Tag You’re It!

Thanks for the challenge Jess – and believe me it was a challenge! (I got tagged by Jess, to post 8 little known facts about myself and might I say this is really tough to do.) I think this is as personal as my blog has gotten so far.

8 Reveals:

1. I am afraid to talk in front of people – even to do story time with kids – but I just figured out last week that when I dress up for story time I am not *quite* as nervous doing it.

2. I like to dabble at art, but I never know when I am “finished” any of my projects so many times I get frustrated and sometimes give up!

3. Most of the time, I really can (and will) find the book you are looking for – even if you can’t remember the author or title.

4. I edit myself a lot – probably too much – even when I am writing blog posts, emails and notes to myself! I am not sure if this is a result of spending so much time in school, or working at a law firm, a combination of things, or something else entirely.

5. Most days I really do not want to go out running, and have to challenge myself to simply run down my street.  Once I kick myself out the door and make it past the local grocery store I end up running farther and when I get home I feel great! Still, most days I don’t want to go out and run until I am actually out there running.  I am tremendously guilty as this week I haven’t been out running at all – not even once.

6. I have never managed to get through LOTR and also I’ve never been able to read very far into any of Jane Austen’s books and this makes me feel like a fake/fraud as an almost librarian!

7.  This one goes alongside Reveal 2 – I have a real bad habit of starting projects at home and then (conveniently) forgetting to finish them.  I have great intentions, really, I do!

8. I love orchids and have 4 of them – My favorite is my Dancing Lady Orchid. I nearly bought a Lady Slipper Orchid the other day, but sadly I began to think rationally and decided that I don’t have space right now for any more orchid plants – though I really wish I did!

Being a Librarian is a Surprisingly Stressful Occupation

Check it out:

Today a coworker sent me an e-mail that the BBC news published an article Librarians ’suffer most stress’

I had no idea about about the stress level of librarians before getting into this occupation and after reading this article I am beginning to question whether being a librarian in Canada is different from the UK – and really truly hoping that it is!

According to the article, psychologist Saqub Saddiq surveyed about 300 people from 5 different occupations (librarians, firefighters, police, teachers and train operators) and found that “Librarians are the most unhappy with their workplace, often finding their job repetitive and unchallenging”.

Apparently, the study looked at “nine “stressors”, such as how much control workers thought they had over their working day, their workload and how much they earned.” As well, it looked at “absenteeism, job satisfaction and whether work stress spilled over into their private life.” The initial hypothesis had been that librarians have the least stress, but the findings indicate they have the most. The article quotes Saddiq as saying “Firefighters and police are trained to deal with the stresses that their jobs undoubtedly entail; librarians and school teachers are less likely to have these support systems in place. [...] In addition, stress impacts different personalities in different ways, and different personalities may be drawn to different roles.”

This will definitely be an interesting study to read and I will most definitely have to look for it! I am wondering if being a librarian really is the most stressful, or if it is the people that the researcher chose to survey and possibly personality difference as Saddiq notes.

Gifts by Ursula LeGuin

This is a fantasy novel for grade 6 and older that is somehow etched into the real world as well as into a fantasy world.

People living in the Uplands have gifts or abilities that often involve causing harm to others.  Orrec and Gry are two young teenagers who are great friends, but at the same time they have started to fall in love with one another, even though the match would be against their parents wishes.  The men in Orrec’s line have the gift of unmaking (destroying) living things, but Orrec’s gift appears to be wild and uncontrollable so he is blindfolded so that he does not cause harm to those he loves.  Women in Gry’s line have the ability to communicate with animals.  What happens when people refuse to use their “gift” or to only allow the gifts to do good? While all this is happening, Ogge Drum, a cruel, greedy and obnoxious landowner is causing heartache for Orrec and his family.  In the beginning, Ogge steals Orrec’s father’s precious cattle, but that is the least of concerns as the book continues. Will Gry and Orrec realize the true nature of their gifts and how best to use them?  This novel creates a great platform for discussion and contemplation about power and individual choices.

Thumb on a Diamond by Ken Roberts

I read this novel today on my lunch break at work and quite enjoyed it. It won the Silver Birch award and it is a children’s book.

Ken Roberts is CEO of Hamilton Public Library and did one of the lectures for Wendy Newman’s advocacy class. I really enjoyed the lecture and was interested to see what he writes. If you haven’t already, you should check out the Hamilton Portal. It is pretty neat to learn how a library could work with the city and non-profits to put this site together – what an advocacy project!

As for the book, I am happy to report that I was not in the least disappointed – in fact, I was quite impressed and enjoyed the book. There is adult appeal as well as kid appeal in this book

Thumb on a Diamond is a sequel to The Thumb in the Box (unfortunately, I have not read this book). Thumb on a Diamond is about Leon (a.k.a. Thumb) who lives in a fictional fishing village in northern B.C. It begins with a writer and illustrator getting shipwrecked to the town. Somehow this inspires Thumb and his classmates to want to see the city. The devise a great plan, setting up a baseball team in a village where there are barely enough people to play on a single baseball team and where there has never been a baseball team before. However, there is no team to play against them and the biggest problem of all is that there is no baseball field in the village and not enough space to practice throwing and hitting a baseball! Despite these major obstacles, the team watches all the baseball movies they can, practices throwing rocks into the ocean and with the help of some great adults, the team manages to get to Vancouver to play in a baseball tournament. Having never played a game of baseball before the team is doomed to fail, but all the movies out there that they have watched show the underdogs win in these situations. I’ll leave it to you to read to find out how this team does in the baseball tournament!

Happy Canada Day!

In honour of Canada Day, I decided to try the Dominion Institute’s quiz on the history of Canada – 10 questions. It took me more than a few tries to get all 10 questions correct. If you’re interested, try it

I also wore red and white – very patriotic! – and visited the Canada Day festivities at the lake. I was pleased to see the Ajax Library had a booth to encourage children to join the summer reading club. I think I’ll be borrowing some of their ideas this summer!

What other job provides this much satisfaction?

I am reluctant now to admit that I did not want to work on Friday night. I would have much preferred to have snuggled up with a good book and been reading or doing anything else but work. My shift began much like usual, except that the library kept getting busier and busier as the night progressed. Usually people are just interested in DVDs and video games on a friday night at the library, but this night seemed to be an exception.

An 8 year old boy came into the library with his mother. She started asking me how people become school librarians and I explained that you needed a teaching certificate. Of course, then she wanted to know why a teaching certificate and not a masters degree, so I told her it was a really long and convoluted answer since there are many reasons and it is subject to debate. Anyway, I found out at that point that her son, the 8 year old boy standing in front of me wanted to be a librarian! Wow!!! I was literally shocked as I’ve never met a kid before that wanted to be a librarian. So, he was looking for advice on what he needed to do. I told him to get to know technology as much as he could, to become really good at interacting with people, and to read and learn as much as he possibly could too. Also that once he gets into high school to become part of the teen advisory group and get a job as a page at the library. Anyone have more ideas of things to say in the event that this happens again to me???

As if this wasn’t enough inspiration for me, about an hour before the library was supposed to close, a teenage girl looked over at me, waved hello and was smiling. I didn’t remember her at all and was trying to rack my brain to figure out how or if I knew her. Anyway, following behind her was a mother and another 2 girls. They were all so happy to see me. Once I saw the mother and the other two girls I immediately recognized that they had come into the library with a real reference question that no one had been able to answer, until I suggested looking at the Project Gutenberg website and we immediately found the answer. The girl was so happy to report to me that she got 97% on her paper and she was attributing that to me. Honestly, I couldn’t accept the honours – I had just guided her to the source she needed. I congratulated her on her hard work as that’s how she got the great mark and thanked her for letting me know the good results too! Really, though it showed me that some people (and I am most especially happy to report some teenagers) really do want to find the “real” answers and aren’t satisfied with what Google alone has to offer and are willing and do consult librarians to find the answers.

The other great thing that happened was the fact that I signed up about 30 kids for the summer reading club in about 3-4 hours! I thought that was pretty good. One of the kids I signed up was a 4 year old girl. I got her to write her name on the back of the slip as I like the kids to feel involved in signing themselves up. Anyway, it turns out it was the first time ever that this little one had written her name. Tears came to my eyes when I heard that, so I rewrote all the information on another slip and gave her mother the slip where she had written her name for the first time!

I left work Friday night so happy to be a part of libraries and so inspired to do as much as I can as part of the profession. Not everyday do I see that libraries have such an effect on people, but the days where I do see this, it makes me realize and know in my heart that this is where I am meant to be.

CLA Part II: The long awaited update

The other sessions I attended at the conference included:

Mary Pratt – keynote session
Pratt is a contemporary realist painter and she spoke about how libraries can be a magical place for children. Her talk was inspirational. If you are interested, check out my article in the Signal (CLA’s conference newsletter).

Mildly Delirious: Recreating you library from top to bottom
This session explained the G.A.S.P. principles (Graphics. Ambience. Style. Presentation.) as used by West Palm Beach Public Library to recreate a library space. Getting staff involved was a huge key to the success, as was creating a vision beforehand of the library space and idea in advance of the recreating of the library space. If you are interested, check out the site on GASP and West Palm Beach Public Libraries.

CLA AGM
I attended the CLA’s Annual General Meeting where the good news was, that student fees have been reduced drastically. They are even going to consider taking away the fee to get into the conferences for students too, which would mean, all we must cover is transportation, food and hotel costs. At least that would help some of us! Hopefully that’ll be approved next year – too late for most of us, but helpful to future students.

Touring the Johnson Geo Centre was pretty neat! You can check out their website. Basically, the Geo Centre is a geological interpretation centre. The building itself is pretty remarkable since it is built using natural rock walls – basically a ceiling and a floor were put up and the walls are completely natural rock and were already formed. You begin by going down an elevator and then you get to watch a movie about the building itself and about rocks and how they were formed. I quite enjoyed that and learned a whole lot!