For the last year now I've been a library volunteer. I mostly work on Saturdays, though for the last year I also worked either Wednesday or Friday due to staffing shortages. Fully staff of volunteers and school workload has gotten me back to Saturday's only.
I usually listen to an audiobook while I shelve the books back to where they belong, or shift books down shelves to make room. It is a pretty good workout, shelving, but I wish I had a couple more arms because you need two arms to move the books apart, an arm to hold the book your shelving, and another arm to hold the books you're carrying. 6 hours of shelving is a pretty good workout and I get sore muscles from it.
On an average day I pull the hold list, remove the expired holds, then shelve books from the prior day. There's usually around 3-4 carts of these. Yesterday, because I was told they were fully staffed on Friday's now so didn't need me, there were 7 carts to shelve when I arrived at noon. They occupied as much floor space as the entire front desk, and were about 300 books. Once shelving is done I polish CDs for an hour, then shelve books for the remaining hours until my quitting time. I work around 6 hours a day. I'm well suited for it. I'd like to be paid. Getting paid is why I'm now studying to be a librarian.
Why Chuckles? My ex-wife used to mockingly call me that. She often chuckled herself so perhaps this was an unconscious self-appellation misapplied. I am also Chuckles because I find comedy and parody my preference while working or exercising, such as Discworld by Terry Pratchett. I strongly recommend reading, watching, and listening to the series. All the books have audiobooks, you see. I find it hard to cynical about people reading, unlike some of the paid librarians. They are already making a choice for literacy in a widely admitted post-literate culture. Their reading makes them better people through a personal willingness to educate. Yes, some people come in for free Wifi and post to their facebook before returning to a sleeping bag in the woods or the homeless shelter, but lots of people want either education or entertainment, and that's really the library's job. I feel like the attached computer center detracts from the library since it forced a local net cafe, which charged money, to close. Now the library does the same thing for free and it wastes a lot of time and security efforts out of the budget that COULD have gone to books and media more appropriate to library services. Computers are cheap. Buy your own, hobo. Sorry if that sounds rude, but really, they are. If they have money for hooch, they have money for a Chrome netbook (thin laptop with wifi).
I plan to post a lot of book reviews and comments on my education as a library technician and eventually as a full librarian through first Cuesta College (San Luis Obispo online) and then San Jose State University online master's program. My goal is to be PAID to be a librarian. I will move to the job since the local library system has multiple important problems I won't get into.
I suspect that since I'm a Republican Conservative male and I respect libraries as cultural institutions of the First World as proof a place is civilized, I'm more employable in places like Weed, Susanville, Red Bluff, Redding, or other small English speaking farm/fishing/timber towns with roots in the land, have been overlooked by tax and spend Communists, and have learned to get by through determination and faith in hard work. Places with retired seniors, too. Folks with the same politics and language as I have. This does mean dealing with rural poverty, but that's part of the job. Not getting worked up over those folks, and not escalating emotional instability into hostility is really important.
Dealing with unstable people who walk into libraries should probably be taught in school but I haven't seen a course like that listed. It also means dealing with people raised to be polite, and welcome those who respect farming and ranching (like me), and the elderly, which I have pretty good skills with. Its a little odd, but being able to teach modern technology to the elderly is a useful skill to have. Old people often have money. And most of them read. So they care about libraries, just need some confidence with their e-readers and smart phones when the grandkids aren't handy.
I will be posting book reviews here as well as commentary on my classes and thoughts on the career.
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