LISNews: Librarian News

In Victoria (AU), "Maura the clairvoyant librarian will check your aura, look deep into your eyes and see if you’re more Dan Brown than Salman Rushdie."

Her powers tell her that a good sniff of her customers reveals lots: for instance travel readers often wear "... no deodorant, so in many ways you can tell."

So sniffing our patrons makes me psychic? Wow. Because I do this every day in out library. "Sniff, You go in the area with the plastic covered seats. Or, Sniff, you can go sit on the nice chairs."

RoC #23

"Do Not Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth"

I had a gentleman approach me at the desk yesterday asking if there was a manager on duty. I've learned from past experience that my lack of authority > manager's ineptitude.
So I told him that I could look in the back for one to which he replied, "Well, maybe you can help me."

He had overdue fees on his card in excess of $50. All for the same 4 books, he apparently failed to comprehend the "Renewal" process. He was playing his violin and was talking about how he needed it to study and before he knew it, his fees procreated into the amount it was today.

He asked if there "was anything that could be done about it." Like he was expecting me to wave a magic wand and *poof* make it entirely disappear, which in all reason I could. But I used my "Win/Win Tactic," I told him that if he paid half of it today, I could forgive the rest. Apparently that wasn't good enough for him because didn't jump at this 'once in a lifetime opportunity' that I just presented him. I even told him that any manager would not even offer to forgive this much, he still didn't accept it.

I know times are rough and I am more than willing to help out patrons but offer them an inch and some of them expect a mile.

I despise romance novels. You know the ones where the cover art has some shirtless Fabio looking flamer holding some half dressed floozy in his arms, preferably over some cliff looking over the ocean, both of their hair is windswept, and its usually depicted during a sunset. Yes, those horrible books. But my hatred is not just reserved for those outlandish titles alone, Nicholas Sparks I'm looking your way---Damn you and your Notebook. I blame these so-called "romance" novels for the high failure rate of marriages/relationships in this country.

Its not that I don't believe in love or romance but I think these books put an extraordinary extraterrestrial-high level of standards that girls expect their boyfriends/spouses to live up to. I really don't think that these books preach the morals and virtues of what love really is anyways.
Case in point, have you ever read any of the titles of these books? They've become quite the topic of discussion at work whenever we come across them. Its like MadLibs for trashy books: "The [insert adjective] woman finds true love with a [insert foreign ethnicity] millionaire and move away to [insert exotic location]."
Really, these types of books are cookie cutter stories. They're all the same, once you've read A Scandalous Mistress I really don't see the need to read His Lady Mistress. Take one lonely, loveless woman, one rich bastard, and an exotic locale and there you go. -- Read More

Use this flowchart to decide whether you should become a librarian. I hope you find it helpful.