It's been awhile...

This school year has been a humdinger; we introduced (and by we, I mean mostly me) Accelerated Reader, which has had the net result of adding at least 3 more jobs for me to do in the time that I have, requiring me to move my lunch back by an hour and a half, and severely limiting my bathroom breaks (which wouldn't be such a big deal if I wasn't pregnant). To quote Calvin, "the days are just packed." Which is usually better than the alternative; I'd much rather have a busy day that passes quickly than one that drags slowly by.

But with all this stuff, I haven't had as much time as I'd like to do things, such as promoting the new class sets we received when we ordered new textbooks last year. I've tried, but honestly, not much has happened with them. So imagine my delight when I receive an email from a high school English teacher, saying that she's going to be starting The Great Gatsby with her class next week, and can she check out 25 copies.

Until I look in the catalog and see that we have only 1 copy of The Great Gatsby. That's right, it is not one of the 67 titles we have a class set of. This teacher did not in any way indicate to me, when the class sets were being selected last year, that she could use a set of The Great Gatsby for her class. No other school in The District has a class set of it, either, which means we can't beg to borrow one of theirs.

And now I feel useless.

Ugh. Shifting

Weeding is done, and within the timeframe I set for myself. Wheeee! I've spent yesterday and most of today shifting the non-fiction collection. Now that it's been pared down a bit, I should be able to make room to display my biography collection a little better.

For non-librarians, shifting is where you move books around on the shelves to make room elsewhere, or to consolidate after a weeding leaves big blanks on the shelves (as in my case). Sounds easy, right? Riiiight. This is how it goes.

Pick up a handful of books; move them to where they go. Repeat. Individually, the handfuls of books weigh somewhere between half a pound and three pounds, roughly. Not so bad, right? But you do it again, and again, and again. And the books aren't just moving laterally. They're moving from above your head to down around your ankles, or vice versa. They're moving around corners.

And the moving them isn't even the tricky bit. The tricky bit is holding on to the books you've just placed while you reach for the new handful. If the books you've just placed fall down, they can slip out of order, get lost in the back of the shelves (my shelves are not "real" library shelves; they're about two and a half times as deep as they need to be. Stuff gets lost back there), fall off the shelves onto the floor (or your toe). But you also have to be careful when taking the new handful of books, because the shelf you take from can have all those things happen to it, too, if the books there fall down. And when the shelves are right above one another, it's not so bad, but when they're in completely different bookcases...well, it's a nightmare of Herculean proportions.

And then, I neared the end of the shifting, and saw that I hadn't quite done enough to free up the shelf space that I needed. So I went back to the beginning, and shifted again, and got almost to the end, and saw that I was still going to end up with about 20 books that still needed a home. I started to do just a bit more shifting, but eventually I threw up my hands and said a great big "screw it!" My shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my neck hurts. I feel like someone's been pounding on my upper body with a big stick. I am going to vegetate at my computer for the last half-hour of school today, because, by God, it's Friday. I am going to spend the weekend lazily reading the new books I picked up yesterday, plus the ones waiting for me at the library. And I am going to do my best to not think about the fact that I have to start inventory and textbook check-in next week.

More Weeding Quotes

• "The first construction crew would arrive on the moon sometime during the period 2000-2005. By the year 2010, the base would be able to support 30 human beings for months at a time."
• "President-elect George Bush, President Ronald Reagan, and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev take a break for sightseeing during the Soviet leader's visit to New York in December 1988. Recent advances between the two superpowers in the reduction of nuclear arms have contributed to a thawing of the Cold War."
• "Political changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which have started a movement toward greater personal freedom and the development of market-based economies, could profoundly alter political and economic relationships between the Communist world and the West."
• Referring to National Guard entrance requirements:
  "The good moral character requirement establishes standards to screen out persons likely to become disciplinary problems. Standards cover court convictions, juvenile delinquency, arrests, drug use, homosexuality, deviant behavior, etc."
• "'We'd also like to ban all smoking on short flights.'"
• "The minimum drinking age in most states is now 21."
• Discussing the future of police work:
  "Patrol cars will be equipped wwith computers so that, while remaining behind the wheel, an officer can instantly call up needed data on a suspicious person or vehicle."
• "Another use of computers is networking. By using modems to link computers through telephone lines, people can make their computers "talk" to one another."
• "A letter of introduction is always handed to you unsealed. It is correct for you to seal it at once in the presence of the author...But the obligation of a written introduction is so strong that only illness or absence can excuse the recipient from asking you to her house--either formally or informally."

And a title:

Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

Weeding Quote of the Day

"A few years ago, Michael J. Fox starred in a movie entitled Back to the Future..."

For reference, that movie came out 3 years after I was born.

Huh. Suddenly I don't feel so old.

Busy, busy

Yesterday was good, even despite facing it on only 5 hours of sleep. For the curious, I don't recommend spending the weekend doing an 18-hour round trip for a friends wedding, especially not when all the driving takes place between 5 p.m. and 3 a.m. Especially not if you then have to slide back into a routine that requires you to be up at 5 a.m. on Monday. But I didn't snap and kill any kids, nor did I drive off the road from sleep deprivation, so I guess it's all good.

And yeah, yesterday was good. Busy, in the way that makes me feel that I am a useful and productive member of the school. I know a lot of librarians have it rough, but the teachers here are almost pathetically grateful to have someone help them.

The high point was when I explained (to some notable troublemakers) how only half the globe is illuminated so as to demonstrate roughly which half of the world is in daylight at the present time, and how it rotates on its own to keep that illusion. Demonstrating how the axial tilt changes throughout the year, leaving the North and South poles in the dark or light, enthralled them.

It made me feel good. I mean, I'm a nerd, so of course I think the illuminated globe is cool. If these kids, who hate school, can get excited about seeing it too, maybe they have a chance.

Now, armed with sufficient sleep, I'm going to weed like my life depends on it. I've got less than two weeks before I have to start the year-end inventory. God help us all.

Overheard in the library #4

Teacher: "I see a lot of Fs in this class"

Student: "Why you puttin' us down?"

Teacher: "You don't do any work, what do you think you're gonna get? A magical grade?"

Student: "Yeah, I'm gonna get a rainbow"

P.S. The Con Artist is still mad.

Oh, No! He's Mad at Me!

There is a student who I will refer to as The Con Artist. He has not stopped trying to con me since the first time I saw him. He always has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why it was all right for him to be doing whatever it was. If he manages to get an education, I would not be surprised to see him running for public office some day.

My first meeting with The Con Artist was in the morning, when the students go to breakfast before classes. Coming back from breakfast, he was talking with one of his little friends. When I stopped them to take points for talking in line, out came the plausible explanation

Con Artist: "He's my cousin, and our aunt just died, and I was asking him when the funeral was."

Me: "That's very sad, now I need to see your point sheet."

The second time was when I caught him accessing Bebo in the library. This is not only strictly against the district rules, but you have to access a proxy site to even get there, as it is blocked by our filter. Out he goes, referral is written. Later in the day, he comes to see me.

Con Artist: "I just wanted to apologize for getting on Bebo, it won't happen again."

Me: "Look, this is not my rule, this is the district's rule. I don't personally care, I just have to enforce the rule."

CA: "I guess you already wrote the referral, huh?"

Me: "Yes, it's been turned in."

CA: "Since I got taken to the office, can I come in this hour to work on my project?"

Me: "If your teacher says it's okay."

Teacher approves, The Con Artist comes in and gets on a computer. A few minutes later, I look up, and he's accessing Bebo again.

Me: "You need to log off the computer and go back to your class."

CA: "Oh, I thought since you said you didn't care, it was okay if I got on."

Me: "A: even though I don't personally care what site you get on, it is the district's policy and I am going to enforce it. B: you told me you were going to work on your project."

CA: "I will, I will"

I think, but cannot prove, that he got on Bebo a third time that day. After this day, I decided that I was tired of him trying to con me, and now, when he comes into the library, I let his teachers know that I am not allowing him on the computers. However, he still comes in, with the rest of his class. Yesterday, he left a book in the library; this was the second book I found yesterday that belonged to other school libraries in The District. When he asked me about it this morning, I told him that I had found it, and that he could get it when his class came in to the library today.

However, knowing The Con Artist as I have come to, I decided to do some checking in The District's union catalog (for non-librarians, we can see the books the other schools have, too). Lo and behold, the book had not been checked out from its home library. It must have just walked off the shelf. I phoned the librarian to let her know and put the book in interdepartmental mail to go back to its home.

When I told The Con Artist, he was furious that I had done anything with "his book" which he had been planning to return to the library himself. I enumerated for him the fact that it was not his book, it was the library's book, he had not checked it out, which would give him some small claim on it, and that he was not legally allowed on the campus of his old school while enrolled at The Alternative School (indeed, they could arrest him for doing so).

But logic failed to avert the wrath of The Con Artist. This is the first time I've seen him other than calm. He wandered around the library for the rest of the hour usually as close to me as possible, so I could overhear as he complained to his fellow students of the great injustice I had done to him. During the course of this, he mentioned that he had gotten the book "at his ex-girlfriend's house last weekend." So it might not be him that walked out of the library with the book; of course, this is The Con Artist, so there's really no telling.

So he's mad at me. He's going to tell the principal on me. Somehow, I think I'll survive.