Sunday

What I'm doing between questions: in the children's room I was ordering our Next Month's Bestsellers orders (Books and AV) and doing a pass-through on the next Audiobook order I'll need to place. Once I get to the adult area, I'm busy enough that I start looking at reviews but don't get far.

1:00 [in the children's room]

• Close/Lock children's bathroom doors as we open.
• Talk to Librarian C about splitting the desk hours, and then put out all of today's newspapers, dropping one with patron RR who will collect a list of books from the reviews sections and give them to me later
• Smile [the copy on the shelf isn't there, so I go get one of the SIX (!) in storage]
• On the way to and from storage, I direct one person to the second copier in the back of the building, and help another person with the first copier
• Sort out transactions tally sheet for the day
• Random semi-homeless woman is wandering through for some reason....go away! [somehow my unspoken command works!!]
• Two tweener girls come in look around and then head to the YA area
• Family of 5 kids + Mom arrive; the older kids immediately sign on to play Roblox while Mom and toddler ask for the train set and go play, analog-style
• My Many-Colored Days and I Am Not Going to Get Up Today [all our shelved copies are out, or MIA, so I send her to Circ for them to check storage for either/both]

2:00 [in the children's room till 2:30, then adult]

• [phone] "Car crash. I'm fine. Books I had in the car are long gone with the car, though. What do I do?" [I transfer her back to Circ since I'm not sure what our policy is on sad stories like this--I mean, obviously, she has fines and overdues, but are we going to charge for the books? I don't know...]
• Changing of the Guard: nothing of major import to exchange info about
• "How many books can I check out?" [not really a limit] "Even if my card is from [next town over]?" [Yep, all good--load up the truck!]
• Oldie patron, who's been coming here forever, needs a local train schedule ... and then a guest pass because the trains are on Sunday schedule (i.e. there are fewer) so she has time to kill
• Another regular patron stops to say bye: she looks more depressed every time I see her...kinda worried about her
• [phone] Multiple new title reserves from one of my absolutely favorite patrons
• Hours and phone number for local antiques place; PLUS compliment about how these out-of-towners like our library

3:00

• Card number [she has a fine, and nothing but a debit card, so she has to lug her infant back up front to pay so she can get online; I feel bad]
• Mom comes over to print, tweener-ish (?) kid meets her and lingers by the desk long enough to whisper to me, "You're an awesome librarian!" [Pull it together woman: open weeping is frowned upon at the Reference Desk!]
• Turn on cameras to survey the array of actual study-ers...in prep for closing
• Favorite book illustrator walks past on his way out [he's turning gray, but still hot]
• I go share the compliment from the kid with Librarian C since I didn't actually do anything to earn it, and maybe she did [nope, but we're splitting it]
• Pen? [Have mine]
• Trade quarter for another quarter; printer kiosk didn't like his
• [Next Town Over] Woman has collected four shopping baskets of materials on a table; I hope to hell she actually takes them all and hasn't just organized them for us to reshelve....
• Three specific books on cutting; his card's expired, so I fill out the requests and send him up front to renew his card so I can attach the requests to his online record afterwards
• White-out? [not today--it's not something we keep around, but we should]
• Chat with one of our regulars
• Cutting dude is back, looking for Rosetta Stone for Italian [I show him our new Transparent Language database and he says he'll try it out
• "I left a thumb-drive in the public computer yesterday..." [got it, and no, I don't have the cover to it because THAT wasn't in the slot, Ding-Dong]
• Closing announcement
• Shopping baskets are headed to the circ desk, one by one...how the heck is she planning to carry all this to her car??

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: checking our catalog against Booklist's Editors' Choice list to see what we need to buy.

7:00

• It is quiet tonight, unexpectedly. I can see 6 people--no, 7--only one of whom is likely to be homeless (it's sleep-in-our-town-tonight night, so we often have people here who are turned away because of alcohol or drug use)
• Circ person brings me three books to order for her
• People sign in for study room use
• I place holds on things that were left behind earlier and then go eat cake and talk at the circ desk. It's really really dead, except for the Board Meeting going on upstairs

8:00

• Chat with one of our regulars about how I "never" get sick despite all the germy people [I've been doing this job for almost 30 years: I've pretty much had ALL the regular stuff and my immune system is on high alert]
• Check the cameras: meeting in public room, meeting in staff room, two study rooms in use, one person on her laptop, and the above regular....yawn!!
• Study room sign out
• Directions to the Children's Books area
• ...time for a pre-closing walk-through
• And everyone's gone, so I finish the last of the closing chores and head out.