Tales from the LIbrary V

Yesterday, I was working on my closing duties, towards the end of my shift. This consists of making sure that the books on the shelves are neat and presentable and aren’t sticking out or shoved back. After doing this to the Adult Fiction area, I moved over to Graphic Novels. (For those of you who don’t know, that’s comics) So, I started working on them and made sure they looked presentable and such. However, there were a few books that were stuck. The reason for them being stuck was because there was a broken key that was underneath them. I have no idea why that would be there. We find all sorts of random and weird things at the library after it closes and during the day in the book drops.

Something else that has been randomly popping up to me while I”m working is birthday cards. For some odd reason, people just leave those laying around and forget about them. Why you would have your birthday card at the library and then simply leave it on a bookshelf and forget about it is beyond me. I feel bad for finding them too. Sometimes there are handwritten notes and messages making it more personal. So, when I have to throw them away, I feel bad. At the same time, however, the person that left it wasn’t smart enough to make sure they had it with them when they left.

My first day of work at the library was also the first day that the new director of the library started working as well. I’ve talked to him occasionally during lunch and he seems to have a good head and view on a lot of things. One of the biggest things he was challenged with since taking this job is bringing the library back under the umbrella of the City. See, the local library is supposed to be governed and under the City. I work for the City because of how I was hired at the library. Anyways, there are policies and regulations that were changed and not followed all the way through because the library has it’s way of doing things. It likes to keep things internal and run itself. There’s nothing wrong with that at all to want to be self-sufficient. However, the problem is, it causes issues when we need the City’s help. For example, we were having computer issues so the IT department had to come in and switch all the computers back to the domain under the City. The reason for this? The library had decided to go onto its own domain and use on of it’s employees as an IT instead of calling Tech support through the City like it was supposed to be. So, the Director is having to work on getting the library back on terms and in sync with the rest of the City. I have a lot of respect for the Director with him taking this on because it’s a lot of work and it’s not going to be easy. But, he’s sticking with it and working things out while getting his family settled in to town as well.