Life-of-a-Librarian

Did you follow our tweets yesterday? If you did, then you know what a fun job I have and why I love working in the circulation department at Missoula Public Library!

If you didn’t follow our circulation tweets, I’ve recapped them here, so you can enjoy the day just as I did:

Today is our 2nd installment of a Life-of-a-Librarian series, featuring circulation department tweets. Stay tuned for updates of our funday! 7:26 a.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

From circulation: checking in over 400 items from bookdrops. 9:59 a.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

The library opens in 5...4...3...2...1...NOW! 10:00 a.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Pulling holds for you and our partner libraries. Sharing is sweet! We'll notify you when we get them on the shelves. 10:32 a.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Snuck in to Tiny Tales to do the hokie-pokie! Tiny Tales are soooo fun! 10:52 a.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Issuing many new (free) library cards! Remember, it's National Library Card SignUp Month! 2:09 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Assisting patrons in signing up for our free internet access computers! We have a great computer lab! 2:30 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Checking in new Grab'nGo items."People of the Book" on our new pre-loaded,portable Playaway device. If you haven't tried a Playaway,you must! 2:35 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Other new Grab'nGo items on the shelf 4 your w/e pleasure:"The Red Queen" book on MP3,"Cross Roads" by Fern Michaels & McMurtry's"Literary Life" 2:38 p.m., Friday, September 10

Helping a student find books for his school assignment! We're both learning! 3:41 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Just informed a patron that we have free wifi! She is delighted! 4:03 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

Sorting checked-in items numerically by the Dewey Decimal System onto carts so that our pages can shelve them - for you! 4:39 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

What a great day at Missoula Public Library! Thanks for spending the day with us in circulation! See you tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. 6:00 p.m., Friday, September 10, 2010.

http://twitter.com/missoulalibrary

Digital Signage! ...and new baskets

If you've been to the library this week, you may have noticed our brand new digital signs. There are two screens, one right outside Web Alley in the basement and one upstairs near the entrance (fittingly) of Entertainment Central. These will have information on upcoming events and happenings at the library.
In less interesting news, we just added lots more baskets for you to use in the library while browsing the stacks. It looks like you'll need them, because we saw a record number of checkouts last month. Keep it coming!

Colorful Circulation

We've endured a week of smelling paint fumes up in the circulation department and now we can see the results. Here's a peek at what will be above and behind the new accounts desk. For now, our old checkout desk is still standing.

Soon the carpet will go in the new account desk area, then it will be time to build a desk.

Well Worn Countertop

Our current checkout desk is slated to be demolished in the very near future. This desk was fairly new when I started working here, but as you can see quite a few books have passed over the counter since then.

We don't have a set date for when this desk is going to give up the ghost, but rest assured it is not long for this world. Once it disappears we'll have to scramble to get you checked out until we get our new accounts desk up. We're looking at some contingency plans now, which we'll tell you about in greater detail once they're all worked out.

Construction Update

One of the plastic walls in our back circulation office has come down this morning, exposing the nice curved wall that will serve as the backdrop for our accounts desk. The opening in the center will be a window, although staff commented today that maybe an aquarium would be a better idea. We'll have to look at the budget.

Now that they've pretty much gotten a handle on the drywall, things should start moving along at a quick and hopefully quieter pace than before.

Tons O' Updates

(Original Photo by Flickr user Xurble. Some Rights Reserved)

If you've been to the library, or you follow this blog, you no doubt know that we've been going through some pretty big changes. I thought I'd take a moment to update you on the progress, or changes to what I've already told you.

In downloadable audio news, the folks at Overdrive have just rolled out a mac version of their media console. Now you mac users can download and listen to audio books on your computer and transfer them to mp3 players. I'm not a mac user, so let me know what problems you encounter and I'll try to find a solution or workaround. Just head over to MontanaLibrary2Go and pick up the player.

In self hold pick-up news, we've changed the way holds will be ordered because of privacy concerns. Now, you can find your holds ordered by the last 5 digits of your library card number. This way, your name isn't associated at all with the items you are checking out, and isn't visible to anyone else. The holds are located past the current check-out desk on the way to the reference desk.

In "Giant Plastic Blob" news, construction is hammering away, sometimes quite literally. They've made a ton of progress as shown here

In behind the counter news, which I haven't yet posted about, here's a look at our new, stainless steel check-in counters. Our Frenchtown branch librarian Heather is seen here testing the new setup and looking for ways to make to make our work more efficient.

And finally, starting today we're trying out a new system of letting you, the patron, help us out a bit by putting kids and young adult books in the right hand slot, and adult books in the left hand slot. You'll see this when we finish our remodel, so we thought we'd just go ahead and start now to get everyone used to it.

Even More Current Events

In addition to the new self hold pick-up area I told you about yesterday, you'll notice a giant plastic blob where our old sit down check-out desk used to be.

Today our construction workers are starting to demo (as in demolish) one of the walls that used to house the circulation department. This is yet another phase in our ongoing remodel. The plastic blob will be replaced by the new "accounts" desk. This will be where you will pay fines, deal with missing holds, ask for help, etc.

The plus side is that the big plastic blob will be a great landmark in giving directions to our self hold pick-up. "Just walk past this big plastic blob and you'll see the holds."

There will be a bit of noise in the coming days, but trust me, it will be worth it. We're finally nearing the final stages of our *huge* remodel project.

Leaning Tower of AV

Ever wonder why, when you drop off a couple of videos at the library and check your account a couple hours later and it looks like you still have them checked out? This may be the reason:

With the rainy weather it seems that everyone is enjoying Entertainment Central more than usual. We're just trying to keep up!

A New Friend

Circ has a new friend in a bright green iguana. He (or she) appeared in circ a few days ago, and his (or her) popularity varies widely amongst staff. Some don't care much at all for our new friend, while yours truly has taken quite a liking to the little guy (or gal). Now if I could only think of something to name him (or her)...my initial thought was iggy the iguana, but that is just to obvious. Any ideas?

The scent of old books

Ah, the history in Missoula Public Library. This book card pocket was removed from one of our books today. My how we've changed. Today I had fun doing a tour of the library for some 4th and 5th graders. One of my favorite parts is taking them to the Audra Browman room where we keep lots of really old things that impress our younger patrons. We also usually have some folks in there doing research for writing a book or tracing their genealogy, also very impressive. The students and teacher all thought the 1911 Missoula directory was really neat and I think they enjoyed seeing our collection of historical photographs of the library and its staff. So, although we have lots of new books coming in daily to add to our shelves we still have lots of older books. And although we have a new computer lab and an online catalog we still have plenty of those dusty tomes and vintage magazines for those that have a more historical bent.

And by the way, our current checkout period is four weeks for most items, 10 days for new fiction, and our fines are up to 10 cents a day.

Beware of the Dog

When books come back, sometimes they aren't in the best shape. People seem to drop books in water, spill every substance known to man on them, crack the spines, leave them in the hot sun, or let their pup use them as chew toys. For example:

We understand things like this happen on a fairly regular basis so we just ask that you pay for the book and then load you up with some more reading material, no grudges or scary notes on your account. In fact, one library staff member, who will remain nameless, has had to pay for more than a few damaged books because of a dog. It can happen to the best of us.

Come on feel the noise!

The library seems like such a quiet place, but behind the scenes almost all of us listen to music of some sort while we work. We each have our own music to help us make it through the day. Some of us listen at our desks with headphones, but when we're working upstairs at the circulation desk we have a stereo to listen to our music.

Often it will be a radio station, 103.3 The Trail and Z-100 are popular choices, and other times we'll put in a CD. We see hundreds of CDs pass through everyday and that gives us a huge selection to choose from. Our playlist tonight looked like this:

We get quite the variety, and what we listen to almost always depends on who is working together and what you bring back for us. So if you see us nodding our heads behind the desk we're not necessarily crazy, we might just be listening to some good music.

See Self Check Out For Yourself

Claire told you yesterday about the self check-out demo we had. But being geeky me, I had to take some pictures and let you all see for yourselves.This is the machine in action. You just place your card in on the machine, and it reads it. Then you just put your books in one by one and the machine checks them out to you and desensitizes in one swift blow. It even features a nifty video screen showing patrons where to place their cards. They told us we can film our own "tutorials" and use them instead of the stock footage. The bar code scanner is a real laser, unlike what we currently use. It is set to scan the barcode three times to verify your patron ID is what it is picking up, but don't worry, it only takes one or two seconds to do this. Then you just put your books up and let the laser do its thing. Once you're done, you can just walk out. It also features a touch screen. You can choose whether or not you want to a receipt by selecting yes or no on the screen.Of course I had to get a shot of the "guts" as well. It's pretty simple, just a Dell desktop running Windows XP pro. The really cool thing is that the system is RFID ready. We'll be making the switch to RFID labels for our AV collection when we implement the self check system so we can keep our items secure, but still let you check out by yourself quickly.

Self check has been a long time coming, look for it in the near future here at the Missoula Public Library