Tag: library

Displaying Why I Shouldn’t Be in Charge of Displays

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Back in the long long ago of my mid-twenties, back when I worked the jewelry counter of the local Wal-Mart, one of my responsibilities was the gift wall. We’d get shipments of stuff for Mother’s Day and Christmas that I’d have to set the wall with that would almost never sell and then I’d be stuck with it until the end of time because we had no storage space over there. Anyway. We’d get smaller amounts of merchandise for Father’s Day. It was my responsibility to fill out that merchandise for a four foot section of Father’s Day stuff. Which meant that I’d go around the store and get stuff from other departments.

One year, for shits and giggles, I put condoms on the gift wall for Father’s Day.

Not one member of management said a word. I don’t think they even noticed.

My coworkers loved it, though.

And so established my reputation as someone who should not be allowed to create displays without a strict mod to go by.

Had this reputation preceded me to the library, perhaps I wouldn’t have been put in charge of the main floor and periodicals displays when two of my coworkers left.

In a nutshell, my job is to create one big display, one medium display, two small displays, one front display, and three DVD/Blu-Ray displays. I make the selections, create the signage, all that fun stuff. They get changed out at least once a month, so I have to come up with themes/subjects. Sometimes the themes are easy to come by: Women’s History Month, Black History Month, Halloween, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc. Sometimes I have to get more creative: National Nothing Day, Christmas Creeps, Pumpkin Patch (all of the covers were orange), National Hobby Month, Count von Count’s birthday, stuff like that.

And sometimes I get really clever.

For example, one February I did a love/hate flip side display with romances on one side and romantic murder mysteries on the other. I also put out a display of true crime books, just for good measure. Feel the love.

Speaking of true crime, both my Mother’s Day and Father’s Day displays included true crime books. My supervisor gave me shit for it, but they were the first ones off the display both times. I know my audience.

Which is why I push limits with some things. I live in a red county. How long before the locals complain about my Pride Month displays? Or complain about how it’s not fair that I’m doing big displays on Black History, Women’s History, Native American Heritage, and Asian Pacific Heritage, but not on White History or White Heritage.

(We did have someone complain about “Black History” books on display after February once. It was literally a new book on the new book shelf. Turns out that books by and about Black people don’t come out in just February. Who knew? Not this jackass.)

Some of my displays do better than others and sometimes I’m surprised by how well some displays do. For example, I was surprised my Christmas Creeps (Christmas horror) display didn’t do that well, but the Winter Solstice display did much better than I thought. I try to take note of that to see what people are looking for.

The library goal of my displays is to put books and DVDs/Blu-Rays in front of people that they might not otherwise look for on their own. Get patrons to expand their horizons.

My personal goal with the displays is to find opportunities to be as aggravating as possible, even if it’s just to needle my coworkers. Or to see what I can get away with. Like the time that I kept Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly out on display three months in a row, just to see if I could.

I could.

I don’t think anybody noticed. Which is very encouraging for me when I think about the things I could do.

There is a pun display in my future. Oh yeah. I can feel it.

I should never have been put in charge of displays.

“What Do You Like to Read?”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

One neat thing about libraries is that you can put books on hold. That way, when the book you want to read is either processed or returned by another patron, it will automatically go to you if you’re next in line. The same thing happens when you request a book from another library. It comes in, gets checked in, and goes on hold for you. And you can do it for multiple items at a time. This is something I do a lot.

And sometimes it backfires.

Working at the library, I usually have a pretty good idea of what items we might acquire. It’s a small library, so we don’t get everything. We just don’t have the space or budget. If there’s something I want to read and I don’t think we’ll get it, I try to put myself on hold for it as soon as possible. Different libraries have different rules about lending new items to other libraries. For example, my library doesn’t ship new items to other libraries for six weeks. But the sooner I get my name on the hold list, the higher I am in the queue, and the sooner I’ll get the book.

Not too long ago, I put three books on hold. They were all recent releases and I didn’t think my library was getting any of them. Given the hold queues, I thought the risk of getting more than one at once to be low.

Oh, how the library gods laughed.

The first book finally shipped. It was late in the week and I accurately guessed that it would probably be the middle of the next week when it arrived. That Monday I went into work to find a pile of books ready for processing. Among the two stacks were the other two books I’d put on hold because I thought my library wasn’t getting them. One was for immediate release. The other one didn’t officially come out until Tuesday. So, I took one book home Monday night, one book home Tuesday night, and the book that had been sent from another library arrived on Wednesday.

Now, the reason why I tell you this story is because I think the books I received all at once accurately cover my taste in books. Or at least the range of it.

The books?

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, a horror novel that is a love letter to the slasher movie

Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me About Caring for the Living by Robert A. Jensen, a kind of memoir recounting the work the author does in recovering the bodies and personal items from victims of mass casualty events like plane crashes, bombings, and natural disasters.

Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur, a queer romance that’s a sort of sequel to the book Written in the Stars, another queer romance.

I recommend them all, by the way.

But as you can see, I read random shit. Typically, it’s whatever catches my attention in that moment. Sometimes I get fixated on a subject or an author. Sometimes I decide to push myself outside of my comfort zone. If it’s about dead bodies and/or decomposition, it’s probably a must-read for me.

If you look at my Goodreads challenge, you’ll see this sort of behavior on a grander scale. So far this year, I’ve read five romances (something unheard of before I discovered that I DO like romance so long as it’s queer and/or fat), 5 books of poetry, 6 memoirs (including Danny Trejo’s because of course and one that I won in a Goodreads giveaway that I just thought looked interesting), two re-reads (one of which is a book from my teen years that I’ve never stopped thinking about and just by luck found it again), two plain ol’ fiction books, and 7 non-fiction books (topics include burlesque, socialism, toilets, and binding books in human skin).

At the library, we are often called upon to recommend items and some of my coworkers are known for their expertise in certain genres or subjects. For example, one of my coworkers is the go-to for fantasy. Another knows all of the mysteries. And we’ve been encouraged to create Goodreads accounts specifically related to the library based on our expertise so we can refer patrons.

I have not done this because I don’t have a specialty. I have random ass shit. Do you like to read whatever? I can help you with that. And the more random, the better.

Now, there are obviously some genres I like better than others and I’m more drawn to some non-fiction topics than others. I can be picky within some genres and game for anything in others. There’s not much I won’t read, or at least try.

Except Amish romance.

No Amish porn for me, thanks.

How to Library

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A tweet talking about all of the good things that libraries do as a publicly funded entity which is probably why people talk about them being obsolete in an effort to be rid of them (I’m paraphrasing the tweet by a lot, but that was the gist) reminded me that I actually have inside knowledge about this that I could disseminate to the masses. Or the readers of this blog. Whatever.

For those of you just tuning in, my current day job is working as a part-time library clerk at my local small town library. Now, I’m sure you think it’s a great job, especially for a writer, to have because it’s a small town, so it can’t be that busy, right? How much work do you actually do? Especially part-time.

Kids, let me tell you…there is a lot that goes into making a library work.

Obviously, there’s checking out items, checking in items, and shelving them. I do a lot of that. It’s a basic of the job. And here’s some real insider knowledge: we all sing the alphabet when we’re shelving stuff. Always. Everyone. My boss is a librarian, master’s degree and all, and she still has to run through the alphabet while shelving. Think you know the alphabet? Work in a library. I guarantee you don’t. It’s amazing.

Other things we have to do every shift include getting the books out of the book drops outside (I curse the people who return half the children’s floor that way) and we get items on the pull list, which are items requested either by our patrons or patrons from other libraries in our system. Yes. You can order books from other libraries if your library doesn’t have it. Pretty neat.

But in order to have access those items they first of all have to be bought and then catalogued and then processed because yeah, this shit just doesn’t come in ready to go.

Cataloging involves putting each item in the system and then barcoding it. After that’s done, it has to be processed. What’s processing? Well, every library has their own way, but this is how we do it.. First of all, everything has to have the appropriate labels; spine labels, obviously, but also series labels on books and audiobooks; DVD’s, Blu-rays, and CDs have to have the appropriate color coded stickers for genre, as well as other relevant stickers; everything gets stamped or stickered as the library’s property; and then the books get covered. Which means laminating them. Paperbacks get hard laminate, which has to be measured, cut, and stuck on by hand. Hardbacks get soft laminate, which means the dust jackets are put through the laminator, cut, taped, creased, put back on the book, and taped down. Does this sound like a lot? Well, yeah, it kinda is. But we’re not done! Because after all that (or at some point during the process; depends on who’s doing it), everything has to be RFID’d. What’s that? That’s the system we use to check things in and out. So everything gets a special sticker and it’s encoded with that item’s information.

As an aside, we switched over to this system during the early months of the pandemic. I, along with three other of my coworkers, tagged every single item in the whole library. It took us about three months.

Anyway. That’s just a small portion of what my coworkers and I do on any given day, and that’s just the “books ‘n’ stuff” work. Because even my small town library provides the community with a lot of resources and services.

Like…

We’ve got an outreach program so people who are homebound or at the nursing home can get items. We’ve got three different book clubs. Do you like ebooks? Audiobooks? Movies? Music? We’ve got apps for that. Yeah, you can borrow items from our digital collection, too. It was a big hit when were shut down in March/April/May of 2020. Also, remember how I said you can order books from other libraries. You can do that online, too.

We’ve got free programs and workshops. From teaching kids how to make hovercrafts to teaching adults how to effectively compost. We made pillows for the local nursing home, painted bottles, made tiny art, made Mother’s Day and Father’s Day presents, made friendship bracelets, taught people how to make pollinator gardens, and had kids do their own Coke and Mentos rockets. There’s crafts and skills and lectures and all sorts of things we provide for patrons and members of the community to do and learn.

Speaking of programs, do you need space for yours? How about a party or gathering? Or just a quiet room to study in? Yeah, we’ve got all of those available for reservation. And again, you don’t have to have a library card to use them, but a few of our rooms do come with a fee.

We provide free computer access and free WiFi. You don’t have to have a library card to use it. You can get copies done on the cheap and you can send a fax for a dollar a page (it’s going back to 1994 after all). We provide free notary services as well. Do you need something laminated? We can do it for a reasonable price.

We can help you find whatever information you’re looking for. We’ve got a list of e-resources for patrons who are looking for work or housing or legal help, etc. We can also help you check your email, print things, use Google, and other basic computer/internet tasks. We can also probably point you in the right direction if we don’t know the answer to your question. And we rec books, movies, music, and TV shows just for the hell of it.

My library has the Library of Things, which allows you to check out things like Rokus, WiFi hotspots, an Amazon Fire Stick, and even ukuleles. We also have a seed library where you can “check out” seeds.

We also have an extensive archive collection relating to the library, the city, and the surrounding areas and people can actually request items to look at in person. They’re also frequently put out on display and my boss talks about them in a video series she does on Facebook and YouTube.

Oh, yeah. We’re on the socials. During the lockdown, we did a major pivot to video for the kiddie story times, which are now happening in person again. We’ve also got a website that’s positively loaded with info and reference links. And we’ve got a podcast that you should totally listen to. Not just because I run it (which is a good enough reason), but because it provides a lot of insight into what the library has and what it does. Also, I’ve done some cool local history episodes that are quite murder-y.

In fact, I just completed a series of episodes in which my coworkers tell you a little more about what they do at the library and how that translates to benefits to our patrons and our community.

And that’s just my little library. There are other libraries all over the place doing similar or bigger and better things.

So check them out! And support them! Libraries are good!

And return your shit on time.

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If you’d like to listen to my library’s podcast, you can find it on Anchor as well as bunch of other platforms. Check the links there to find the one you like best.