Tag: librarians

empathy, information, kindness, librarians, strangers

The Ones Who Call

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Answering the phone at work is one of my favorite activities. I already like talking on the phone, which is more than many people can say. However, when people call in to the public library (note: I did not say THEIR public library, since we get scores of calls from far, far away), there are good chances the encounter will be positive. This is because:

  1. The caller is likely to be older. Maybe they are physically restricted and can’t make it in, but gosh darn it, they are pleasant on the phone. All it takes is a sweet old lady calling me ‘dear’ and telling me I’ve been ‘so very helpful’ and I am struck with a good mood for at least two hours.
  2. Often, a mobile customer is asking a brief question, ie “are you open?” or “do you have [this book]/a color printer/paper federal tax forms?” and in a ten second interaction, I can provide a solution to their information need. One reason I’m a librarian is that I actively enjoy answering questions and sharing information.
  3. The library employee maintains a healthy amount of control in the event that a customer becomes demeaning or inappropriate. While this does not happen often, in person or on the phone, I treasure the ability to not have to endure verbal abuse for longer than it takes me to say, “sir/ma’am, if you continue to disrespect me like this, I will hang up.”
    • My wise and talented colleague taught me a librarian lesson (our version of life lessons) one day with a customer who wanted to babble with no perceived purpose. She told the man politely, “I’m sorry, I have a customer here and I need to hang up.” And then she did! It was crazy how simple it was to reclaim her time.

That said, phone interactions can go south in many ways. You never know who will call in. There is one frequent caller who asks for various conversions of inches to millimeters and for phone numbers to businesses in the United Kingdom. It is not her questions that rub me the wrong way, but her snappish, pushy tone, and the way she does not believe what I report to her. There are weeks where patients in psychiatric facilities call us and we have to encourage them to call priests or pastors because we cannot answer their questions about sin and forgiveness. There are teens who clearly have not used their cell phones for the purposes of communicating voice-to-voice with other human beings, and people who get angry at us because we can’t hear them due to their poor cell reception.

When I worked in Youth Services, we received many phone calls from one mother whose son visited the library for many hours each school night, and Saturdays, and Sundays. He did not have a cell phone, and she knew to find him there. She called once and asked for her son and when I said sure, I will go get him, she lashed into me. “Why do you know my kid?” The thing about librarians who work with kids is that we get to know them in a safe space: what they like, what they read and what magic makes them who they are. We care about them. This is what makes good youth librarians good at their jobs. I told her that I knew him because he was there every day, and she lost it. She screamed at me about how I was judging her for having to work and not being home with her child. She told me she was tired of us at the library and how if we thought her kid was there too much, she wouldn’t let him go there after school. In between saying that that was not necessary, that of course he is welcome and we all really liked him, she projected all of her guilt and single-parenting issues directly onto me. Though I was conscious I didn’t deserve her misplaced anger, I was still rattled. When she was done berating me, I brought him to the phone to talk to her. Then I took a break to walk it off.

And then there is thank-you-for-taking-my-call guy (TYFTMCG). He earned his moniker because he begins each and every call by verifying the library employee’s name and then thanking us for taking his call. If he is not hard of hearing, he does a very convincing portrayal of someone who is, and he is notorious at our library. An elderly gentleman, he never visits our location. Just calls. All the time.  The first time I had him on the line, he verified my name. “Emory?” “My name is Emily. How can I help you?” “Ah, Emory. Great. Thank you for taking my call.” There is no one on our staff who he does not irritate. After the second call, I memorized the last four digits of his phone number (0241), so I could at least know I was headed into the Emory phone calls, mustering some degree of preparedness.

He asks inane, often un-answerable trivia questions that feel like when your mom asks you “what restaurant did we go to that one time?” or “what is that thing you were talking about that one time when we were at [that restaurant]?” He asks us to repeat our guesses around a dozen times, and often, to spell them, often a dozen times. On one such call, he asked me the name of places where pregnant girls go for counsel. This led to me near-shouting “pregnancy crisis centers!?! Abortion clinics?!!” over and over again. He also doesn’t accept your responses, which means he denies you have found the answer the whole call, and often calls back to try to speak to a different employee.

Many people have competing theories about whether he is annoying on purpose/calls us for crossword clues or Jeopardy questions, but my theory is that he calls us because he probably has dementia and forgets things he has heard about. I believe we are his external memory.

I have been thinking about this man and that boy lately. No one had seen the kid or his mother in a while, and apparently the overdue notices had come back with a forwarding address in another town, where I hope he has a new library with a great youth team. There were many dormant months when we received no TYFTMCG calls. When he called again, I was glad to hear his voice, but I’m worried that we are nearing a time when he won’t call anymore.

The phone is an exercise in kindness, in dedicating your energy to communicating with someone whose body language is absent. One bad customer service call can essentially convince anyone that the person on the other side of the phone is a fool. During my most recent shift, I returned a customer’s voicemail, and concluded my message on her machine by asking her to give us a call back. I started to give the phone number as I have done hundreds of times, paused for an awkward length, and had to conclude by stating I literally forgot our phone number, but she found it before so to try us again.

I aim to grant people as much benefit of the doubt as I hope she gave me listening to that message.

I hope she doesn’t think I’m a terrible employee. I hope she chuckles at my silliness, or understands that everyone has those days. I hope she grants that there are many reasons why the employee could have forgotten. Maybe, for example, she woke up at 6am after 5 hours of sleep, not able to fall back for another couple hours because she is moving in two weeks, breaking up with her lovely boyfriend, and her mind won’t stop, and she was in pain because her neck/shoulder muscles froze from all the tension she’s carrying but she didn’t want to call out to her very-part-time job and she is trying to make the best of the day, though she can neither remember the library’s phone number nor turn her head.

So, yeah. Conversing on the phone is a solid indicator of who a person is in a moment in time. Call your loved ones, call your libraries, call anyone you want to vet before meeting. And be kind.

librarians, strangers

THE Library

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I did not grow up with the library profession on a pedestal, and am not entirely sure when in my adult life I learned that there was a true, physical Library of Congress. My school and public libraries were great–I learned how to pronounce “subtle” when requesting Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife and sobbed while I finished Where the Red Fern Grows in these respective locations. It just didn’t occur to me that someone at The Top needed to decide how to categorize ALL THE BOOKS (and store them for posterity).

Many librarians treat the LoC (as it is – affectionately? – called) as our profession’s Mecca, and my experience was decidedly NOT religious.

Yes, y’all, this is the road trip alluded to in my rant against the concept of “iSchools.” The story you’ve all been waiting for!

I waffled* on whether to go on the “field trip” to tour the Library of Congress. On the one hand, I felt like I “should” go. Librarians are “supposed to” view the LoC with reverence, awe and appreciation for all the organization. Plus, I hadn’t been to Washington DC since my attendance at the Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity back in 2010, which I spent throwing up in a porta-potty, violently hungover, scaring my mom so badly she told me to go to the hospital. (I am NOT a drinker, so I shouldn’t pretend to be.) I needed to wash away that experience and replace it with something far more professional.

And yet. Lester was the one driving the minivan. And as previously discussed, Lester was, in a word, insufferable.

A glutton for punishment, I decided that a behind-the-scenes tour of the LoC would outweigh the social pain. I was not correct, BUT that little circle at the center of the photo up there has a SPIRAL STAIRCASE underneath it from the non-majestic basement and I WALKED UP IT AND EMERGED INTO THAT BIG BEAUTIFUL READING ROOM.

That was the lone highlight.

The trip started at Lester’s house, at 6am. That is never a good time to be awake, in my opinion, but I consoled myself with the thought of napping for the four hour drive.

This plan was thwarted by a full-length album by the dude who sings “Les Champs-Elysees” on FULL VOLUME. In addition to being a jerky driver, Lester was sleepy and needed energy. He turned over the driving to his poor wife after 45 minutes. She was stuck driving the rest of the way, and did not change the music for the entire FOUR HOURS. Champs-Elysees is a grand song for high school French class, but dear lord, the rest of the CD went downhill fast. This early-morning torture was THE road trip party foul of all road trip party fouls.

The return trip was even worse because it was at the end of the following day, so everyone in the car, including the chattiest person in our program who happened to sit by me after we had slept in the same hotel  room the night before, was awake and talking. And talking. And talking. And talking. About what, I have blocked out in the years since, but all I know is I had had enough of these people even before the tour of the Shakespeare Library. The conversation was the only thing I could imagine worse than the French CD. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, I have several witnesses who can back me up that on another occasion, as we tried to work on projects nearby during a class work period, this person waxed poetic for THIRTY MINUTES WITHOUT RECEIVING ANY QUESTIONS WHICH IS TO SAY WITHOUT ANY ENGAGEMENT FROM THE “CO-CONVERSATIONALISTS” about breakfast foods they did and did not like, and why. And WHY. Why???? WHY!??!?!?!

It is with people so blissfully out of touch with what conversation is that I have to question: how can someone BE so un-self-aware? I understand that people on the Autism spectrum are varying levels of incapable of “reading” social cues, and many people in the library world hover somewhere on or adjacent to the spectrum. In Lester’s case, how much of the elitism would be his “fault,” if he is or is not on the spectrum? How much is just his personality? Exactly how much can I blame him for his rudeness?

In youthful classmate’s case, when will they learn that beyond middle school, your circle of friends or the brunch table, no one cares at all whatsoever about your affinity for pancakes but deep hatred for waffles. And if they did care, they would show you by asking questions or replying in kind. (Yes, your preference is bizarre and contradictory because waffles and pancakes are the same batter, after all. Yes. We know.)

This was how I learned not to accept rides of extended periods of time from people I don’t like. It was also how I started deciding to do activities because I wanted to, not because I thought I should. Painful learning, but essential.

Road trips are better with friends, family, and audiobooks. And pancakes and waffles are BOTH my jam, IF you wanted to know. Please, tell me your thoughts on the matter!

 

 

*As I am known to do with any decision of any magnitude. Also, LOL waffled.. See what I did there?

information, judgment, kindness, librarians, strangers

What does it mean to be an “Information Professional?”

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A recent trend in graduate programs for librarianship is to take out the word “librarian.” Leaving just the “ship.” Jk jk. What universities are actually doing is transitioning to “iSchools:” Information Schools (for those of you who prefer less trendy jargon). The title of the degree once was Library Science, then was Library and Information Science, and it seems now to be morphing towards just Information Science.

I, thankfully, could choose what I wanted my degree to be called. Since I don’t think “Library” is a dirty word, I named my degree Master Library [and] Information Science. My degree is almost two years old, knows its ABCs through A-L, loves avocado, and is cute as a button.

iSchool is a stupid name for a school.*

First and foremost, iSchool looks like it is trying to be an Apple product. Jump off that corporate bandwagon, universities! Though we love iPhones and iWatches and iWhateverElses, you as an institution of higher learning should be better than that!

Second, no one outside our profession understands what being a professional of information means. Libraries, yes, are changing–as are the skills librarian has, and how people are interacting with information–but leave the degree alone. If you are a database programmer, a medical/law librarian, a data manager or anything else where your relationship to information is a wrangler, organizer, streamliner or finder/retriever… you’re using those librarian skills.

Here is a TRUE, not-too-brief narrative about what I think of when I hear the term information professional:

At the orientation for our program, AKA first interaction I would have with my future classmates, representatives from library school clubs stood up and made pitches for interested parties to attend a meeting/ join their ranks. A joiner by nature, this new pool of groups to join excited me, but I didn’t know how to balance that with the questionably-less-healthy skepticism (cynicism masquerading as skepticism) also in my nature wherein I threw shade at everything and everyone in grad school on a whim. In one case, this disdain was justified.

One middle-aged career-changer began his pitch by saying, AND I QUOTE: “If you frequently find yourself the smartest person in the room, this is the club for you.”

I won’t even address the multitude of ways you could convey the same principles (intelligence, presumed love of Jeopardy) in a non-asshole series of words. But this dude had clearly thought this exact series of words in many a room. And he did not feel the need to disguise his assholeishness.

Dear reader, I wish I could say I stood up in front of the seminar room of my new peers and told him how smug and obnoxious this sounded.

In real life, however, I did not call him out on this ridiculousness. My mouth gaped open for far too long, in disbelief. After all, I was in the same room with him right now; did this man therefore believe he was smarter than everyone else?

In a practiced and particular mode of Librarian Acceptance (which I do not yet possess), however, this was more or less waved away with a “well, that’s Lester** for ya.”

Unclear whether anyone joined his club, nor whether they did so because of this statement or in spite of it.

Lester’s business cards probably identify him as an “Information Professional.”

In my [the real] world, I try to avoid thinking I am better than other people because I am smart. (Note: this has become increasingly hard since November 2016. But, I would argue that the prominent draw pulling many people toward political views diametrically opposed to mine is actually the lack of empathy, rather than intelligence–or a combination of the two.)

At any rate, I know I did next to nothing to earn the gift of my brain, though I appreciate and constantly try to stimulate and expand it. I try to withhold judgment and act with empathy and genuine (not condescending) kindness.

Because there have been plenty enough times where I have a migraine and stutter my words, or can’t make a decision whether to buy the proposed reusable bag at checkout, or just generally act uncomfortable and awkward around people I don’t know. Some people judge and condescend, and some are patient and don’t look for ways to look down on people. I aim to be the former, but occasionally I don’t catch my skeptic instincts in time.

All I’m saying is call a spade a spade, call a library degree a library degree, and don’t call yourself a [very stable] genius!

 

 

 

*I don’t mean ‘stupid’ in a lacking intelligence way…. I apologize to the Political Correctness police, and acknowledge that this is slang and suggests I act in the direct opposite way of what I claim in this blog. I just mean it’s trendy and tedious and silly, not what universities should be about.

**Lester is not his real name. He will likely show up in a future blog for his role in the worst road trip of my life.

coworkers, librarians

Librarians as Control Freaks

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My friend is a 20-something living his best life and paying down his student loans. He loves expanding his mind, doesn’t want to spending money on books, lives around the block from the public library, AND YET, he still does not have a card. This makes me angry.

Upon further probing (aka nagging), he asks, “What is the checkout process like?”

I dial back, wait a second, realizing there is more to this story than laziness. I then say, “what do you mean?” (This is simply the best non-reaction question, and I recommend it to people like me who tend to react by jumping down peoples’ throats when I hear something I don’t like. It stalls, keeps the other person talking, and gets you more specific information so you can proceed more calmly.)

He went on to describe the checkout process at his high school library as tedious, complicated and stressful, under the watchful/psychotic eye of his high school librarian.

“Yeah, the public library isn’t like that. You just take your book and your card up to the person at the desk, and she tells you the due date and to have a great day.”

He was relieved. Huh. Was this “library police” myth real after all? I thought my dad was the only one who had this recurring dream, but it turns out some librarians scare people away. To empathize with the librarian, many school library budgets are THIN to non-existent and librarians want to focus on keeping the materials they already have so they can spend their money on new materials. This avoiding paying for replacements might manifest in making the process overly complicated, or putting the fear of God into the kids.

Some librarians are mean. The vast majority, though, are–and this may come as a surprise–kind, thoughtful control freaks.

When I joined the profession, I knew I liked to catalog things in such a way that I could find them, but it didn’t click that all people I work with would also like order, occasionally to an unhealthy level.

Suffice to say, I learned. I learned when I received an email from a colleague indicating that I “should not have moved some papers out of a binder,” when I had set them 1 centimeter away, Directly beneath said binder because the little flap holding said papers was tearing from overuse. (Save the flap! Vive la binder!)

I learned when someone stood over my shoulder, watching me pack books to mail and asked me in the same tone as you would ask a child to tell you the next step in tying her shoes, “and where are you sending it?” following my (correct) response with, “and how will you label it?” ………. Ma’am, I’m a grown woman. One who understands the concept of mail. I see you with your bazillions of pre-printed labels, ready-to-stick.

I picked the correct one (because it wasn’t hard) while wondering why, since her assumption was that I was going to do it wrong, she chose to treat me in so condescending a manner rather than just remind me or ask me if I remembered where to find the labels.

And then, because I’m passive-aggressive, maybe not unlike the email-writer, I’m writing this instead of Directly confronting the issue.

To my boyfriend, I seem maniacal and obsessive-compulsive with putting household items “where they go.” In the library circle, I am one of the more laid back ones, because I do not hold procedure or organization as the highest priority. (GASP! Library foul!) That #1 honor goes to the humans and my relationships with them; no one likes a rude coworker! So unnecessary.

I know there are people like this in all lines of work, at all rungs on the career ladder, who like to make other people feel small in order to feel more important or smarter.

Kind librarians do not do this. While we’re at it, please know that librarians are MUCH more than control freaks. When applied humanely, this is an asset rather than a vice, because it means we know where to find what you need. Librarians have superpowers. We are generalists, we are eye-openers, community builders, granters of access, innovators and teachers.

But if you want to see us lose our shit, hide something we are planning on using in the next few hours.

bookmess
Librarians may twitch until they are allowed to organize this.