Sponge or a duck?

Well, how did this week find you? Busy, excited, a little under the weather, upset, annoyed? A few months back, the Hayden Library had a customer service workshop taught by Kate Laughlin, who also taught the Intellectual Freedom workshop that I told you about. She talked about how we had a choice to be a sponge, or a duck. We could either let all of the problems and complications really get to us, or we could let them roll off of our back. I like this reminder to have a positive attitude even when things don’t go the way you want them to, or when it isn’t the best week.

Speaking of having a positive attitude, something that could either be annoying or hilarious happened yesterday. Karen Yother and I took the library van to get some stuff from storage. The Hayden Library has two vans that it owns, and our director, John Hartung, had the newer one. Not a huge problem; the old one still runs. The problem was that the old van is used for recycling, and the entire storage space was filled to the top with cardboard boxes. Needless to say, we needed to take a trip to the dump to free up some van space. Once we headed through the dump, we drove over to our storage unit. Like most storage places, you need a code to get in, and it turns out that our code didn’t work. You could normally go up to the office and they could get you in, but the storage people were out for lunch. Turns out that the bill hadn’t gone through yet, and the system automatically starts locking people out of their accounts if the bill doesn’t go through. Obviously, it could be a very sponge or duck kind of choice. This situation could either be seen as a huge waste of time, or we could look at the bright side and think how this could very easily be used in a slapstick skit.

Yesterday also included driving to Hayden Meadows and Dalton Elementary, so I got to spend a lot of quality time with our Library Van. At the beginning of every summer, we always have some free giveaway stuff that we get from the Collaborative Summer Library Program. Although we didn’t do summer reading promotion at these schools like we did with Fernan or Bryan, we got them the free stuff and some information on when programs were going to be held.

Going back to the beginning of the week, I heard about a resource that I haven’t been utilizing. It’s called Bookletters. Bookletters is an online service with thousands of pages of information on books, films, and authors. You can also set up a customized subscription email, or choose from the long list of subscriptions that come out through Bookletters. You can also set up an event calendar. Basically it’s a database on new and old books, which include synopsizes, author and book information and a lot more. Bookletters can be accessed from our ksalibraries website. Although I don’t have a YA specific newsletter and event calendar set up, I’ll be working on it, and getting back to you in a few weeks.

A few more things to mention. I have my first Book Blurt book review, which I posted on Wednesday. This week’s was about Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, and next week’s is going to be on Ingrid Lee’s Dog Lost.

In other news, this week is going to be the start of our summer programs. Our older teen programs aren’t until the third week of the month, but we have plenty going on for tweens (basically our middle schoolers, so around grades 6-8 even though we won’t be too precise) this week. On Monday, we have Ka-Boom science experiments. On Tuesday, we have Lightning Comics teaching us how to play Yu-Gi-Oh, and on Friday, we have our Open Game Friday where we’ll set up our Wii and have some fun.

Well that about wraps up this week, so I’ll see you on Wednesday, and always remember to be a duck.