Athena’s Banquet

Today I:

• Observed preschool storytime.  We have an African drumming program coming up on the 17th, so my supervisor chose stories and songs about Africa as a tie-in.  We sang the Hippo-Pokey (“You splash right in the mud  and you squish your foot around…that’s how a hippo cools off.”), went on a lion hunt, and made animal masks out of paper plates, crayons, and yarn.  Some of the adults got really into it, and a few kids walked out with some spectacular masks!It can be pretty interesting to watch the dynamics of the kids during storytime.  We’ve been having HUGE crowds, upwards of 80 people each session (which isn’t intimidating to me AT ALL, no indeed…), and it’s pretty funny to watch the energy levels and general wriggliness change during some stories and songs.  My supervisor is very energetic in her presentation, and does a great job of holding attention, but there’s always such a mix of ages and development levels (even though  Wednesdays are intended for pre-schoolers (3-5ish), parents bring younger and older siblings or just drop in with their babies) that it’s hard to keep everybody focused at once.  The little speech she gives to the adults at the start of every session helps, reminding them to try to keep their kids reasonably quiet and not blocking other kids’ views definitely helps – the parents are GREAT about grabbing them when they get particularly het up and taking them out for a bit, or just sitting them on their laps and keeping them there.


• Worked the reference desk for a while.  Two interesting questions – one woman came in looking for information on and practice books for the TOEFL, specifically for the Kaplan and Barrons books.  We didn’t have any on the shelves, so I put a few on hold for her and put her in line for the very newest 2009 editions.The second interesting question came from an older woman who was writing her memoirs for her kids and grandkids.  She said she wanted to learn about techniques for writing a “holographic” view of events and that The Atlantic Monthly (I think it was this magazine, but I could be wrong) had a special section for pieces written in holographic view every month.  I hadn’t heard of this term at all, so I went through a pretty extensive reference interview to pin down what exactly she meant by this – apparently it’s a way of writing narrative nonfiction that presents everything the character is experiencing at that time, from the level of what they’re eating and wearing on a daily basis, the conversations their having, up to the level of political movements and events that are affecting them and their behavior, but I’m still not quite sure that it’s the most commonly used term for this style.  At any rate, I had taken a class on writing creative nonfiction in college, and we had used the ever-popular and very well-known guides to writing memoir, Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.  I’ve generally seen these two books recommended as THE places to go for memoirists, especially for laypeople who don’t necessarily want to be utterly bogged down in writerly minutia.  So I put them on hold for her, and then copped the ever-popular reference technique of writing down the call numbers and checking out the shelves to see if there was something helpful that I could actually send her home with today.  We had three good books on the shelf – one by Ray Bradbury, one by Norman Mailer (he won two Pulitzers; he must know what he’s doing), and one that was a more straightforward guide to writing narrative nonfiction.  She was very appreciative.Reference work is a LOT easier when you have background knowledge.  Like, a lot.  Thanks, Professor Pei!


• And sometimes it’s really rough.  A teen girl came up to the desk looking for a music album; we didn’t have it on the shelf so I went to put it on hold for her.  As part of this process, we always double-check to make sure that the method of contacting the patron in the computer is still the best way to get in touch with them.  She had an address in there but was no longer living there, so I asked what her current address was.  She handed over a card from a youth shelter nearby, and I started entering the new address in when the other person on desk tried to confirm that this was her actual living address, not just a mailing address.”Is this your home?”
  “It’s the only home I have.”

  I feel like there are some terms that are loaded with emotional freight sometimes—home, mother/father, husband/wife—and it’s something that I’ve been working on; don’t assume a heteronormative two-parent family structure; don’t assume that a woman who comes in with kids is their mom; don’t assume kids have a mom or a dad at home; don’t assume moms are the ones cooking and cleaning and dads are off earning money; don’t assume kids are siblings; don’t assume they’re at a certain reading level based on their age and appearance.  Don’t assume.  And to some extent we have to ask for certain pieces of information – “Is this where you’re living right now?” – but there are ways to do it that are less emotionally weighted.  I don’t think you ever get it right all the time – I saw long hair on a young patron once and and thought he was a girl and um…yeah, he wasn’t – but I think you have to try to take into account what your words might mean to them if the patron doesn’t fall in line with the easy assumptions.  Everybody’s welcome at the library.  Everyone should be made to feel that way.  We choose our collection to represent our population, and we should choose our words that way too.