We’ve had a busy week at the library! Wednesday we had a retirement breakfast for the lovely and talented Meredith Pierce, who is leaving the library after 25 years to spend more time writing. She is an accomplished YA fantasy novelist, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next! Thursday was our “reopening” party because of all the renovations on the third floor; we’ve swapped the collections, opened a new quiet reading room, painted, re-carpeted and generally changed the layout of the whole adult services areas. It looks great, and all the bigwigs came to celebrate. On Saturday we had our annual Family Literacy Festival, which was a big hit! A lot of kids came to be recognized as part of the Million Minutes of Reading, there was a play, some dance performances, and booths set up by local businesses giving out cool swag. I wandered around on my lunch break (as everyone was breaking down) and ended up with a Publix bag, a Florida football poster, and I got to make a button!
My totally cool Bookaneer Button!
It was a lot of fun and the kids all seemed to love it. The Literacy Festival is a great way for parents to get their kids interested in reading and TH and her staff of amazing volunteers did an incredible job!
The other day I was at work and patron came up to the desk and asked if I was a performer at the medieval faire. I told her that I was (I sing with a group of women in a wench troupe, we sing naughty songs and tell jokes) and she said that she recognized me! She told me that she thought I looked familiar but then she saw my necklace (a Celtic knot I always wear) and she knew it was me. She mentioned that she loved our act and she can’t wait to see us next year! It was really flattering (and a little embarrassing!) and kind of surreal. Does this mean I’m famous? I’m pretty sure this means I’m famous.
I needed to rent a car this week while mine was in the shop, and the Enterprise representative who picked me up made conversation by asking where I work. Great question! I managed to not talk his ear all the way off about the library and how great it is that we offer so many services. He was really impressed by the idea of downloading audiobooks to his phone to listen to while he was at the gym, since he said he’d been listening to the same music for a while now and was getting tired of it. I told him to stop by any of our branches with a photo ID and proof of address and we’d be happy to get him started! I really hope he does, new patrons are my favorite! (Except for my old patrons that I already know and love!) Besides, as I’ve mentioned, September is National Library Card Registration Month!
And now, the meat of today’s post: A young man called the library in a state, and said that he had returned some DVDs over the Labor Day weekend, but one of them apparently hadn’t been checked in! He had received a bill notice in the mail and was panicking, not sure what he could do. He said he was nearly positive that he’d returned it, and he would be willing to pay for it if it came to that, but he’d rather not. I told him not to worry, and that I would take care of everything for him. I said I’d take a look around for it at the library, since it hadn’t been checked out again, but that I couldn’t put it on the “Claimed Returned” list since it had been billed to him. I advised him to look for it at his home just in case, too. I promised to email him within the next day or so with the result. He thanked me profusely and I told him I would fix it. We happened to have a lull that evening and I let my coworker know I was going to go do a quick shelf-search. The DVD was discovered exactly where it was supposed to be, on its shelf; it had apparently just accidentally been skipped on check-in in the mad influx we’d had over the holiday. I checked it in for him to clear his account, and emailed him to let him know the good news. The next day I received an email back saying how grateful he was to me, proclaiming me and the library to be “so awesome”. It was a really nice gesture, and made me feel appreciated, which is not always a feeling you get as a public servant (fortunately my patrons are usually pretty good about that). Never fear, The Bookaneer is here to save the day!
Weird, but Funny:
A lady came in holding an infant, and said “Yes, I’d like to get her a library card.” “Her, who?” I asked, bewildered. “Her,” she replied, gesturing to the baby in her arms, who must have been a few months old, at best. “Oh,” I replied, “you have to be four years old to get a library card here. Sorry!” Why does your baby need a library card? She can’t even recognize faces, much less read or watch anything. RW told me that we used to issue library cards to “unhatched” babies, even, though we changed it when we switched to Polaris in June.
Weird, but Cute:
I was balancing DVDs on my head across the lobby, as usual, and a little girl turned to her mother and said “Mommy, look!” “That’s cool!” said the mother to the daughter, “she could be an African!” What? I am clearly a PRINCESS. Maybe an African Princess?
Moment of Cute:
A kid of about 11 wearing a red fez came into the library with his mom to return some books. I said, “Hey, a fez! Fezzes are cool,” which is a reference to the popular British television show Doctor Who. He broke into a wide grin and said “Yes! You get it! Awesome!” and gave me a high five. His mother smiled and rolled her eyes, saying, “he loves that show, I don’t get it.” I winked at him and said “We Whovians always recognize our own,” which made him grin again before they wandered upstairs. I love tiny nerds-in-training!
Keep bookaneering!
The Bookaneer 