Thursday, July 1, 2010

Mistaken for a Librarian

I went in today for my first session of volunteering for the Summer Reading Program at the library. I originally was going to have my first day tomorrow, but the Children's Librarian called, asking if I could come in to help train a young man who has never done it before. And I guess it's a good thing I agreed, because that young man never showed up to volunteer.
Since it was the morning shift, it was relatively quiet. A few kids came in to turn in their reports on the books they read. One of them had read a book named Sophie the Awesome, and she told me she really liked the character. Her sister really liked a book called The Pigeon Wants a Dog, because she too wants a puppy. Then I gave them each their prizes, which right now are little rubber sharks. (Why sharks I'm not sure.) And I signed a few extra families up for the program.
One of the things that is a little strange is that people often treat me as if I am a librarian, which I am not. Several adults approached me today with questions. I can answer some of the more general ones, like where certain genres of books are located, but today a Mom asked me where the Junie B. Jones books were. The library is organized alphabetically by author, and since I haven't the foggiest notion who the author of the books are, I couldn't tell her. And I don't have access to the computer system that the librarians have, so I couldn't even look something like that up. I'm not totally sure how to feel about the whole mistaken for a librarian thing, since I don't think I look like a librarian, just a student.
When I'm not doing stuff, I sit and read. I'm still slowly working through the essays on feminism I've wanted to read. What's taking a long time is not so much the reading but the follow up stuff. I find that I'm always having great and interesting thoughts that I write down in my notebook. And then I'm slowly making lists of books and people to look up to get a better sense of the other secondary and primary sources that went into a particular essay.

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