I'm over at the
ALSC Blog today - complaining about stuffed animals.
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| Max Braun CC BY-SA 2.0 * |
Feel free to join me if you're so inclined.
In other news, I hope you've been downloading your free books from SYNC. Two free books are available each week beginning on Thursday. The books for that week are available for one week only. Books are yours - forever - no strings attached.
"SYNC is a free summer audiobook program for teens. Starting May 5th 2016, SYNC will give away two complete audiobook downloads a week - pairs of high interest titles, based on weekly themes. Sign up for email or text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at
www.audiobooksync.com."
Today is the last day to get Zac & Mia by A.J. Betts, and I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson. Tomorrow, it's How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon (with a full cast narration!) and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson.
Below are the titles for the next few weeks (there are more to come after these!):
I can't count the number of times that people have made comments to me similar to these:
- "It must be nice to be able to read all day."
- "Are you a volunteer?"
- "You need a master's degree for your job?"
- "I could read to kids for a living."
- "A librarian? Oh, you must know the Dewey Decimal System."
No one ever makes these comments to be rude, they just don't know what it is to be a librarian. In fact, I am consistently amazed that, considering the training we have, how
little people expect of us. It occurred to me that we (as a profession) don't do a good enough job of explaining the many ways that we can, we will, and we do help people every day. To that end, I wrote an article for the online magazine,
BonBon Break, titled, "
5 Things You Didn't Know about Librarians." It's been on social media for about a month now, but if you haven't seen it, I hope you'll give it a look. Here's the link:
You can find me over at the
ALSC Blog today with a little bit of library humor. Please stop by and read about one of my favorite library patrons. [
http://wp.me/p5Z0QG-32Q]
And if you know of a good, new, middle-grade book trailer, please tell me about it in the comments. My book club is meeting this afternoon. Thanks!
Humor me by reading this, and I’ll return the favor. 
A few weeks ago, I was lamenting the fact that I hadn’t seen a favorite patron in months – a chatty, precocious boy who, since a very young age, had been allowed by his mother to come alone to the library and read whatever he wished. He would request every book in a nonfiction series about baseball, basketball, football, or whatever struck his fancy. Never shy about seeking assistance, he once came to me inquiring why we did not have a book about the Seattle Seahawks (we’re in NJ). I explained that unless the team has superstar players or has won the Super Bowl, there aren’t always current books available about them. The day after the Seahawks won their only Super Bowl, he came in to place his hold.
In any case, I was thrilled when he popped in on a quiet Thursday night. With his mother’s usual trust, he was carrying her driver’s license for identification. He needed to print some items for homework. We had a nice little chat. I told him that I’d missed him and how nice it was to see him. I asked about school.
When his homework was finished, he came to the reference desk to pay for his prints. The cost was eighty cents. He gave me a dollar and I gave him his change, commenting that I hoped to see him again soon. He distractedly began scanning the surface of the reference desk. “What do you need?” I said. “Tape? Paper clip? Stapler?”
“No, ” he replied, still clutching his two dimes. “Where’s the tip jar?”
Image credit:
By Tomwsulcer (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJar_for_tips_at_a_restaurant_in_New_Jersey.JPG]
The post Gratuitous information (#librarylife) appeared first on ALSC Blog.
