Call the Library Sex Line

Don't you hate when you call the library to renew books, and you have to listen to some erotic fantasy instead?

Do You Believe In the Library Elf?

It's amazing how many library tools are out there that go completely unnoticed even though they can be quite useful. Case in point: The Library Elf. I don't know how long it's been around, but I just heard about it not to long ago.


Basically, if your library is part of it, you can set up your card with the library elf and recieve email and txt messages reminding you to turn in books. The only thing that disappoints me about the service is why libraries have to outsource to an elf! Libraries should have been doing this kind of stuff years ago! As it stands, I know of very few libraries who even bother to send out emails to their patrons telling them about new and upcoming library programs...it's a free way to keep users informed, and way too many libraries have completely ignored it...

Darn You Oscar!

Occasionally librarians do very serious work. This week was one such week, because it was the Oscars. Oscars give librarians an excuse to do serious research on such important topics as "Who will win best actress." On Tuesday when the votes have been tallied, a librarian who wins is hailed the best person to take with you next time you take to Vegas or want to know what stocks to pick.

I was confident this year. I made some wise decisions in the stock market, and ended making a handsome sum of money. I believed that at last I finally knew how to research. My time had come. I would be the Oscar king! But I lost. I got a score of 19. The winner got a score of 22.

In retrospect, I did pretty good. I wisely choose the right picks for most the categories with movies no one will ever see (i.e. Short doc and live short). My biggest fault was not having faith in the Bourne Ultimatum, and, for reason I'm not sure of, picking There Will Be Blood over No Country for Old Men.

In truth I hate the Oscars (if this statement is true then what is this essay all about?). I have never watched one all the way through (does anyone?), and for the past few years I have watched known of it at all (though I did go to YouTube in search of Jon Stewarts better moments). But I'm a sucker for competition, and am logically drawn to this annual contest.

Oh well. There's always next year...

Things That Pop Into My Head While Bored At the Reference Desk

Why doesn't everyone wear their socks inside out?

How did I end up here?

Does Apple really not have the capability to create a iPod Touch with bigger storage? Or perhaps it's just all part of there marketing plan? Get them to buy this, then the bigger one comes out in six months. I'm sorry, Apple, but you are not the anti-corporate enviorment you try to make us believe. You are no better the Microsoft. And at least Bill Gates gives money to charity...what have you been doing with yours, Steve?

Is Warren Buffets kids not at all upset that he didn't leave them any money?

Why don't they just call it a computer center? And if people want books they can go to the bookstore. People who read statistically have more money then people who sit on their butts all day playing computer poker, and checking out the personal ads on Craigslist.

Does anyone who wears a tennis shoe play tennis? Everyone who walked into today wearing them does not look like the tennis-type.

I think I'd rather have a jury by professional jury person (someone who gets paid to sit on a case (like a career)), and not a jury by peers.

Were any of the Golden Girls fetching in their younger days?

I think that movie The Holiday is making Americans try and be British and say, "I'm going to have holiday at my boyfriends home." It just sounds stupid when some American chap says it.

Why does it always sound dirtier when a British person talks about sex?

I don't really miss TV now that it's on strike.

How the heck is J.D. Salinger still alive? Has anyone check in on his home lately?

Who will be the next American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature? I'm guessing DeLillo, but I'm hoping it's Pynchon.

Nicholson Baker Is a Big Fat Idiot

If you go to graduate school to get a degree in library science, you’re bound to come across figures in the literary circle that really pissed off a librarian, and your entire two years in graduate school will be at times misery because of this literary figure.


There was only one when I was in school. Nicholson Baker. There are few people who can stand alone in a sentence by being both the noun and verb--good ole Nick is one of these people.


The curse of Nicholson Baker apparently all started in 1996, when Baker wrote an article called “The Author vs. the Library” for the New Yorker (volume 72). The article attacked the way the San Francisco Public Library was discarding many of its older books.


I have not read the article, I do not care what the article has to say, and indirectly I don’t hold anything against Baker (although I still cringe when I hear his name and silently curse him for the horrors the name put me through in graduate school).


To this very day, many librarians have remained bitter and outraged with Nicholson Baker; in fact many faculty members at San Jose State’s library science department will probably be willing to argue about Baker and book preservation at the mere drop of his name.

Working in the public library can be strange

The following was recently published in the Orange County Register (http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/life/homepage/article_1806319.php). It will appear in a different form in my book Quiet, Please

When the patron told me members of the international community were watching her because she had knowledge of secret documents in the government's possession, and not to be surprised if federal investigators soon questioned me, I knew it was going to be an interesting night.
Working in a public library, I have come across a number of strange things and an even larger number of strange people.

The patron, a plump middle-aged woman with dirty hair but a surprisingly refreshing perfume, came into the library like anyone else. At first glance, one would never suspect her of being who she turned out to be. She spoke coherently and seemed courteous. She had the typical grandmother looks, and was very polite and friendly.

She went to her assigned computer, and I believed that would be it – she'd do whatever it was she needed to do. I was wrong. Five minutes later she came to me and said that something was wrong with the printer. I checked it out and indeed it hadn't printed her job. I apologized and asked her to print it again.

"It's no use," she finally told me. "They're just hacking into the computer – like they always do. They steal everything that I want to print. I don't know why they want this stuff anyway."

I didn't know then who "they'' were, but I assured her that they weren't.

She quickly rebuked me.

"You don't know how they are. They're good. And they're always doing this to me. They're all over the library – look around. Whenever someone wipes their head. That's one of them – they're speaking in code."

It was hot and many people were wiping sweat from their brows. In fact, I believed the woman herself had wiped her head a few times.

She did not speak loudly, but she spoke loud enough that anyone nearby could easily hear the conversation with little effort. The listeners included the men she undoubtedly believed were talking in code.

I persuaded her to print again and stood with her at the print station to make sure she did everything right. As we waited for her document to come on the screen, a pregnant woman soon stood behind us, waiting to print her own document. The older woman turned and became hostile, saying to the pregnant woman, "I know what you're doing. You're suspect. Everyone is suspect."

She then pointed at the pregnant woman: "This woman here has been watching what I've been doing since she got here. And the stomach's not fooling me – they probably hired her just because she's pregnant. But she's still suspect."

The pregnant woman backed away slowly and I did my best to apologize to her with my eyes.

The older woman looked at a small boy, who was wandering around the library with his mother, and said, "They've been training kids for years now. They used to only use them in other countries. But now they're using them in the U.S.; have been for at least two years."
It took us two more tries to get her documents to print. I saw them disappear from my print screen with my own eyes. When, at last, they printed, she switched her focus from hacked computers to the copy machine. She needed to make multiple copies of her document to, in her words, "be safe." She was able to recognize a national conspiracy against her. But she was not able to work the library's very basic copy machine.

She said the copy machine was slow and wanted to know who the library's vendor was. When I told her, she laughed to herself, then said: "I'm not surprised. They are funded by our government. They make copies of everything Xeroxed on their copiers, and forward it to analysis at the NSA. Every time a copy is made, it's stored on a tiny chip inside the copier."
She looked quickly around the library and said in an almost incoherent whisper, "I'll show you where the chip is if you want to see it."

I was curious, but didn't want the woman to think that I was taking her too seriously, so I declined the offer.

She nodded understandingly and said, "It's better you don't know where it is anyway."
She had more theories. The whole idea of religion of Islam was founded by a secret society of world leaders – George Washington and almost every other president had been in the group. So were Napoleon and Hitler. World War II was thought up during a game of poker between Churchill and Hitler. She went on to tell me why she came to the library. "I'd do it at home. But it's too dangerous, so I had to come here."

Her face became sad.

"And I had to leave my dog – my poor dog – in the car. It's their fault that my poor dog is suffering in my hot car. And I can't roll my windows down because they'll take him. They have before."

I thought about that poor dog's suffering as I watched her leave the library, then wait at the bus stop and get on the bus. There was no dog in a car. That settled it; I could be satisfied that the women was simply paranoid and crazy.

Then two young men with army buzzed heads and crisply ironed white T-shirts walked by and quietly said, pointing at the bus, "Let's go."

Everyone was "suspect" to the woman, and I imagined she had left believing I was innocent, but nonetheless would have to give an interview of what she said to me to the secret agents upon her departure.

Librarian TV

As if having a made-for-TV action movie isn't enough, now librarians have their very own sitcom. Austrailia will begin airing a television comedy about a library. From the looks of the preview below, it looks like The Office set in a library.

Email Basics

For the past few months I've been teaching an email basics class at my library. Despite the ease of access to computers, there are still millions who want email but just don't know how to get it. I have uploaded two handouts I use at the class that gives simplified instructions on how to get an email address, and what to do once you have it. If your library does not currently have handouts to give to patrons requesting email, feel free to use them or alter them as you see fit...just go to the page below to download the files:

http://www.scottdouglas.org/documents

Halloween Through the Ages

I've have made some bad costume choices over the years (like the year I went as a raggae man complete with dreads...it's really a wonder someone didn't shoot me). Luckily I can only find photos from the past few.

Gilligan has never looked so scary; what's the deal with that smile?

Probably the easiest costume I ever wore...it was basically normal library attire with a name badge that said "Ji'm." I spent the entire day having the following dialog with patrons/staff: "Why didn't you dress up?" "I did. I'm Jim from The Office." "This isn't a office?" "It's a TV show." Then they would walk away disappointed that I didn't try harder.

I put on so much make up to try and look pail. And yes, I actually owned that purple blazer before I wore this costume. I bought it during my "I want dress like Arsenio Hall" phase.

Halloween 2007

I love Halloween; it's my one chance a year to dress up and not have people say I'm weird. Each year I devote months of planning to deciding what I can wear that would be kind of library themed; usually I come up with nothing, and end up wearing the cheapest thing I find at the store.

This year I came up with somehting perfect for libraries! Mark Twain! It was cheap to make, and easy to put on. What wasn't to love? The only problem was apparently no one knows who Mark Twain is. All day long people came up to me saying, "What a great Groucho Marx's costume," "Cool, your Charlie Chaplin," or "That Eisnstein get-up makes you look so smart." It made me depressed! No one guessed my literary themed costume. Then a homeless, drunk man came into the library in drag, and said, "Who are you supposed to be? Mark Twain?" You can always count on the homeless to cheer you up!

Later in the day I took off the wig and got even more compliments by people who thought I was dressed either Amish or like a Orthodox Jew.

Sleeping On the Job

Vice President Dick Cheney was caught on camera sleeping during a briefing on the California fire situations. My first thought was what is that guys problem? When he's not blowing up countries or shooting friends in the face, he's sleeping on the job.

But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized well I've did that too. A few years back, on a rather slow day at the library, I began nodding off at the reference desk. I tried to fight it with a friendly game of FreeCell, but alas, I could only fight it for so long, and I fell asleep at the desk. I slept for over a half hour; when I finally woke up, I realized not a single person had even noticed I was asleep.