Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Which Contains One of the Infamous Library Stories

You can't help but love the week assignments are due for the children's-literature courses.
More specifically, the day before and the day of the deadline.


SO MANY panicked college girls in the library's youth department.
One apparently imprinted on me because I was the first staff person she saw, bless her, and she kept coming back no matter how many other desks I sent her to. For the purposes of this post I shall name her Boots, as her fuzzy boots were the first defining feature I noticed; the poor thing seemed more confused every time I saw her.

First question was easy enough: "Where do you have the like, comic-book type picture books?"
Youth Graphic Novels rack, why yes it is quite full, and don't expect everything to be quite in alphabetical order.

Next: "Where do you find books about, like, family relations, or parents, and stuff?"
There was no youth librarian around (most likely she was helping one of the other half-dozen panicked college girls who were milling about), and the girl didn't really seem up to doing a keyword search on the computers, so I referred her to the book list of various subjects that the youth department has on hand for cases such as this. It was already lying open in the right spot on the desk anyhow, due to aforementioned  surge of college students all on the same scavenger hunt. The list occupied her for quite some time, but then it came to actually retrieving the items ....


"Can you help me find this call number? I don't know what I'm doing!"
Normally a straightforward task, but we hit some snags.

Boots: I've looked through everything, I can't even find the .92 ones.
Me: Did it say it was checked in?
Boots: Yeah.
Me: Okay, let's see. The 591's are over here, so this is the right place. The .92's are these right here. [points at the somewhat hastily-written call number on her paper] Is this an A, that it starts with?
Boots: Uhm, yeah.
Me: Okay. Yeah, I don't see that author here. So you were looking for a book about animals? Ocean animals, sea creatures? [points to the other books in this section]
Boots: I don't know! I dunno, it was just a book without words [same thing last semester's students had to look for]. Would you still have it shelved over here, if it was a book without words?
Me: Well, we don't really sort them that way; if this is the call number, it should be here -- wait. [notices a letter "E" sitting a ways to the left of the call number she's scribbled down] Is this part of the number, is this an E?
Boots: Yeah?
Me: Um ... huh. [it's now too long for the 3-letter author ID, but the E doesn't make sense as a collection marker unless she meant ETR, easy-to-read]. Did it say it was in the easy-books section? [blank stare] Do you remember the title?
Boots: I don't know, I just have this number.
Me: ...Okay, how about we get someone to look this up again for you and see if we can find out where it is.

My mention of the E reminded her of a more pressing question, however:

Boots: So does the E, this E [points at another call number jotted down above the troublesome one] mean they're over there? [points at the picture books section].
Me: Yes.
Boots: So, how do those, like ... work? 'Cuz I'm looking for like, "Sendak," and I can't find anything.
Me: Well, they're roughly sorted in the bins by first letter of the alphabet, so they're not in exact alphabetical order; but the bins are labeled with the letter range you'll find there. So you're looking for -- what again?
Boots: Maurice Sendak, it has to be something by him. So like, it says there are like a bunch of this one checked in, SEN. It's Where the Wild Things Are.
Me: Okay, well let's go over here then ... see the "SE" on these? It should be in one of these four bins, in either the top or the bottom. Now this one right here is a Where the Wild Things Are, but it's the movie storybook.
Boots: That's fine.
Me: Okay, but this one's not the original book, is that going to work? It's a picture book based on the movie "Where the Wild Things Are" that was made later.
Boots: Oh that's okay, it just has to be by Maurice Sendak.
Me: Weeeeellll ....
Boots: [looking inside] Oh, is it not? Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't see it anywhere, it said there were a lot of them.
Me: Was it this version of the book?
Boots: I don't think so.
Me: Okay, well, here's the actual Where the Wild Things Are, down here.
Boots: Oh, great!

When I saw her again she had a pretty good-sized pile of books amassed, but still looked lost.

Boots: I need to find a book with a copyright of 2010 or later. How would I do that?
Me: Any book?
Boots: Yeah.
Me: ...But a picture book?
Boots: Oh, well yeah.
Me: Okay, because those we don't have a New Books shelf for.
Boots: Yeah.
Me: But any picture book?
Boots: Yeah.
Me: Well, when you do a search on the computers you can sort by publication date, so...
Boots: [gives me a sort of blank look, starts going toward the book bins]
Me: Or, okay, you can just grab one that looks new and check the date. Like, here. Rrralph, that one's copyrighted 2011.
Boots: Oh ... okay! [pages through] Uh, but does this look like it's one for ages 5-12?
Me: ...Um, well, that depends; so it has to--
Boots: Sorry, yeah, it has to be for ages 5-12.
Me: Well, like I said, you could just look for the newer-looking ones, or you can go over here and search for something, and the search results can be sorted by date ....
Boots: [grabs one, points at the copyright date] This one says 2010. So will that work?
Me: ... Ah, don't know, is that what they told you to look--
Boots: I mean, "copyright 2010," is that what that means?
Me: [not quite sure what she's asking here] Yes, "copyright 2010" means ... the copyright ... is from 2010 ....
Boots: Okay, good!
Me: So, did you find that one without words?
Boots: No.
Me: Let's go to the Info desk and see if they can help you with that one; maybe it was checked in recently. They can help you look in some of the other areas of the library where we keep things before they're shelved. So, this is the Information  desk ... oh, and there's the youth librarian too! Okay, so we need to look up a book.
Info: Alright, what's the title?
Me: [turns to Boots] So, did you get the ...?
Boots: No.
Me: Okay, do you still have the call number with you?
Boots: Uhm ... darn, let me go see. [runs off]

At that point my shift was almost over anyhow, so I handed her over to the excellent care of the youth librarian, silently wishing them both some much-needed luck.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

In Which I Go To The Avengers And Also The Moon

I don't exactly feel qualified to *review* this movie and do it any justice, as I'm not a Marvel connoisseur (let me just pause here for a moment to exult over the fact that I spelled "connoisseur" correctly the first time for once), but I will say I enjoyed it. Since I've hardly gotten around to seeing any of the individual superheroes' movies, why was I looking forward to this one so much? Good reviews aside, Joss Whedon and Iron Man were not the only reasons ... but I'd be lying if I said those didn't factor in. 

I mean, c'mon, Stark's like a scrawny obnoxious Batman, gets the best theme music, suits up in Cyclones colors ... what's not to love? 

Okay, some of those may be Ames-specific, but two out of three ain't bad.

Also, since about half of the guy's screen time is as a GIANT FACE with some computer-y stuff around it (for most of which time I managed not to think, "BuffyBot?") ...

Tony! How is your money?

...you can't help but notice what pretty eyes Robert Downey Jr. has. I mean, I am seriously a little envious of those eyelashes.

As for Joss Whedon, well, I've already managed to reference his work once and I haven't even gotten to the part where I'm referencing his work, so, there's that. Grr. Argh. Speaking of, when Thor (whose lines were funny for the opposite reason of Stark's -- he's got such a dead serious expression and delivery) is describing the Bilgesnipe (do you not have those?), despite the scales I can't help but picture it as Dru's chaos demon. All slime and antlers, y'know.

Anyhow, it's a fun movie, just watch it. Whether you know what's going on or not it's tons of fun visually -- in action and fine details as well as in more "posed" scenes like the Avengers on the street or the final remnant of the name on the Stark building. My mom watched it, didn't realize that Bruce Banner = The Hulk until like halfway through the movie, and she still loved it. As with any movie with source material, your biggest concern would probably be if you go in knowing *too* much about what's going on. When consistency/accuracy is at odds with mass appeal, guess which one invariably wins out?
Oh, and of course, watch the news monitors near the end for the "superheroes, in New York?" cameo.

And finally, let us have a moment of silence for all of the space-eels who died being awesome.
That's a moraaaaay

Well. In other news, the moon was pretty last night. Wait wait, I'm going somewhere with this.
I'm still figuring out my new camera, so most of the time I'll just set it to Auto and hope for the best. Because of this, at first all of my pictures were like this:

So the following dialogue ensued.

ME: Camera, why you gotta be this way? You were EXPENSIVE for a point-and-shoot, man! You've got like, 25x zoom! Is this really the best you can do?
CAMERA: Maaaaaybe.
ME: Is that so?
CAMERA: I'm not tellling....
ME: You know what, enough of this. MANUAL OVERRIDE!
CAMERA: !!!
ME: [presses random buttons]
CAMERA: Ow, wait, stoppit! Fine, fine, this is how well I can actually see it, okay? Are you happy now?



ME: Dang, Camera, why couldn't you have just started with that?
CAMERA: I dunno, didn't see the point. Now it just looks like a rock instead of a glowy rock. What could you even use this picture for?
ME: I can ... I ... I'll show you Camera, I'm gonna put it on a BLOG!
CAMERA: 'K, whatever, can you put my lens cap on now? It's getting late and my battery's low.
ME: We still have a long way to go, Camera.

I like to think it was secretly trying to teach me how to use the Manual function, though. I mean, I'm still clueless, but it's a nice sentiment.