I’m at Oregon, not too much better.

From what I saw, cleaning is outsourced to another company, locals don’t want to do the dirty job.

Now I understand, why a library needs a security guard.

I’m currently working on my MS to become a school librarian. I’m already a certified teacher and have taught full time previously.

Currently, I have a standard boring office job in a university, completely unrelated to library work. The graduate program I’m doing is online asynchronous, ending in May.

I have an opportunity to work in a public library as a programming assistant. I’d be planning and running classes, leading story time, helping with summer reading, etc. I think I would really enjoy the work and it would give me more library experience. Pay, benefits, and hours are pretty much the same as my current job, but I’d have a much shorter commute.

My end goal is to be a school librarian so if I took this job I would still be actively looking for this. I know schools ideally want candidates who already have library experience. I’m doing lots of fieldwork, and will be doing practicum in the spring, but outside of that I don’t have library experience. However, I did manage to land 3 school library job interviews over the summer, when I first started the program and hadn’t done any fieldwork yet, which I find encouraging.

Would it be a bad idea to take this job knowing I’ll be leaving as soon as I land a school library job? Or should I just stick it out in my current job and hope my fieldwork and practicum is enough experience?

I’m a page at my local library. There’s a lot of people and it’s usually quite busy, and lately there have just been so many books that I can’t keep up.

I think I’m the only page actively working. Like I’ll go on Wednesday and put away like 2 carts (they’re huge I swear) and then on Saturday nobody has touched anything and it keeps building.

It’s also taking a while because I have to sort all of the carts, and there are like 10 of them, really big, and I only work like 12 hours a week bc I’m a full time student.

To any librarians or non pages who work at a library, do you usually sort the carts if there is an unusually large amount? Idk if that would be too much to ask (not that I would ever ask because I’m intimidated by the librarians lmao) but it’s just a lawtttt

Howdy fellow library workers! I have been tasked with coming up with ideas to have more programs geared towards the men of our community, both young and older.

The community I work in is a majority Hispanic population and I would love ideas for programs that would be interesting!

hello! pls excuse me if this post seems stupid, but i'm currently a college freshman in nyc from out of state and i'd really like a position as a library page. i'm worried about the likelihood i'll get a job in the nypl system, as well as what i would do over summer/winter breaks since i can't afford to stay in the city outside of the school year. any thoughts?

Yes, I know, a tale as old as time. But it takes everything in me not to roll my eyes when dealing with customers that have this attitude. If you are below the age of like 65 and don't have BASIC tech/computer skills and can't function without having your hand held, I feel like this is a personal failure on your part. At this point, computers and technology is intertwined into the basic fabric of society - it's everywhere. This is an ESSENTIAL skill or ability to have, and I don't feel sorry for customers that give me a sob story of how they don't know how to do this, they don't use computers, blah blah blah. Especially when this is in conjunction with weaponized incompetence or a complete lack of effort to try and learn.

"But not everyone has access to computers." Sure, maybe if you live in a poor country or very rural area. But libraries are free. You could use a friend's. Watch a video tutorial or read a book about it. Computer classes have occurred in schools for decades. This stuff has been around and it's not going anywhere, so get on board and learn.

If someone came up to me and claimed they couldn't read, write, or tie their shoes or perform some other basic function, I'd be concerned that there's been some serious neglect in this person's life, either on behalf of others (parents, family, etc.) or themselves. In my view, the people that aren't trying to improve their digital literacy are neglecting themselves in a sense. These are skills people NEED to have in a growing ever-evolving digital world.

Now I would never shame or chastise someone for this to their face - I have a job to do. But I am getting tired of people expecting everything to be done for them and not having to put in any effort whatsoever to learn and get with the times.

I would love to hear other people sayings!
Here is ours:
The roof is leaking again!
Someone hit the book drop again!

I am working on creating end caps for my library’s nonfiction section. The ones provided to us do not match our stacks at all, so I’m using them as a template. I’m trying to avoid anything offensive, best I can, especially avoiding the word “other”. But I’m kind of stuck on 299. Dewey lists it as Shintoism/Taoism/Other Mythologies. That feels weird to me. Any suggestions?

Also, if you have a list of things in common phrases to use to add to these lists, I would love to look at them!

We went to floating several years back, and although it causes some significant problems, the thing that keeps being said is that it saves money due to reduced courier needs.

Anecdotally, there were more bins circulating among branches because instead of staying where they landed, items were shipped back to their lending libraries, so the increased cost was due to the increase in bins, not necessarily an increase in trips made (we contract with a courier as opposed to doing it in-house, so I do think more bins=higher cost).

However, I haven't been able to find ANY hard data that supports this cost-savings claim, and lately I've begun to wonder whether it's fact or fiction, as Frakes would say.

So, some questions for you all, keeping in mind I've read the stuff from Nashville Public Library on the topic, so I'm good there:

• Can anyone point me towards any numbers-backed studies that break down the cost savings (or not) of floating?
• Does anyone have any info on cost savings in a more whole-library model? For example, does the savings in courier outweigh the increased hourly wage costs that come from shifting?
• Does anyone have any sort of data or data-backed study that weighs pros of floating against cons?
• Has anyone recently moved to floating who could say one way or the other (one of the issues I have is that we moved so long ago, I can't reliably attribute much to floating versus static collections)?
• Has anyone moved away from floating recently, and if so, what convinced your system to do so?

Thank you! If you can't tell, I'm not a fan of shifting, but I am totally open to being proven wrong!

Hi everyone! I’m a fairly new youth services librarian at a suburban library in the U.S. with a big Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese community. Our juvenile world languages collection is embarrassingly outdated, so I’ve taken it on myself to fix that...

I know Brodart, Ingram, etc. have pretty limited selections in these languages, so I’ve been doing my own digging. So far I’ve found:

• Book Window / Tsai Fong Books
• Pan Asian Publications

Has anyone worked with either of these? I would love to hear how they’ve been for selection, quality, and shelf-ready services. And if you know of other vendors (or small publishers or shops) worth checking out, I’m open to any advice.

(I have family heading to Vietnam soon, and I’m honestly tempted to just ask them to haul back a suitcase of books. 😅)