2:00 - 3:00 p.m.

What I'm doing between questions: checking the death dates list, and researching vacuums.
2:00

• "I found this at that internet computer" [ID holder + flash drive]
• "I think I forgot my password..." [check ID and look up for her]
• Pay for print jobs [forgotten pw woman]
• ...and the printer's out of paper
• [phone] Sing You Home [our copy checked out, so I reserve it for her as she is an "our library only" patron]
• Shockingly, ID holder + flash drive guy returns to collect it
• "How do I get on the computer?" from a kid [since his parents haven't signed the permission slip, he can't today, but I walk him thru the basics]
• Pay for print jobs [and I 'donate' 2 cents to him so that he doesn't end up with 23 cents on his account--because I know him and he makes me laugh]
• ...and he returns with two quarters [goof] ;-)
• Pay for printing; he asks about blank pages [I show him "Print Preview" and make a friend]

And I'm outta here! Because I have to get my house organized for tonight's staff party!! :-)

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ; 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

What I'm doing between questions: catching up on the 404 unread Autocat postings since 11/14 (finished at 3:50, holyMarymotherofGod!).

11:00 [in kids' room]

• Key to restroom, and returned
• Other key to other restroom, and returned
• "Do I get a library card at the front desk?" [yep]
• [phone] Asks for Librarian C, but since she's not here today, "any other reference librarian" will do
• "Elephant Key Please!" [small child who used the Ladybug Key 25 minutes ago--lol), and returned
• [rather creepy guy comes in from the other room to print his documents, and stands and "hmm" and "uh-huhs" while doing so--ugh]
• IT guy appears, we chat

2:00

• Neuromancer [on holdshelf for someone else--I reserve it for him] and Dune [on the shelf, but so old the spine is hard to read]
• Gmail changed, so I go over how to compose a group email with an older patron
• Patron turns in random headband he found on the floor; I doubt anyone will remember it falling off here...but who knows?
• Magnifying glass to read the microfiche [it's actually film, but wevs, yo--and yes I actually found one in the drawer!]
• [Sir, those computers don't access the internet]
• Fax
• Pencil
• Pay for printing [and a quick tutorial on how to his document print]

3:00

• Books on Britishisms or, better, Canadianisms or Australianisms and what they mean in "American" [we.have.NOTHING--fail--so I show him some of the blogs I read, especially the one by Lynneguist, and leave a note for the Mad Weeder on staff to freakin' BUY SOMETHING in that section!]
• Magnifying glass returned
• Kingston card reader returned
• "Is Librarian C around?" [yep--more of the grant fooforaw that's been going on around here all week]
• How the Grinch stole Christmas [all copies on hold or checked out, doesn't want to wait]; Mortal Kombat, game or DVD [we don't own, doesn't want to wait; Rush Hour 2 [aha! success, plus RH3 is here too]
• Fax [guy looks disturbingly like a friend of mine]
• Scratch paper
• Pencil and paper
• Ethernet cable [ID taken and attached to note in drawer that says "USB thing"--in Librarian M's handwriting, and she's the techiest of us!]
• [time has officially stopped at 3:30...or rather slowed to a complete crawl...isn't it 4 YET?]
• Pay for printing
• Ethernet cable [another ID on the "USB thing" tag]
• Recycling bin time [and again I'm picking up stuff that didn't go IN the bin]
• Operation Family Secrets [on the shelf--woo-hoo!]
• "You have TWO horses here??" [yep, the other one is behind that pillar]
• [phone] "Can you find my old dentist's new addresss?" [couldn't find the guy]
• Scratch paper

1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

What I'm doing between questions: creating order carts in B&T and Midwest Tape for my collection development areas, and the ever-exciting subject-heading changes.

1:00 [in the kids' room]

• [there is a storytime going on for the first half hour I'm at the desk, so I eavesdrop on that]
• Disney Princess Christmas CD not in library system? [nope, and it's not available from our suppliers, being 6 years old] [thank God!]
• [phone] Do we have "e-reader books" for Kindle? [transfer to adult ref]
• [when storytime ends, I talk to Library L re her new kids' standing order plan(s)]   

2:00

• [phone] Do we own I Have Heard You Calling In the Night? [no...he will check it out at the library he is at then]
• [phone] How to download library ebooks on Kindle [I walk her thru it]
• Can we get books from [next-town-over] library? [nope, different library system, but your card works there] REALLY?! [I love telling people that--it makes their whole day]
• "My email didn't fill in my friend's email address, just her name. Did it send? [yes, probably, but this is how you can check...]
• Downloading ebooks on Kindle. [the week after Christmas is going to SUCK, when everyone is trying to get their new toys to work!]

3:00 - 5:00 p.m. ; 6:00 - 7:00 p.m.

So, yeah, I haven't been doing a lot of Reference for the past few years, trying to catch up on a giant backlog of cataloging and bring a new director up to speed.

As I will start working full-time hours beginning in a couple of weeks, and as one of my friends reminded me about this sad little blog recently, I figured I would use the quiet early-afternoon hours today to reboot.

What I'm doing between questions: revising this blog (ahem), and working on cleanup, mostly subject headings.

3:00

• [I am warned before Librarian L leaves the desk that people seem to be cranky today. Great]
• [phone] Garbled request for "It's not fair, Jeremy Spencer's parents let him stay up all night!" and Hannah's List [we own both, but Hannah is checked out, so I put it on hold and take the former to the holdshelf]
• Pay for printing [and I have a terrible time understanding how much she wants to leave on her card after she prints]
• One of our custodial workers comes around emptying recycling bins [how the heck does staff MISS a 2-foot-by-3-foot box under the desk??]
• Return ethernet cable; I return her ID
• Pay for printing
• Realize DH has IM'd me

4:00

• Ethernet cable goes back out to someone else; ID in drawer
• [phone] Basic math books to brush up [we have loads--I pull a couple and put them on the holdshelf]
• "I forgot my card. Can you look up my number?" [ID? Nope? Then, sorry, no...]
• "I've moved, but I have a card from my new home...." blah blah [yes you can use the internet]
• [Person on computer nearest me has the volume turned up so loud on her headphones that I can identify the song, easily. Yeeesh!]
• Pencil
• Pay for printing
• Pencil
• [Hmm, dude with card from out of the area is clipping his fingernails at the computer station! NOT a homeless guy. ...sigh]
• Pay for printing
• "Where is everybody??" [not here, not sure why, not complaining! lol]

6:00 [in the kids' room]

• Pencil and paper
• [6 black sharpies in the drawer and NOTHING ELSE to write with?! ...sigh]
• [I was volunteered to 'peer review' a paper for a patron--am doing that for the first part of the hour]
• Pay for printing
• Bathroom key
• [Circ person comes in with a DVD asking if I requested it--yes--it's been sitting around for God-knows-how-long in The Box (there's A Box?) for staff requests]
• "Where do I find a book that says it's in "J Parenting..." [I find it]
• Key returned
• Pay for printing 
• "Where does it print?"
• Easy-to-read books for a 3rd-grader who reads low for his age [Magic Tree House to the rescue!]
• 2-inch long pencil stuck in electric pencil sharpener; a paper-clip is a bad idea for retrieving it [I snag it with the one fingernail I have]
• Bathroom key
• Key returned
• [phone] Books on rocks and minerals for "oral language" low-level elementary kids [I pull what we've got on the shelves]
• Eclipse movie [checked out]; other Twilight movies [checked out]; Harry Potter movies [the only one that's here he doesn't want]; Harry Potter books [THOSE we have!]; Alvin and the Chipmunks, Home Alone movies [strikeout] [I eventually walk him to the to-be-shelved cart at Circ to look at what's there....and reserve Eclipse for him when it comes back] [And his name was wrong on his card, not inverted so he was coming up under his first name...fixed]
• "Are there any programs tonight?" [nope, not really much going on till the beginning of 2012, sigh...sorry]

9:00 - 11:00 a.m. ; 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

What I'm doing between questions: checking for typos (a quixotic process, at best, but for now I am caught up), collection development....
9:00

• [phone] (they hung up on me when I answered--first question(?) of the day at 9:35)
• "Is breakfast ready?" (one of our regular patrons, making a joke)
• "Are you open tonight?" (only till 5--and if you're leaving, you might want to log out of your internet acct.)
• [phone] (circ person asking how to run overdue notices--which no one working today knows how to do...derrrrr [we figure it out, though])
• Pencil
• Mr. Ick needs an eraser...and also wants to know where to buy them
• [phone] "Can I renew my books?" (sure--why did circ transfer this to me?)
• The book with all the prescriptions in it (PDR, coming right up)

10:00

• Help with using PDR (I go get the Consumer Drug Reference book which is 100% easier to use!)
• (He fills me in on his entire medical history for the past 40 years. He's remarkably upbeat. I could have lived without the comments about his catheters and the parting remark that he's been celibate for 40 years...but what can ya do?)
• Pencil
• [phone] Can I use saved Office 2007 files on your computers? (the public ones, not directly--they have to be saved as [Word, Excel] 97-2003 documents first)
• Pay for prints (nope, only one today: it's free)
• Prescription drug program (who knew? No one, except Librarian D who fills me in)
• Mr. Ick returns eraser
• Are my DVDs here yet? (no)

1:00

• (Is there some reason that people can move a chair across to the room to where they want to shoulder surf behind a friend/family member, but they can't move it back? D'oh)
• Make (unnecessary) change
• Paper
• Summer hours (same as the rest of the year) and the next time we are closed on Sunday (next week for Father's Day, and then not until Labor Day)
• Today's local classified ads
• [phone] Melatonin: spelling and anything we have about it (dude's a crank--I 'found nothing')
• Help with wireless connection
• Update SAM access
• Classified ads are returned
• Someone returns a wallet left at one of the computers
• [phone] Three book reserves
• Pencil
• Concerned wallet owner asks about found one--it's his

I do like summer weekends!!

1:00 - 4:00 p.m.

What I'm doing between questions: collecting all the books left laying around and sorting them onto a shelving cart (yes, it's supposed to be done by teenage pages, but most of these things have been sitting around waiting for over a month), fixing the call numbers for foreign films [unfinished], and prepping the Demand order for entering.

1:00

• "Those terminals don't have the internet on them"
• "Call of the Wild" only with lots of commentary about the area and the author...no author, no year... [can't find it; she's going to call her friend who has it and ask for some more info and call me back]
• Classified ads
• "Check the kids' room for open internet stations"
• Magazines from 2001 [I introduce her to microfilm--"COOL!"]
• How do I find books in my Lexile score? [damn--at least she knows what it is]
• Which computer did it assign me?
• Where is this book? [the new books section]
• Classifieds return
• When did Enron first hit the news? [World Book]
• Which computer did it assign me?
• Playgroup mom from 12 years ago--omg, is that her little girl??

2:00

• Where is this book? [eventually we find that he only needs to finish his bibliography; I show him the catalog record and introduce him and his friend to WorldCat citations]
• ...ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!!! Random memories:

  How to listen to CDs on the computer [I spend about 20 minutes off and on with him]

  How to print pictures...but I've never used a computer, and can't be bothered to learn now [probably close to 45 minutes]

  Scissors

  Do you have a typewriter?

  Circ person brings me a message to return a call

  Can I use a study room? [sure, go nuts!]

  Scissors come back to me, point first [niiiiice]

  The light bulb on the microfilm reader just went out [I go shut the machine off and turn it right back on...and it works again]

  Pay for print jobs

  Books on Rx drugs

  How to print just page one from Yahoo! mail [I can't get it to work]

  ....and I'm sure I've forgotten a ton of others...

3:00

• AAARGHHHHHHH!!! Panic stations continue....till about 3:20
• Do I need to check in with you to use the internet? [nope]; but I can't remember my password [I look it up]
• I need to type something up on Word [good luck with that--I send him into the kids' room to see if there are any workstations available there]
• Call back message--do we have anything by a group called "Ten Years" [no]
• [I go check to make sure the rest of the building is under control--so much for trying to do that a couple of times an hour...]
• How do I find the résumé template in Word? [Start Bar--oooooh]
• Pay for print jobs
• Of course: the mom-and-kids from hell are here [she calls 'em "little bastards" under her breath when they misbehave...which they seem incapable of not doing]
• Paper needed in printer [uh-no]
• CD-listener is done, but now what [I show him out to eject the disc and log off]
• Closing announcement done early [GET THE #&%*$ OUT!!!!]
• Pay for print jobs
• Stapler
• Peter Himmelman "Time Just Flew" guitar chords [lots of other songs by him, but not that one]
• Pay for print jobs x2
• Did my resume save when the computer shut down? [nope, sorry]
• FINALLY everyone leaves....