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I’m actually doing Library Week in the Life, and what an unusual week it has been. I am a library assistant at a suburban library in central Michigan. I am also a MLIS student. I do Information Desk duty everyday so I find books, place books on hold, look up DVD titles, assist with Microsoft Office questions on the public computers, pick up crayons and toy trains from the floor, place magazines back on the rack, do reader’s advisory for all ages and find the book that will make some child’s school report.
- On Monday I ordered books for my section of the collection (the 600s–dieting, work-out routines, medical conditions, technology, gardening, pets, food history, cooking, household management, sewing, business management), checked the online calendar to make sure all the dates and times were correct for the spring programs I am coordinating, and discussed details for summer program planning–kids’ gardening, American Girl and cupcake wars with the youth librarian.
- Tuesday I would have worked the evening shift on the Information Desk like I always do, however, work did not happen. I got a call at 8:40 am from a police officer telling me my husband had been hit by a car. This wasn’t a fender bender. My husband commutes to work by bike. My day was spent in the trauma center with my husband. Fortunately there were no serious injuries–a minor concussion and a badly bruised shoulder. The fate of the bike is still unknown. We have yet to collect it from the police. The driver was cited, but a stretch of busy road that should have had a bike lane added when it was re-paved last year is still a stretch of dangerous road.
- Wednesday I worked the Information Desk from 9 to 12 because my husband did not want me at home staring at him. I got a question from a father that I am still trying to answer. He is looking for websites where he can download free children’s ebooks. My library has Overdrive, a website where many book can be downloaded for free with a library card, but not, it seems for people under the age of 10. My search continues. I went home, got my husband some lunch and went back to the library. I finalized contracts for speakers for my spring gardening series. I also took care of some books in the problem box–transposed call numbers and misspelled author names on spine labels, location changes for books so they can be in the appropriate age range or fiction location and gave books, CDs and DVDs new barcodes when the old ones fall off. If there is a call number question those get sent to the cataloging department at the main branch.
- Thursday the staff at my library held a retirement party for a library assistant who had worked in the county library than the district library for 30 years. She did hundreds, maybe thousands of children’s story times and mentored people new to story time like me. I do toddler story time. I have taken a break from it, but will start again next week.
