Great Library Pick

One of the graphic novel titles that I purchased for my library recently is a European-based comic called Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarido.

 

A friend recommended this to me when I was put in charge of ordering the graphics at my library. I poked around, read some reviews (well reviewed by both Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly), and checked out some image scans from the book.

  I decided that it would be a good fit for our library, but I couldn't wait for it to come in and get cataloged before reading it myself. I found it at one of the local public libraries and checked it out.

I could not put it down. I read the entire thing in one sitting. The story is noir detective fiction in a Cold War-era type time period, complete with McCarthy-style finger pointing and Black Panther power gangs. Stuff that's not normally my genre, but what really makes this book is the art and the characters. The dynamics of movement and the angles of each and every panel coupled with the expressiveness of the characters that manages to make their thoughts and motivations obvious without looking cartoonish makes this whole book eye candy. And the main character, John Blacksad, is one that readers can instantly sympathize with and really root for. At the end of this volume I found that I was disappointed that I had read it so quickly instead of savoring it, especially since the fourth issue, published in Europe in 2010, has not yet been released in the US.

Even if you are not a comics fan, this one is worth reading 

What I'm Reading

I recently finished reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and I was enraptured enough that now I'm having trouble finding a book to follow it.

The Night Circus is the story of two magicians in a competition of skill and endurance and the circus that is their venue. What I found most intriguing about this book, however, is the circus itself. The descriptions of the tents, the acts, the food, and the atmosphere have an air of dark, almost melancholy beauty about them. The circus itself, most probably intentionally, becomes as much a character in the novel as Marco and Celia, the two magicians.

I'm usually a sucker for a good love story when surrounded by a greater plot, but the relationship between these two had the potential to get too heavy and drown out the voices of the other characters (circus included), which would have been a tragedy. The author instead dealt artfully with their involvement and what we are left with is the knowledge that they, and the others involved in Le Cirque des Rêves are simply part of a greater whole--a living environment whose purpose, and pleasure, is to create something beautiful and intriguing for an audience to enjoy. It made me wish that such a place really existed.

For now I'm trying to move on to my next read--The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson. But while I enjoy the geeky-quirky writing style and sarcastically arrogant tone, I find myself missing Le Cirque des Rêves.

Library Surveys for Fun and Profit

At my library, we have a small leisure reading collection that we maintain in hopes of encouraging the students to read outside of class. My boss approached me at the beginning of the semester and asked if I could come up with some sort of survey that would help us determine what our students' reading habits are like and what exactly it is that they like to read in their free time.

I came up with a seven question survey asking questions like "How often do you read materials outside what is assigned for class?" and "What is the biggest factor that would prevent you from borrowing books from the library to read in your free time?" I kept it short, keeping everything on one page, knowing that the students would be less likely to even want to look at it if they felt like it was too long, asked too many questions, or had too many complicated questions.

Then I had to come up with a distribution method. I briefly considered just hosting it on one of our library's LibGuides or distributing it by email and hoping for responses. In both cases, the chances that anyone would actually find the link to the survey, then click it to get to the survey site, then actually take the entire survey were very slim. What students really need is something to motivate them to complete a task that otherwise doesn't really do anything for them (at least in the short term).

Then I came up with the crazy (as it seemed to me at the time) idea of standing in the commons area handing out candy to every person who completed a survey while wearing a "Librarian" t-shirt, geeky glasses, hawking my wares like a merchant by shouting "Seven questions! Five minutes! One piece of candy!" My supervisors loved the idea.

I bought a blank shirt from JoAnn Fabric and used fabric paint to print the "Librarian" on in a semblance of old typewriter font. Not my best work, but it got the point across.

So, I made myself a Librarian t-shirt. The Director picked up a few bags of Halloween candy in the post-holiday sales. And I emailed a facilities use request to the Facilities Director ("No set up required! My survey stand will be a book truck." Request easily approved.). I also, after much deliberation over what to put on it, made a sign advertising the library and my purpose. I wanted to get the point across without being too cheesy or stuffy. After bouncing some ideas off my supervisors, this is what we came up with:

Library name blurred out for semi-anonymity's sake.

 Of course, the word "candy" had to be written in the Candyland font.

The survey event went better than I had cautiously hoped. I decided to forgo the geeky glasses and annoying merchant persona, and instead I parked my book truck and approached each group of students in the commons with my survey, some golf pencils, and my bowl of candy so they could eye the goods before making their decision on whether or not to bother. I printed out 35 surveys at first, afraid to print too many, but I ended up having to leave my post and go print out more because I ran out of blank surveys before I ran out of candy. After an hour and four bags of candy, I had 68 completed surveys. Good enough at least for a start.

In tabulating the results, some of the responses were expected. Most of the students said that they read free-time material once a week or less. Magazines were the most-read format, followed by books. Most of the students said they liked to read about characters and settings that were either "similar to their own life situation" or "set in a world very different from ours." And most students said that they didn't check out free-time materials either because they don't have free time, or because they always forget to return the materials on time, and thus are afraid of borrowing. One anomaly in the responses that is weighing on my curiosity is the fact that when asked what types of materials they like to read, and prompted with "ex: books, magazines, newspapers, graphic novels or comics, blogs, etc." four students wrote both "books" and "novels" and one student wrote both "novels" and "trade paperbacks." Somehow genre and format are bleeding together, and it would almost be explainable if eReaders and eBooks are taken into consideration, but of those five students, none indicated that they own eReaders, though other students did.

Even if I can't puzzle out the genre/form anomaly to anything conclusive, the survey has given us a list of materials that the students are interested in seeing in the library, including two graphic novels that I had put purchase requests in for before I administered the survey, much to my satisfaction. And we now have a method of collecting more data if and when we decide that more is needed. My stunning, expertly designed and executed sign and t-shirt are going to be stored (the sign at the library, my t-shirt in my dresser drawer) for future library shenanigans.

  

Cute Library Item of the Day

Antique Book Bag photo by Innocent World, and borrowed from lolibrary.org

Can I tell you how much I wish I had this bag? Both times it was released by Innocent World I was not able to financially justify the splurge. The dimensions are just big enough to fit a small wallet, cell phone, keys and a small paperback (or the nook Simple Touch), and it can be worn as a pochette, or the strap can be removed to use as a hand bag. What really makes "brand" items stand out is the fact that they're laden with fine details, like this bag's nice gold print, tooled-leather look front, heart shaped zipper pull, and its side that evokes the look of a traditional sewn leather book spine. You can see more of the gorgeous details at lolibrary.org here.

There are alternatives to this bag, if one must own a book-shaped purse. There are a number of bags actually made out of books over on Etsy. Lolita brand Alice and the Pirates also has their own take on the book bag. The brand originally came out with a bag that looked very similar to Innocent World's Antique Book bag, but it has since sold out and they've released this alternative.

Hurricane Irene

I intended to make this post much earlier, but life has gotten in the way and distracted me. It's still something that I felt I needed to talk about though, so, although delayed, here it is.

On August 28th, my area was hit by Hurricane Irene. The actual hurricane itself wasn't bad. The wind didn't do too much damage, and most people didn't even lose power for more than a few hours. There was moderate local flooding in lakes, ponds, and storm drains on the day of, but nothing that caused any damage. However, as the hurricane tracked north it dumped more and more rain into the rivers. The following day, a Monday, was when the flooding really crested.

Back in August my schedule at the library was still Tuesday and Wednesday, with the rest of the week off to work my other job. The Monday after the hurricane I hadn't heard from anyone at the library, and as the damage near me (close to one major river which hadn't crested beyond the worst that the spring melts had ever brought), I didn't think too much about how the library was faring.

It wasn't until I was talking with a friend Monday night and he mentioned that his childhood home was under water that I started getting alarmed. His old house was in the same district as my library. I tried to get on the college's site and check my school email for info, but nothing would load. Then I went on the local newspaper for the city and in the first picture I saw, up in the corner, was my college. Completely surrounded by water from the nearby river. In the article it stated that one of the college board members had said they "were trying to save the library, but it didn't look promising." I panicked. I didn't have anyone's home phone number, it was obvious no one was on the campus with that much water around it, and I had no idea what to do.

I finally decided to drive down the next day, after stopping at the store to buy a pair of barn boots, and see what I could do to help, see how my library was, and just try to figure out what I was supposed to do. When I arrived, I was confused to see that no one appeared to be there. I parked in a corner of the campus where a quarter-inch of mud on the pavement showed where the water had been, and walked around the side to the library building. I could see mud left on the bushes bordering the building where the water had crested. The parking lot, which is somewhat bowl-shaped, was still full of water—probably about 4 feet deep at the parking lot's lowest point. There were still at least two feet of water in the garage, which is in the basement of the library. 

My cell phone photo of the campus parking lot. In the front you can see mud. In the back, to the left of center, is a pickup truck half-submerged. The campus buildings are off to the right.

The door to the library building was open, so I crept in. The electricity was still off, but there was enough light to see that there was no mud on the floor of the lobby. The outer doors to the library were closed, so I opened one just enough to peek in at the library's main floor. There was no mud. No water. Everything looked dry.

As I closed the door again I heard voices and turned to find members of the maintenance crew and a security guard coming down the hallway. When I explained that I was a librarian and that I had come because I thought there would be someone on campus at least, they said that no one was around because it wasn't safe, and that I should go home and watch the news and they would announce when the campus would be re-opened.

I left, feeling a little silly. But at least I knew the collection was safe. I was relived, but the threat of what the damage could have been still left me feeling unsettled. What must it be like for the people who did lose their homes? And their libraries? 

Over the next week the college hired outside contractors and a cleaning crew to fix up the campus. The water in the library's basement/garage area had stopped just six inches from the ceiling. Everything that had been in the garage was ruined—some machinery, old chairs that had been in storage, vacuums, spare vehicle parts. The library's elevator car had been parked on the top floor when the flood hit, but some of the mechanisms in the bottom of the shaft were damaged. A sink had hole also opened up in part of the parking lot and seeped water all day that ran across the pavement toward the storm drain. While I was at work I could hear the repair men and cleaning crews down in the bottom of the elevator shaft, grinding or burning away the mud, mildew and rust that the flooding had caused. Every few days we got the strong smell of some kind of caustic cleaning agent wafting up the elevator shaft and the emergency stairs as they tried to stave off any mold and bacteria.

A week later the remnants of tropical storm Lee blew through and the over saturated soil couldn't absorb the water fast enough. The campus flooded again. Classes had to be delayed again. The mud had to be scraped out of the garage and off the parking lot again.

Two weeks later a story in the local paper explained that the campus had sustained about a million dollars in damage, and it would still take at least another two hundred thousand to fix two elevators that were damaged, one of them being our library elevator. A lot of the money was coming from an emergency fund that the college keeps for just such occasions, but the problem with our elevators would cost more than the college had, so they were working with FEMA to try to get funds to fix them.

It's been two months now, and our elevators are still out of order. There was word at the beginning of this month that the repair men could arrive any day, so I spent a couple of days with our student assistants moving our special collections so that the repairmen could access the elevator shaft through the wall of the special collections room, but no one has shown up yet.

In the scheme of things, elevator repairs are a minor thing. Our collection was spared; the college was spared from massive damage. Meanwhile two streets over, people are still living with family members while they try to find the money to repair and re-furnish their own homes. Schoharie, the neighboring county, was completely devastated and lost large portions of two of its libraries' collection, and hundreds of people's homes were completely destroyed—including the home of my coworker's mother.

Hurricane and flood damage is so unusual for my state, no one quite knew what to expect, and the reality was devastating. Water gets into everything. It burns out the motors in hot water heaters and furnaces, it drowns the engine of your car. It leaves mud all over family photos, carpets, beds, clothes. For the people whose homes were covered in water, they lost everything. And as for the libraries, people immediately started volunteering to donate books but the libraries couldn't even take them because there was no where to put them. There still isn't anywhere to put them, as the buildings themselves are still in need of repair before they can even erect bookshelves or bring in materials that would be in danger of mold from the moisture lingering in the wooden studs of the now-stripped walls.

If you can spare a few dollars, please, consider donating them to one of the damaged libraries in Schoharie County, or to one of the Schoharie County hurricane relief funds. Links can be found below.

Middleburgh Library 

Schoharie Free Association Library

Libraries in other areas affected by Hurricane Irene 

General relief organizations taking donations for Irene victims (from the Southern Adirondack Library System's blog)

Style Post

Last week (or possibly earlier) I began writing a scholarly, informative, and interesting post on the trials and tribulations of effectively utilizing student workers in an academic library.

That hasn't gotten very far yet, and any focus I had on the topic has been quickly set aside by a near-tragedy at the library where I am currently working. There will be an entire post about that later, most likely after the campus is re-opened and the extent of what could have happened vs. what did happen is fully assessed. For now I will say that our north-eastern state experienced a very unusual weather pattern which led to a situation which could have been much worse, but that everything important on our campus was luckily left intact and undamaged, with no one being injured.

For now, on a completely different track and in the interest of keeping myself in the blogging mindset, I present the first Style Post. My style is a morale booster, and a confidence booster for me. I don't feel at my optimal self if I'm not wearing the clothes that I feel most comfortable in. From time to time I will be posting pictures of my favorite work outfits to share a little bit of my own quirky style with you. This first outfit shows off just the basic building blocks of one of my most-worn outfits.

The skirt and over-the-knee socks are by Japanese brand Innocent World, and the print on the skirt features several books, along with chess pieces, pocket watches, and keys. Ever one for coordination, it was obvious to me that this skirt would do very well in a library setting. The blouse also features antique gold-colored rose buttons, and the socks have an argyle and ribbon pattern woven in, as you might be able to see below (in which the items are more true to color). In order to mix up the outfit, I will wear it with different hair accessories and jewelery each time, sometimes adding a black fitted vest over the blouse, or a ribbon tie for a girlier look.

I love that this outfit is old-fashioned yet refreshing and looks cute but still elegant, especially with a nice pair of basic, low-heeled dress shoes (rounded toe and simple embellishments preferred).

Innocent World has many other old fashioned, refined items that would complement a library setting. You can check out their website here.

Cute Library Item of the Day

It always seemed like most of my librarian co-workers or internship mentors wear either glasses or contacts. As I've never needed to wear glasses, I start to feel left out sometimes when most of the people around me are wearing them. Especially when the stereotype is so strongly in favor of librarians wearing glasses.


When I found this necklace I decided it would be just the thing to make me feel more legit, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. At only $1.50 a piece, I probably should have gotten two...