Insert double entendre here

Something something...wow, this book was so good?

I don't know.

We have this little game we play at work. It's called "Blood or Chocolate?" If you work in a library, you probably play a similar game. Basically, you get a book with stains on the pages and have to guess...bodily fluid? Or food?

In this episode of "Blood or Chocolate," my coworker came over to me, held out a book, and said, "uh...you have to look at this. Tell me what you think it is."

Part of me wishes I had taken a picture. Alas, I didn't, so a word picture will have to do. The book was a romance novel, and at the bottom of the page, right about where you would grab to turn to the next page, was a fingerprint-sized, slightly raised, crusty white oval.

Blood or chocolate, guys? Bodily fluid or food?

I recently offered an escape room at our library, and one of the things you have to find in order to escape is a black light. Since we had said black light available, we decide hey, why leave this to a guess? We have the tools here to either confirm or disprove, to a reasonable level anyway, our darkest fear.

We trooped over to the supply closet to retrieve the black light. Found a dark-ish area. Winced as we shone the light on the page...and it glowed.

It was cum, you guys.

I may wash, but I will never be clean.

On Nerdy Girls' Night and Equity vs. Equality

As mentioned in a previous post, I've got a bit of an imbalance with the teens who frequent my library.

In a month, I might have three girls come to a program. Like...the entire month. Three girls. Every once in a while, a new one will pop up, but inevitably being alone in a room full of loud, rowdy dudes scares her away. The two lone girls on my teen council asked if we could have a girls-only program to try and draw a new crowd of ladies into the library, and I thought to myself, "what the hell, let's give it a try."

The Plan:

Have a Nerdy Girls' Night!

1. Start off with an ice breaker, 90-second sales pitches of your favorite fandoms to try and sway others to the cause, while we had some pizza

2. Fandom trivia using Kahoot.com

3. Make scented candles and candy sushi

4. Hang out, eat our sushi, and enjoy some fandom-themed coloring while we waited for rides to come

The Execution:

1. Everyone loved the idea of 90-second sales pitches, and after a suggestion from one of our younger attendees we actually kicked this up a notch. Instead of pitching our favorite fandom, we each wrote a fandom on a slip of paper and put them into a cup. Then everyone drew a fandom and had a few minutes to research said fandom using our branch iPads before pitching the fandom they drew to the group. We had fandom suggestions ranging from book series to popular ships to which pet is the best. It was hilarious, and they were way more into it than I expected them to be, given how shy some of the girls were.

2. Fandom trivia! As mentioned, I used Kahoot, and if anyone is interested in trying their hand at our Nerdy Girls' Night trivia challenge, you can find it here. I wasn't sure which fandom the girls would be into, so I tried to do a bunch of different ones with just a few questions about each one. That way, even if they weren't into one of the chosen fandoms, at least they would only have to sit through three questions before hopefully getting to one that was more interesting. Trivia was a huge hit, and as it turned out they even had fun trying to guess answers for the fandoms they didn't care about. Also, I learned that some teens are hugely into Pinterest! I had no idea...but that's kind of awesome.

3. Scentedcandlessushiandcoloringpages! Yeah, all smooshed together like that. I had only expected one or two girls to show up, so I planned conservatively. I didn't want to get through everything really quickly and then end up with a bunch of sitting around bored while we waited for rides, so I kept the program pretty short. When I ended up with five girls instead (not a huge number, but a pretty big deal at my library!), and when they ended up being way more into the icebreaker activity than I anticipated, we spent a lot more time on the icebreaker and trivia than I expected. Fortunately, this program was held in the evening and no one had the room reserved after us, so we were able to extend the program. Still, we had about an hour until library staff needed to start working on closing duties, so we decided to try and hustle through both of those. Everyone stuck around to make some candy sushi and try out making a candle, and it was awesome to see how enthusiastic they were and how creative they got with dying their candles.

The consensus: I wish I had been a little more confident and planned to allow more time so we didn't feel so rushed at the end, but overall I thought the program was a huge success. The girls all loved it, asking when we were going to do the next one and suggesting that we make these a regular occurrence at the library.

I agree that I need to offer more programming that girls can feel comfortable attending, but I am a little conflicted about the idea of gender-centric program planning. Several of the boys who regularly visit the library said that if I was going to hold a girls-only program, I also needed to hold a boys-only program. On the one hand, would that be providing equal programming? Yes. On the other, given that 98% of our programs are either attended only by or taken over by boys, would that be equitable? Probably not. At the end of the day, I'm not terribly worried about offering a boys' night to appease my male teens...the Nerdy Girls' Night program is over, and they've probably already moved on from this and forgotten all about it. My bigger concern about offering the program was using a binary gendered term and potentially excluding non-binary teens who would have liked to be there.

Looking back, I wish I had thought of a better, more inclusive name for the program. Also, rather than focusing on programs for "girls" versus programs for "boys" going forward, because gross, I do not want to be someone enforcing stupid gender roles, I need to do a better job of enforcing a standard of behavior. Behavior didn't used to be a huge issue for me with the teens at my branch, but recently I've had some pretty bad issues in my programs. Doing a better job of saying "this is how you need to behave if you want to be in the program" and then sticking to that standard will likely do more to help make programs more comfortable for everyone than trying to offer stratified programs based on "feminine" or "masculine" activities will. So, I've got a plan, and I'm moving forward. Our first, last, and only Nerdy Girls' Night was a huge success...and from now on, I'm going to make every program that big of a success.

No boys allowed

I don't know what it is about my library, but I have no shortage of male teens regularly hanging out in the teen area...and zero girls. I do have a small number who will occasionally come to a program, as well as two valiant young ladies who have braved our Teen Council. My courageous teen council girls are two of my youngest library users, and their parents won't let them come to most of our teen programs because of how frequently they end up being the only two girls in a sea of teenage testosterone. 

My poor girls at every Teen Council meeting...

These two not being allowed to come to programs stinks for a variety of reasons, but chief amongst those reasons is the fact that they love the library. They worked as volunteers for something like 90 hours each last summer, they regularly stay behind at programs they are allowed to attend to help me clean up, and at our end of summer volunteer party last year they ran over and hugged me, then told me they had been waiting all summer to give me those hugs. I died, you guys. How cute is that? These girls deserve to be able to come to the library as frequently as their beautiful hearts desire.

The solution to this problem, although not easy, is obvious. I need to get more girls coming to the library. So...how to do that when my teen program as it stands might as well be a clubhouse with a "no girls allowed" sign hanging on the door? I'm not sure I know, but you'd better believe I'm going to try.

I think it's official now

I've been in my position for almost a year and a half, and I think I've gotten to a point where I should probably change my blog name, since the training wheels have officially been off for...well, probably a long while now. I've taken on a lot since I started this job, and I can say with some confidence that I've become quite a jack of all trades, and definitely a master of none. ;) Now I've just got to work on posting more regularly to my blog!

How many books is too many books?

Doing reader advisory is awesome, and I love it. Obviously I want to give solid advice, which means keeping up with new books, reading award winners, finding great diverse reads, etc...but...

Holy shit, there are so many amazing books out there. How does one find time to read them all?!

Seriously, take a gander at the books on my currently reading list.


Lunch break books:

A Consequential President

Girls & Sex

White Rage

Reading in bed books:

Angelfall

Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

City of Heavenly Fire

End of Days

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Reading during the day but not at work books:

The Last Thing I Remember

Defy the Stars

PLUS I have I Am Number Four, a new Uppercase book, three Quarterly books, and a book one of my teens recommended that I read sitting in a stack waiting for me to get to them.

How many books  is too many to read at one time? Are you a literary monogamist? Or a huge philanderer like me?

"When [blank] worked here..."

And just like that, in the blink of an eye since my last post, I've been in my new position for two and a half months.  For the most part, I'm loving it.  I'm starting to get to know people, find my groove, all that good stuff...but there are a few things that I'm struggling with.

First, teen advisory groups...and really, just teens in general.  I love our teens.  They're great, and our TAG members have good ideas, but damn, it would be nice if TAG members would actually show up to the programs we plan!  I've been trying to be open to their ideas and work with them to make programs what they want, but then the day of the program arrives, and not one TAG member is there.  I guess I could just be happy that there are people coming and let it go that none of them are TAG members...bu what gives?  I feel like I'm doing something wrong.  Also, the teens who hang out in the library are, for the most part, super well-behaved, and all of them that I've interacted with are fantastic.  I, however, am ludicrously awkward and can't help but feel like the doofy single parent in a sitcom every time I interact with them.  I keep trying to remind myself that establishing relationships with them will take time, but sweet lord, if a magical pill exists that would make me less socially awkward, someone let me know so I can get my hands on it.

Next up, the stagnancy.  Good god, the stagnancy.  This could just be a problem with my particular library, but it seems like everything moves at a snail's pace and people are so complacent that nothing ever gets done.  Our current layout isn't working, and ideally we'd be able to make x, y, and z changes but they aren't a possibility.  Can we make some smaller changes instead?  Of course not!  Let's just leave it the unfunctional way it is instead because if we can't have the perfect scenario, we may as well just not fix anything.  Need approval for something?  You'll get it, but be sure to submit it at least six months in advance, because it's going to take forever for you to get a response, if you ever do.  Everyone is unhappy with the way something is handled, but can we do it a different way?  Sure, that would be a good idea, we can discuss that in our next staff meeting...you know, if we ever had staff meetings.  I feel like everyone is looking to me to be the mover and the shaker, but yo, I'm one person and a brand new librarian at that...how much change am I supposed to single-handedly introduce?

Aaaaand finally, the cherry on top of my struggle bus, the sentence that is rapidly becoming my least favorite combination of words in the whole world: "when [former teen services librarian] worked here..."  This may come as a startling newsflash to some of the staff members and customers at my branch, but I am not the former teen librarian.  I get that he was super outgoing and played guitar with the teens and liked to go to the high school at lunch to hang out and meet new kids...that's super cool.  But I'm crazy nerdy and don't know how to play the guitar and have raging social anxiety, so if you're waiting for me to go start an impromptu jam session with some high schoolers during their lunch break, you're going to be waiting for a verrrrrrry long time.  If, on the other hand, you'd like to learn how to knit, are looking for a suggestion for your next supernatural read, or want to talk roller derby strategy with me, I am down for that!  I'm more than willing to push myself out of my comfort zone, and I've been working on doing that, but every time the words "when [FTSL] was here" come out of someone's mouth, I die a little inside.

Anyway, the above griping aside, things really are going well.  I had one instance of chicanery in the teen area during a passive program, but I put out some signs reminding everyone that if they want to have nice things they need to be respectful, and we haven't had any problems since.  I've been working on slowly worming my way into the confidence of our teens in my own geeky, awkward way, and I'm doing all the research I can on young adult programming so I can bring interesting, helpful programs to them.  Every job comes with its highs and lows but I think, all things considered, things are going to be alright.

Has it already been a month?

Yesterday marked month one at my new job.  In some ways, I feel like I haven't really started the job yet, since most of the programs I've been doing were planned by the children's librarian before I got hired, but I did dive in right smack in the middle of Summer Reading, so all things considered, I guess I can still be proud of the work I've done so far.

Whether or not I can actually consider myself a "real" librarian yet, I have to say my proudest moment thus far, 30ish days into the job, is having a parent tell me on Monday how much her daughter loves me.  I was super professional when she told me, too. I believe my exact words were, "oh my god, YAY!" complete with hands clasped in front of me and one foot lifted off the floor.

Seriously, though, it's unbelievable how good it felt to hear that her daughter is excited to have me at the library.  She and one of the other teen girls I've been working with have become friends, and they (plus four other girls!) have decide to join Teen Council, which basically triples our active membership...it's exciting!

One month in the books...I'm happy with what I've accomplished so far.