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For now. There is still a chance things will change, but for now I haven’t gotten a letter. I don’t like that anyone is getting laid off though, and I hope we find a way to keep that from happening.
Had a lovely staff day today, learning all about the budget and what might come in the future (digital devices you can check out?!?…maybe some day). Mostly it just made me tired, but that might have been the little bit of sleep I got the night before. Union executive board meeting tomorrow. Lots of discussing to do. Still feel limbo-y about all this stuff.
What am I reading? Half heartedly a few different things. The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall, which was something I picked up at PLA and never got around to reading. It is a lot like Big Love.
Also Merlin’s Harp, same deal. They are both decent books, I am just waiting for my copy of Monsters of Men to come and being impatient…
People are getting their numbers today, via work email. I haven’t gotten one yet. They have until 5pm to send them out. Branch managers are being eliminated, so those in that position will have to take an open position or bump librarians in order to keep their jobs. Sigh. Waiting is so hard.
Especially since I love my job. I know the others affected do too. It is hard to advocate for yourself in a budget crisis–why is my job more important than any of the other people/services being cut? :P
Just waiting…
Tomorrow’s the big day. Budget announcements. I probably won’t find out about my specific job for a couple more weeks after that, but we will have a much better idea of where we stand tomorrow. The City Librarian told us on Thursday that the cuts have decreased to 8% and managers tell us that at their meeting on Friday, they were told 7%. That is certainly good news, but still a lot more than the budget cuts we have faced over the last couple of years. Most of those were 1.5% and could be answered by eliminating empty positions and a week long furlough. This is definitely not that.
One of the fear making issues during this budget cut time is the secrecy that the Mayor’s office puts around the decision making process. I am not sure what the reasoning is behind this, but McGinn is not the only one. Nickels really started the whole thing. I found out recently that not only do the plans have to be secret, but our library council is not even allowed to talk to each other about it. What? Really? These are the people who have to approve a final budget. Is the Mayor hoping that by keeping them from talking to one another…trying hard to pull this out…that they will make better choices? Or won’t have time to be informed enough to make different choices than the Mayor laid in front of them? Can he really care that much about what cuts the library makes? His comments up to now show he really doesn’t care about the library much at all, although he does like to use it himself occasionally.
In Libraryland, I keep on trucking. Teen Advisory went great and we are well underway planning our first event. I hosted Danger: Books at the middle school in my area recently and as usual, it totally rocked and inspired me. The actors are so great and I love hearing my favorite books acted out. I taught my first computer class in over a month and it went really well, with a full house.
What am I reading? I finally finished The Broken Teaglass a few days ago and found it a nice change in scenery. The writing is dry and the characters are shallowly defined. The only person you really get to know is the main character and at first he is one of the biggest mysteries of all. Billy is new to Samuelson, a company that compiles dictionaries. He feels lucky to have a job, being a newly graduated, but isn’t sure that being a lexicographer is for him. He is also a reluctant mystery solver when a strange citation falls into his lap and it appears that someone has been murdered, but his new friend Mona talks him into taking the plunge.
I am almost done with The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller. I was looking forward to this because I really liked both Kiki Strike books. Don’t get me wrong, I do like this book…mostly. I like the strong female protagonist, I like the story line: people who are born again and again because something is drawing them back, I liked the characters. Sigh, I don’t like that the main character, Haven, can’t seem to tell when the others are lying to her. Ever. She is tricked time and time again by the same people. Haven needs a big gong rung that says “trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice, shame on me.”
I have been working on what librarians do best. Research. We have two people (George and Joan) coming to facilitate our librarian “forum” in two weeks and I wanted to know more about them. It is pretty much what you’d expect from two long time administrators that haven’t been on a reference desk for 20+ years. They are definitely library advocates, but they are part of the “budget cuts are a great time for big changes” school. They don’t out and out say that librarians are outmoded, but what I have heard so far, they don’t make any statements about what librarians bring to the library.
Like that we are the ones that develop and test the programs they are going to continue without us. That we can find the information you are looking for, even if you don’t know for sure what it is when you come to us. As libraries crowd out librarians, patrons will get less of what they want, but they might not even know it. Eventually the library won’t be known for the place to get answers, it will just be a place to pick up your materials and use wifi, which will edge out the young and the poor. Seattle will no longer be known for its smart population, its excellence in literacy. I won’t go so far to say that our poor will drop into wrack and ruin, but lower test scores for under-served populations and all that means for their future…that I will predict. There is a direct correlation between summer reading programs and maintaining literacy levels into the next school year.
I hate the fact that I am developing an advisory board for someone else now. But I have to make the best of it. This is great experience and I have a lot of support from my manager and former managers. I will have great references when I am looking for a job. My biggest question is whether I would take one of those clerk positions when the lay-offs come. According to our contract they have to allow a laid off person to take the lowest level of whatever other position they qualify for (I think I got that right). I would have a really hard time doing the LAIV job, basically my job, for much less pay, but not being able to do real reference or readers advisory. How do you explain to a patron, “well, I could help you, but I am not supposed to. Let me call someone who is allowed to.” ???
On a lighter note, The Mister is coming home today! I am meeting him at the airport at around 6 and we are going to go to Georgetown on the way home. I know it has only been a week, but I have missed him. I also have the week off, partially to spend time with him, and partially to help with my sister’s wedding. She gets married on Saturday :) I am so happy for her.
Ah, the sh** is coming down now. There was a notification yesterday about our new service model. It seems as if we don’t need as many librarians as we currently have. Isn’t that good timing with the budget cuts coming? There can be a bunch of librarian lay offs because hey, we don’t need them and they get paid more, so we can just replace them with lower paid clerks. Clerks can answer questions at the reference desk and the few librarians left can do outreach and programming. Two birds and all that.
I am feeling pretty dark right now. It isn’t just the cuts and lack of respect for the profession (although that would be enough). Things are building up with the Offspring as well. We always want to think the best of our children, but they do screw up sometimes. Let’s just say that OS seems to be piling up the screw ups lately.
Gotta run off and talk some smack with some library ladies. Maybe this will help.
Do I sound excited? I actually am despite my sarcastic tone, since I get to go visit the Mister in Las Vegas and I haven’t seen him in 2 months. Sigh. And the furlough doesn’t hurt as much because the system figured out the percentages and took a portion from each paycheck rather than one big divot in our regular pay. Next year won’t be so cushy.
Vegas is spendy! Most of my time will be spent pretty domestically, hanging out with my sweetie at his apartment, hiking, grocery shopping. The usual. The planets have aligned though for the labor day weekend, when several of my friends and my sister are going to meet me there to have some fun. We are probably going to see Love at the Mirage and I would really like to go to Rain at the Palms to see Paul Oakenfold, but the price and the wait to get in might keep my friends from braving it with me.
What am I reading? I finished my review book for Teen Services, The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood with the Duchess of Northumberland. Well, it reminded me of the many retellings of fairy tales we have seen in the last 5 years, except that it is an original story as far as I can tell. The setting is beautifully constructed and the characters are both likeable and hateable, as they should be, but I couldn’t make myself care. It felt like one too many of the same sort of story. Girl loves boy, boy loves her back, they are torn apart by evil, evil is defeated, but no happy ending for you. I don’t usually think every story needs to have a happy ending or have all its loose ends tied up, but this one left me hanging.
Point in fact, I loved Tell me a Secret by Holly Cupala. Miranda is a teenager with problems. Her sister is dead, her mother is hard to live with and her father rolls over far too easily. What could make it worse? Getting pregnant by the first boy you ever have sex with. It makes the mother impossible, the father avoid coming home and Miranda’s feelings of abandonment so much worse. Things at school don’t help, where she loses friends and her boyfriend to rumor and speculation, along with her own awkward ways of dealing with her issues. Miranda is a deep character and Cupala captures the heart and mind of a teenage girl in crisis perfectly. (I should know, I used to be one ;) And all the conflict is not tied up in a nice package at the end, but it does give a feeling that the future can be redeemed.
I was back at work today and now I have 2 more days off. Time to spend with the Offspring and to have dinner with some co-workers I no longer co-work with. I think the Offspring and I will go see Karate Kid. I heard the Last Airbender was quite disappointing, so I guess I can wait for dvd on that. I need to get into the garden too, as I think the weeds have decided I’m not coming back and the whole plot is fair game. I have had 2 nice heads of cauliflower, some snap peas and strawberries so far this year. Oh, and some carrots, although I don’t think they like our soil. I keep getting veins of dirt in them and they don’t grow very straight or long. Onions are coming up and I need to plant something to replace the cauliflower. I am thinking some cabbage.
We got back from Chelan about 3:30 yesterday and I am a nice red color. I wore sunscreen, but the redness had already started in Las Vegas, then continued in Boston. I don’t really tan, I just get red, then go back to pale and I don’t expect anything different this time. Chelan was beautiful, but windy and I don’t think I got much sleep. We went out on the boat on Sunday. I rode on the skidoo with my sister and brother and it was good wild fun. The ride back to the dock was the worst, as the wind had come up and there was no gentle way back in. I thought my uncle was trying to kill us on part of the ride, but it turns out there was no other choice.
I came back to work this morning to a reference meeting of 3. Me, who was totally unprepared, our adult librarian, who was over and mis-prepared, and our manager who was able to reign us both in. The children’s librarian was sick and I am not sure if our LAIV was scheduled, but most of the conversation was about him, so it seems like he would have been a good addition. An LAIV is a library associate level 4, who has the “basic” job description that matches that of a librarian, but doesn’t have to have a master’s and is paid a bit less (see much less). His duties have to stay “basic” so that we librarians don’t get our panties in a bunch (for good reason), but it is hard to find him good, meaningful work and still have it be “basic”. And the fact that he does have the master’s makes it that much harder.
Oh, and the start to my day was trying to ride my bike, going back in the house about 4 times for things I forgot, then still forgetting my gloves. I was running late, so I decided to take the bus that happened to be behind me up the hill to work. I got on the bus after putting the bike on and after a couple of blocks, I watched my new bike computer fall off the handlebars (HOW does that happen??!). I decide to get off the bus and go look for whatever mangled bit of plastic and wires was left of it. So, I take the bike off and push the holder up and what falls out of the holder? The bike computer. I look at the bus driver with wide questioning eyes, and she looks back at me with a hard gaze. I say “fine” push my bike up on the curb, then wait several minutes for traffic to pass by so I can cross the street. At least my computer wasn’t mangled, AND I did manage to make it to work on time. I was just a bit grumpy.
What am I reading? Still Mindspring and I like it a lot. I wish I had more time to sit and read it, instead of the choppy blocks I have had recently. Hethor was a clockmaker’s apprentice in a world that turns on gears. Literally. One night he is visited by an angel and given a quest to find a key and save the world. In the morning he is unceremoniously dumped on his ass by the ungrateful, spoiled sons of his trade master and his journey begins. So far there have been ignorant Viceroys, awful dungeons, airships and winged savages. I am still only half way done.
I plan to read the next book, Escapement, but I just got in Pump Six and Other Stories and I might have to give that a read first.
The Mister has made a new cage for my snake, Cleo. It is about twice as big as her old habitat, which was 55 gallons. We need to get her a good sturdy branch to climb on, because she can just barely hold herself up long enough to get to the top, then she falls back into the bottom. One of her favorite things to do is climb towards the top and look out at everything.
That’s my girl looking at me now.
Cleo came to live with me about 6 years ago when her original owner went abroad and didn’t come back. I worked at Crave then, which was located in the Capitol Hill Arts Center (affectionately known as CHAC) and the main office for the building was pet sitting her. I saw her at some point when I was up there, gave her a pet and it evidently caught the eye of the staff there that I was not afraid of slithery reptiles. A couple of months later I was asked if I would take her in when it became apparent that her owner was not returning.
I never thought I would be a reptile owner. I have always found it a little mean to keep that kind of pet. Especially one like Cleo who is small enough that you can’t let her roam the house. She would get lost in a warm spot and you wouldn’t find her again for a long time. Her head is small and so is her brain; experts say they have very little memory. Cleo has never had live food and she is not surprised that her food flies and sometimes is heralded by an earthquake. I buy frozen mice and thaw them, hold them by the tail to let her grab them and often let her know it is eating time by shaking her log tunnel. I don’t know that she would do well in “the wild”.
She eats once a week and her eating schedule can really affect her mood. You don’t want to hold a hungry snake, as they are a bit cranky. They also don’t like to be held while they are digesting. That leaves a couple of days a week to hold her, and I probably end up lining that up once a month or so. She is fine being held, but she wants to go look at everything–she is very curious–and moves around a lot. I am in constant motion to control her constant motion.
She has bitten me once. It was an accident. I had been holding her for a while and she had mostly settled down around my shoulders. I was talking to the Mister and started gesturing with my hands. A little too fast I guess because the next thing I know her teeth are around one the side of my index finger. She looked as surprised as a snake can look, and I probably did too. I used my other hand and held her behind the head and pushed her forward and off my finger–snake teeth angle backward. It didn’t really hurt and was more like a sandpaper burn, but I cleaned it really well and put a band aid on it. She wasn’t trying to eat me–snakes are good at judging what will fit in their body–I probably just surprised her.
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Libraryland is all about budget cuts right now. I was off yesterday, but there was a timeline posted that included the idea that layoffs would be happening, but not for a bit. It also doesn’t sound like actual library staff will be laid off. Any layoffs are bad but layoffs you know are the worst. I am trying not to worry about it until we know more. But I will be at the staff meeting next month when the Mayor is there. Evidently he doesn’t understand the importance of the library to our community.
What am I reading? It has been a prolific week. The River by Mary Jane Beauford started out a bit weak but grew on me. There were some weird descriptions in the first few chapters, almost as if she was trying to include some SAT words or clever twists of phrase, but they fell flat. Veronica made a hard move with her family from Portland to rural Oregon. The two things that make living in the middle of nowhere are running and Karen, a little girl who lives along her running route. One day the river takes Karen away and while Veronica is trying to deal with that grief, she finds that there is more than the river to blame.
13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison was quite good, and a rival for The Various by Steve Augarde (I thought this was much better, actually). Tanya has a second sight that allows her to see fairies. After one too many mischievous encounters, her mother packs her off to her grandmother’s home in the country. Tanya has never felt welcome there and has a tangled relationship with the grounds keeper and his son, Fabian as well. A mystery begins to unfold and Tanya and Fabian try to solve it, forcing them to trust each other and dangerously delve into the fairy realm.
Right now I am enjoying both Readers’ Advisory: an Unshelved Collection by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes and This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson. So yes, I am completely geeking out on library-based literature.
And just when I think that things are going well and that I am doing useful work, I get a reminder that our City Librarian thinks I am less useful than Google. I know she would be appalled that her words were used this way, but the fact that she said them at all is just awful. And the article is true, there is not anything in there I would disagree with, except the part that says that the folks overseeing the community conversations were librarians. While they might hold the degree, many of them have not worked with the public for many years and some never in the library world. They do not represent me or my position.
This article just made me sad. Sad for our future. Librarians are not only the people that find you that dvd you were looking for, we are the ones that protect your right to privacy, make sure you have access to information and provide a gateway to technology for those who haven’t had the exposure. This article makes it clear that librarians are slowly being specialized, dumbed down and minimized until someday people will say “what is a librarian?” We have already lost several library positions to clerical positions that do our “basic” duties, and all of the new hires into that position have librarian degrees.
I love my job and will continue to do it cheerfully and to the best of my ability. I was starting to feel warm and cozy here again, reluctant to ever leave because I feel that I have a bright future in my system. This article reminds me that I am just a number to be moved or eliminated and while I might get warm fuzzies from above occasionally, this is the bottom line.
Nothing like a jolt of reality to sharpen the mind.
I hinted that I have been a little whiney lately, a little stressed, maybe a little annoying? I have annoyed myself, but I can’t speak for others and they have been nice enough not to say.
Most of this has stemmed from the changes that happened a couple of months ago. I would still be my happy self at my old branches. I wouldn’t feel as challenged though, or quite as elemental in important goings ons. In many ways the changes were good for me and are likely leading me in promising directions.
I was stressed and irritated because of some extra work was given to me because someone else didn’t want to do it. The extra work is really a good opportunity. The problem is that it makes it so I don’t have time to do programming. I have taken positive steps and made my teen volunteers my project and things are really working out great with them.
The session at PLA I was talking about in my last post, Mourning the Loss, helped me deal with this. I was reminded of the stages of grieving that you go through when you experience a major change. I was definitely grieving and I was in the anger stage. I was venting to people and it wasn’t helping–it actually made me feel worse. Hearing this in the session helped me identify it and to let it go. Just like that, I decided I was done railing against that which I cannot change. It is working so far.
They also talked about a new book that I put on hold immediately. It is called Influencer: the Power to Change Anything. It is more for administration and shows how to lead people through changes with minimal damage to their moral and thus to their work ethic. There is some information there for individuals as well.
I plan to give it a read just as soon as I dig myself out of this pile of galley’s I was given at PLA. Which brings us to:
What am I reading? The Passage by Justin Cronin. Love it so far, even though I am still in the baby stages of the plot set up. This book is over 700 pages long and thick as a paperback. Mr. Cronin knows how to set up a character, even a minor one and the story has really sucked me in already. Some day there will be vampires, but for now there is a special agent, a death row convict, a jailor/guard, a nun and a sweet little girl. Too bad you have to wait until June 8, 2010 to read it…
Living in Color 