Library Adventures

I had to work yesterday.  Amanda walked me to work at 9, then headed off while I got ready to open the library.  She showed up again a few minutes after the library officially opened at 10.

Amanda told me she didn't really want to laze around my condo knitting and playing video games while waiting for me to get off from work.  She had missed me a lot last week, and I felt the same way.  We both knew that it wouldn't be okay for her to just hang out next to me all day (and in fact, during my eight month tenure as interim head librarian, I had to reprimand a staff member for a fairly similar matter).

So Amanda asked if there was some work to be done that she could do.  She thought, and I agreed, that if she was able to do some volunteer work and we made sure to keep our visiting to a minimum and *made sure* it did not interfere with my ability to help patrons, it would probably be okay for her to stay at the library.

I thought about it for a minute, then decided that I could work on adding DVDs to our catalogue.  Quite a few had piled up over the past few months and I hadn't been able to catch up with them.  So while I entered DVDs and created basic DVD cards to put on our shelves and in the DVD cases, Amanda worked on cutting out the DVD cards, attaching barcodes to the DVD cases, and applying our TRPL labels to the DVDs.

With the exception of the final task, Amanda was mostly doing work that I normally do.  So we plugged away at DVDs until lunch at 1, and then from 1:30 to 5.  I estimated that if I had been working alone, I would've only finished around 20-25 DVDs, and would not have cut out the to-be-laminated DVD cards or applied the TRPL labels.  Between the two of us, we finished up nearly 70, and all that's left is for the library's clerk to laminate the DVD cards, make spine labels for the DVD cases, and check-in the DVDs.

It's funny, but even though Amanda and I were only working five feet apart, we really didn't spend much time talking.  It was enough just to be near each other.  I got to be with Amanda all day, Amanda got to be with me all day, and the library had a ton of extra work completed.

Amanda later joked that she should submit a timesheet to the head librarian for the work she'd done.


Late in the day, just before it was time to close the library, Amanda and I took two photos.


Amanda took a photo of my working at my normal desk.

I took a slightly different photo of Amanda.  She was adjusting her glasses and was looking down her nose towards me while doing so.  It struck me that she looked vaguely like a stereotypical librarian at the time.  So I asked her to push her glasses down her nose slightly and hold her hair up in a bun so I could get a photo.

So I present to you Amanda the Librarian:

...that photo makes me happier than I can possibly say.  :-)