Wearing Scarves Year Round

I am the second-youngest librarian on staff, saved from being the youngest only by our newest staff member, who is only slightly (like, I suspect, months) younger. Usually, this works either in my favor or does not register with patrons at all. However, twice this week, while working on the desk with one of our veteran librarians, I had the patron insist on asking the “older” librarian, because she knew more.

The “older” librarian did not, in fact, know how to answer the patron’s question any better than I did, but that’s not what upset me. The problem is that the two veteran librarians on staff have, for years, cultivated the air that they are experts in their particular areas and no one else can know things the way they do. I have no problem with expertise, and consider several areas to be “my” areas, but I do not, and would never, tell a patron that I am the only one who can help them in that area. I might know more about online reference sources than my colleagues, but they also might know some resource I don’t, or, you know, they could learn!

Being told by a patron that Veteran Librarian over there is the only one who knows historical records questions is annoying and insulting, because, 1. Veteran Librarian is currently busy and so Young Snarky Librarian is the one available,  2. Young Snarky Librarian does in fact know her way around the local history room, thank you very much, and would be more than willing to help, and 3. Young Snarky Librarian also knows that Veteran Librarian just wants you and everyone else to think she’s important. And she is, but not because she hordes information.

Monday morning is teaching me that some things never change: over-helping co-worker still over-helps patrons and makes the rest of us look bad when we uphold the policies; poisonous co-worker is still poisonous, demonstrating a particular lack of respect for me as she passive-aggressively refused to help me find something I needed in her department; the atmosphere of communication-breakdown-as-policy continues as people push their feelings onto others instead of being invested in finding a solution - sending an email is not the same as having a conversation!

I’m obviously having a frustrated morning. Perhaps it is because there are so many wonderful things about my job that the difficult things stand out? More than that: I want things to get better because I am committed to this place, but I really need everyone else to understand that just doing our jobs alone means not contributing as much as we are capable of contributing together. And wow, look, I sound like a training manual! Which, interestingly, is also something we are lacking!

One of the things they don’t teach you in library school is that the reference desk has tax season. I can’t tell you the number of circular conversations I’ve had with patrons about what I can and cannot tell them about their taxes - essentially, we can only provide the forms, but even that isn’t as straightforward as it sounds, because not everyone knows what forms they need, or how to ask for the form they need. I anticipate the number of anxious and angry patrons will only increase as the deadline approaches. Thankfully, there’s an H&R Block right up the street.

And just a teeny Today I Have:

• ordered a bacon cookbook
• had a patron tell me he invented the idea of “pay it forward”
• had several people shout at me re: see above
• joined a social networking site for knitters and crocheters
• been thankful many times over that I’ve already done my taxes

Today I have:

• looked up for a patron how to tell if a can of soup (without an expiration date stamp) has expired
• read a passage from the Encyclopedia of Communes aloud to a patron over the phone
• been invited to a TV premiere party at a patron’s house
• shelved, shelved, shelved, and shelved

Now I think I’m going to go browse shelve in the knitting books.

Today I have (wrapped up a week of crazy and):

• been reminded that telemarketers have gotten ahold of the phone number to the emergency phone in the elevator.
• helped someone navigate through Yahoo Italy (”Does that mean log-out in English?”)
• helped a patron look up info on a potentially antique glass bottle
• participated in some remote reference for a friend in California about a wine from the 1970’s
• had chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, and onion rings for lunch (OMG, I know.)
• tried to determine why specific passages of the Bible had been highlighted in blue

One of my favorite parts of being a librarian is when I answer a question for someone and they respond with, “How did you do that?”

Today, I had a patron ask for our phone book to find the address to a store. It wasn’t in the phone book, and so I offered to look it up in Yahoo Yellow Pages, and in Google Maps. We found the address, and looked at the map to determine a cross street and how long her walk might be. She was astounded that all this information was in one place, and she asked, “How did you do that?” And so I showed her how to search Google Maps. It was fantastic.

Being a librarian isn’t just about having the answers. We shouldn’t hoard information. It’s just as important to answer a question as it is to show someone how they can use our awesome information-finding tools, too. It’s a great and very rewarding part of the job.

Today I have:

- had a patron call and say, “So I need to build a bar in my basement.”
- helped someone figure out the difference between “acclimation” and “acclamation.”
- used NoveList to figure out where a book was in a series (my favorite NoveList feature, seriously.)
- found a book a patron was desperately searching for (but could not remember anything about) using only the search terms “mango” and “sail.”
- endured a conversation about Wikipedia between a patron who had no idea what it was and a librarian who understood even less. The subject line of this post says it all.

I’ve spent the morning opening a considerable pile of mail from vendors who want to sell me expensive reference books. I don’t want your $800 Encyclopedia of Religious Movements! Nor do I want your $300 almanac of government information which you and I both know is provided for free online. What I want is for someone to publish some up-to-date readers’ advisory books about romance, horror, and mystery/thrillers. I’d totally spend $300 on those, even though I know they pretty much become outdated as soon as they’re in my hands. They’re still useful resources.

And then I won’t feel so bad about withdrawing the ones we have from 1990.

Today I have:

• been told that the library is like a mother - the one you call for everything.  It was a very sweet compliment.
• been tempted into passive-aggressively dealing with a nosy co-worker by looking up Yahoo Answers to the question, “How do I handle a nosy co-worker?” while she’s reading over my shoulder.
• completed my very first display - a Jane Austen theme, with actual Austen novels, spinoffs, movies, and non-fiction. It was awesome fun.
• tried to dissuade a six-year old from watching Too Fast, Too Furious: Tokyo Drift
• set myself a challenge of starting to collect information on local book clubs and what they are reading, because I have gotten similar questions several times this week and still not had a good answer.

We don’t work on commission here, but we do thrive on building relationships with our patrons, and patron-stealing isn’t cool. What’s patron-stealing? A colleague butting in on my conversation with a patron about choosing a book for her book group just a few minutes ago. What happens is this: my colleague acts is though she is the only one who knows anything about book groups - she knows more even than the patron, in fact - and jumps into the conversation, suggesting a book without hearing the patron’s requirements, and then she beckons the patron over to her side of the desk and deliberately pretends not to hear the phone ringing, so that I am forced to answer and be parted from my patron, despite the fact that we were mid-sentence.

Thankfully, this incident of patron-stealing didn’t stick because the patron did not find my colleague’s suggestions helpful, and she returned to me once my phone call (a quick request for a book) was complete. We ended up compiling a good list of leads for the patron’s book group, I showed her how to use NoveList, and then she recommended a book she had just finished. A perfectly excellent interaction, despite the attempted subterfuge. My rage was slightly diminished.

I know why it happened. This is just the way this woman rolls. She’s the Experienced Librarian, and I am the New Girl. She knows more, and instead of teaching me (a small blessing, honestly) she just takes over when she thinks she should.

I wouldn’t have minded a team effort - in fact, that’s one of things we do well at the reference desk, especially in terms of readers’ advisory since we all have wildly different reading interests. But there’s a big difference between cooperation and outright theft, and on top of the website playing Hide and Seek with me this morning, I was not in the mood to have my readers’ advisory cred questioned. I may be the new girl, but I give good RA.