build away. So our library has a dumpster pad, dumpster enclosure, and no dumpster. We do however have a great place to "hide" the rolling trash bins so they never get picked up.

How Garbage Has Come to Rule My Life

Before I became a branch manager, I lived in a blissful world wherein I didn't think about garbage very much. I tried to remember when trash day was and take out the bins. Occasionally I would see a documentary or news special about filling up landfills and worry about our planet. For the most part though, trash was a very small part of my world.

Not now. Now, it is a huge part of my world. Hardly a day doesn't go by when I am not writing an email, having a phone conversation, or answering a patron complaint about garbage. And this is the story of how a nice librarian's life went to the dumps.

Before we opened the branch, there were about a thousand details to work out. Many of them I expected, the librarian type things (shelf end signs, ordering book ends and book carts) and those I dispatched with grace and professional surety. Some of the others took me by surprise. (Don't get me started on the weekly emails from the electricians with technical reports that appeared to have been written in Greek. I've saved them in case anyone ever asks me about the electrical system in this building). And that is how I found myself one day having a meeting about garbage pick up.

The meeting had all the usual suspects: the head of facilities for the library, the solid waste removal representative, the project manager for the building construction, and the head of janitorial services for the city. Oh yeah and me, the librarian. Binders were laid out and options were explained. I nodded like I understood. And then came the killer moment where everyone stared at me.

I stared back. "Great!" I said with cheerfulness, "So which one are we getting?"

"It's up to you," explained the head of facilities for the library.

And then we all stared at each other in complete confusion as it dawned on me that these four men, all specialists in buildings, maintenance, and garbage, expected me, a specialist in books, to make this decision. I had thought (well, really I had hoped) that this was merely an informational meeting, not an Elizabeth-make-12-rapid-fire-decisions meeting. (Opening a branch requires rather a lot of the second type of meetings.)

So there were choices. We could have a dumpster. We had a paved pad to put a dumpster on. But we would have to build an enclosure around it due to the new city ordinance and there was a lot of concern that people would come by and fill up our dumpster with their household trash. Or we could have those large rolling bins for trash and recycle and put them out on trash pick up day.

I carefully reviewed my choices. I reflected on that if you told me the square footage of the building and the demographic make up of the community (all information I had), I could tell you how many books you needed and what type of collection to build. Cheerfully I would rattle off number of children's books versus adult materials, media materials and computer needs, seating and furniture needs. How big should your meeting room be, your staff areas, etc. All of this would require some thought, but I knew how to work that out. I had a master's degree and everything to prove it. Garbage? I had no idea how much garbage this building I had just designed would be.

Desperately, I did what all good librarians do, I sought more information. By that, of course, I mean I tried to pressure one of the facility/janitorial/building type guys to make this decision for me. No go. They were wily and resisted all my efforts to get them to even commit to recommending one over the other. Eventually someone finally said that they thought rolling bins would be a better choice because of the aforementioned issue with dumpsters getting filled.

Aha! This is true. People do illegally fill up dumpsters not their own. Rolling bins! (At that point I was willing to act on even the smallest scrap of information.) After a bit more unsuccessful wheedling for advice on sizes and quantities, I chose two of the biggest sizes (which automatically came with a recycling bin) and we were off and running. Silly naive me even thought that would be the last I'd think about the trash. I was ready to leave the meeting.

But how would the trash cans get to the curb? This was the next big point of discussion. Couldn't janitorial just take them out? Janitorial only fully cleans our building three days a week, the other two days they just do the bathrooms. Garbage day was one such day. But if they were here to do the bathrooms, how much trouble would it be for them to wheel out the trash cans as they leave? (Janitorial comes in at night after library staff has left.) Then my staff would wheel them in first thing in the morning. Eventually all agreed this was the most logical course of action.

This post is currently ridiculously long, so I will tell you further tales of garbage later. I think I need a tag for this, perhaps facility maintenance woes?

In which I learn a painful lesson about donations

Remember how I ranted about donations yesterday. Here's a great story to prove my point. Even better, I'm the rube in this story.

I was talking with one of my library staff and she mentioned that someone had wanted to donate some auto manuals to the library. The staff member (new) had checked with staff at another branch who thought it was a gold mine. That is true, to an extent. Our auto-repair reference databases get the most searches and this material is some of the most frequently requested. However, it makes the most sense to have this material on a database then occupying four rows of the library. The staff member mentioned the patron was bringing 10 or 15. Well, I can deal with 10 or 15 books even if we can't use them. This is the point at which alarm bells are ringing for wiser and more experienced librarians, but I continued blithely on my way.

One lovely Saturday morning in September just after we opened, we receive a call. The patron is on her way and wants to make sure we're ready to receive her donation and check if we have a flatbed and/or dolly. My heart starts to sink as I ask her how many books she is bringing. She has 15 boxes of books to bring us. My heart starts racing and I begin to feel a little faint. (I'm not mixing metaphors, my heart really was sinking and racing at the same time, hence the faintness I was feeling.) 15 boxes of auto manuals? No one has that many auto manuals. People usually have one or two auto manuals for the vehicles they own. People with 15 boxes of auto manuals have typically owned an auto repair shop. I don't know if you've ever been to an auto repair shop, but they're not the cleanest places in the world, and not to disparage mechanics (I've known several very nice mechanics, friends of mine), but they're not the best at keeping books in good condition. My sinking feeling was getting worse by the second.

When she arrived, the entire back of her pick up was full of boxes of auto repair manuals. And, naturally, she wanted us to unload the boxes so she could have them back. There were several moments here where I should have said, "I'm sorry that's not possible" or "I'm sorry we don't have the staff time available to deal with that donation". I didn't. I don't know why, but I didn't. Even as I accepted this pick up load of (and yes I counted) 17 boxes of auto repair manuals, I knew they would be worthless. This incident helped strengthen my backbone a lot.

As we were unloading the boxes, the woman said she had to "run and get something" but would be right back. Foolishly I assumed she was running to a store to pick something up. Nope. She went home and got another pickup load full of boxes of dirty, outdated, useless, heavy auto manuals. Another 9 boxes. That brings us up to 26 boxes of auto manuals. Our hands were turning black from unpacking them. The courier tubs we were putting them in were getting filthy. All in all it was a HUGE mess. But the patron thought she was doing us a service, helping out the new library in the poor neighborhood. I would never put these filthy books on my shelves. They were in disgusting condition and so old as to be useless to the vast majority of my patrons. Almost immediately they went into the dumpster and recycling bins. (Well I tried to send them to our main library but all that accomplished was another three staff members handling them, more courier bins getting dirty, and people getting angry at me.)

Lessons learned? When someone offers you a donation, clarify if they are counting in boxes or books. And make sure all of your staff understands what can be accepted as donations. (This assumes that you've already established a policy on what you're accepting as a donation.)

What we will (now) accept as donations:

• hardcover books published within the last 5 years in good condition
  
• hardovers of classic books
  
• no encyclopedias
  
• any hardcover or paperback graphic novel or manga
  
• limit one box per patron per donation