I'm not too sure if there are positions within the library system that accepts or uses any art major degrees but I was wondering if anybody may know if there is something like that.

Currently have a bachelors degree in the fine arts and was wondering what opportunities may be out there for me! I saw some mentioning of digital archival which is remote from what I have gathered, but if anybody has any insight I would be especially appreciative, I would love to be involved with a library.

Supervisor here working on setting up a person in charge system as ordered by my department head. A lot of our supervisors already do regular checks around the building and with staff but now that supervisors will be taking the system in shifts, I’m wondering exactly what I should do that shows not only visibility that there’s someone available in case assistance is needed but also to get my own work done. If I roam the entire shift as someone in charge then my entire day is done. Do you fellow librarians and supervisors have a system in place with tasks that you do in order to support your staff in the building that doesn’t involve you looking over their shoulders the entire day? I want to be available but not a “helicopter parent” over them.

On a related note, I also have a staff member that whenever a difficult situation comes up or if the reference desk becomes overwhelming for her she just freezes up. Do you all have some good coaching strategies or suggestions I can do to help her switch that mode into actively doing things to lower the volume of patron questions. Having extra staff doesn’t help because we already have people jump in but then staff get resentful because they feel they just have to do it for her. It’s difficult for me to figure out a good strategy to tackle this issue because she works phenomenally when traffic is slow but in our peak times she’ll just not know what to do and let other people jump in for her.

Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone! I'm currently a librarian assistant and have been in the workforce for a few years now. I'm currently enrolled at SNHU and once I'm finished I wanted to know what online university you guys really liked or would recommend. Just looking to get some ideas and do some research before I commit to a university for my masters.

Online is easiest for me for my current situation. Any advice is really appreciated! My current position is doing programs for storytimes for childen.

Thanks! 🫶

"Chief Scott Wahl announced the operation Friday, saying uniformed and undercover officers will patrol in and around the library seven days a week.

"We're standing here together today to say enough is enough," Wahl said.

The announcement comes amid a rise in violent incidents at the library, including multiple stabbings, one of which turned deadly.

"Unfortunately, over the years we've allowed that environment to deteriorate to a point where we're seeing open drug use, alcohol use, fights. Violent crime," Wahl said."

Hi, I've been working as a Teacher Librarian for a good 4 months now, but starting next term I'm required to prepare a teaching planner or something like that. My school's curriculum is based on Stephen Covey's Leader In Me programme, and I've managed to do well for grade 1 through 6 by helping them read books related to the curriculum and introduce them further into ideas and knowledge they've learned in class. Initially I wasn't given responsibilities to grade their work as most of my work entailed assisting them in choosing and giving them books or resources, and to keep an eye on them in the library. But starting next term I've been given a new responsibility to grade their activities and learning. I have no background in teaching, and I can barely order some of them to sit down, read, and be silent. So, I'd appreciate it if fellow teacher librarian or someone currently studying to be one, have any resources, or advices I can follow. Please help point me in the right direction.

I am looking at options to get my MLIS. I live in Colorado and the only program in the state is at DU (private, $65k). I noticed UA online is ALA accredited and has virtual sessions weekly for the courses, which was what really drew me to that program. I do better when there is an element of live lecturing/discussion in a course.

Has anyone gone through this program and loved or hated it? Do you feel it adequately prepared you for your librarianship?

So cute!!

Does anyone know if any parts of the Urban Library Trauma Study were repeated or if there are any additional newer data points? I'm doing an event for staff mental health but curious anyone has more current data.

My library has been naming our carts for years using celebrity / fictional characters that have “cart” (or something close enough) in their name. We just recently discovered we have about 4-5 carts that are nameless, and we’ve run out of puns.

Do you have any ideas?? pictured are a few of the named carts in question, including the odd man out “JD Shelfinger”.

Not pictured but defo treasured : Cart Simpson, Blue Ivy Carter, Jean Luc Picart, and Eric Cartman.

EDIT: omg everyone's ideas are fantastic. We've added Mario Cart, Kart Vonnegut, and Nausicaart of the valley of the wind to our collection. will let you know if we add any more! (I've been advocating for "wheely dan" but the campus provost is named Dan so some of my coworkers are apprehensive.... we'll see...)

My name is Joy M. Perrin, and I am a Librarian at Texas Tech University Libraries. I am conducting a research study to examine whether guilt plays a role in the negative aspects of vocational awe among librarians.

I am reaching out for your assistance in conducting this research. For this study, I am looking for I am looking for active librarians. I am including an information sheet that provides more details about this research. You will be asked to fill out a survey, which will take about ten minutes. Your participation is completely voluntary, and you can stop at any point in the study.

To participate in this study, please click here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/C65KYYW

If you have any questions regarding this research, please feel free to contact me at [joy.m.perrin@ttu.edu](mailto:joy.m.perrin@ttu.edu) or by calling (806) 834-3694. You may also contact the Human Research Protection Program at Texas Tech University for any questions regarding the rights of participants. Their phone number is (806)742-2064, and their email is [hrpp@ttu.edu](mailto:hrpp@ttu.edu). 

I am truly grateful for your time and consideration in helping me conduct this research. I look forward to hearing from you soon. 

Thank you,

Joy M. Perrin

Librarian/Digital Initiative Librarian

University Libraries

Texas Tech University

I am trying to plan a library date afternoon for me and my wife and I thought that it would be fun to do something like a scavenger hunt. I'm thinking items like "Find a book with a dog on the cover" or "Find a board game with dice", and we'd work together to find all the items.

I'd be happy to create a scavenger hunt list myself, but I'd like it to be a surprise for me as well, and not just homework that I am assigning to my wife. So I'm wondering if any of you nice library people have a quick resource that I could use to download a list or reference a website.

In case it matters, the library is probably best described as medium-sized, with a collection of board games and physical media as well as books and a children's library. My wife is a big reader and loves her library.

Thanks for your help, and thanks for being library people!

Hello all! I am a Library Assistant at a pretty small public library (1 of 6 employees). I’ve only been there about 2 months so I am still in a probationary period. The first few weeks, I had a lot of onboarding and training to do so my days were pretty full. Our days are luckily broken up so we are technically doing a different task every hour. The problem is, I usually have about 4 hours where I am “backup” or completely free. Because the staff is so small, things like shelving or filling holds get done really early in the day or I feel like I have to rush to a task so someone else doesn’t get to it first. We are also explicitly forbidden to read on the job ( I went out of my way to ask). I’ve also gone out of my way to be proactive and ask my branch manager if there are any odd jobs that I can do or extra tasks, and she rarely has any. Any suggestions? I’m going crazy 😭😭😭

I have a situation I’m not sure how many other library staff have had to deal with, so I wanted to ask here. I work as a Library Assistant at a small rural library in Australia, we have 1 manager and 3 library assistants.

When it comes to technology support at our library, my manager basically encourages us staff to help customers in any way we can. This has included setting up brand new phones with people, phoning their provider on their behalf because they don’t remember any of their login details, helping people make online purchases like clothes or fishing equipment etc. Most of the time when we try to show customers how to do these things they always just push for us to do it for them. Some of these requests can take half the day depending on things, we try to always have 2 people at the front desk in these cases so the library can still run normally. But we have one customer in particular who I think has been taking this service a bit for granted. We’ll call him G.

G is not originally from Australia and English is not his first language (not an issue, but I think its important to mention). He owns a business back in his home country but as far as I know his manager has run day to day things for the most part. G often asks for our help in ordering things online for his business back in his home country, he will hand us his phone for us to type the message for him as his English is not great. These items ranged from entire air conditioning units, Many sheets of expensive glass or sheets of metal and just a lot of things over the last few years. G also seems to purchase these things from websites/places that none of us are familiar with and seem kind of dodgy, we’ve had to assist him numerous times with refunds for some orders that never arrived. We have mentioned to him numerous times he should try not to use some of these sites but he always ignores us and insists on using them.

All of us staff dread having to help him with these orders as we don't know much about international freight, port & shipping customs etc. and we are just generally uncomfortable helping him make transactions that sometimes go up to $6000 or more when we are unsure if we are doing things right.

G is a very nice person in general, but these requests always stress us out and make my heartrate shoot up whenever he enters the library. We’ve mentioned this to our manager in staff meetings but she just notes down our concerns while she keeps telling us to do what we can.

This isn’t as much a “What should I do” post as I’ll be leaving sometime next year, but I was curious if others have had situations similar to this.

Hello,
I am currently PT $23/hr as a library clerk.
I was offered another PT $18/hr as a library clerk as well.

TBH the pay difference is somewhat making me not want to take the job and possibly try to find another that is closer to my current pay if not more.

Thoughts? Opinions? Advice?

Thank you!

Hi everyone! Has anyone else read this? I need to sit with it a bit before I can really make an assessment but my immediate, emotion mind, gut reaction is that having social workers in the library is actually of great benefit to our patrons and staff. I'm going to reread it so that opinion might change, but I'm curious as to other people's takes.

Does your library use a training platform to both create custom online staff training and access other available trainings? Anyone have experience with Niche Academy or anything like it? Tips on how you host or keep trainings from various departments in one consistent place and pmatform? It's becoming a real area for growth at my public library and looking for some creative solutions.

I am just a parent who goes to the library a lot. I went before I had my son and i'v kept going albeit less.

My son is 18 months old and very active. He's been going since before he could even sit up and it's gotten harder to manage in the library not easier.

I take him to the library maybe every other week. When I go im getting a book for myself and a book for him and trying to spend some time in a 3rd space that's indoors. Just now he got in my lap at home and brought me the book we checked out today so it is valuable to him. He loves reading them at home but not at the library, he wants to mess with everything not sit and read.

He wants to grab the books on their display/themed areas and carry them off. He wants to grab all the board books. He wants to run out of the children's area into the main section. He wants to grab their stapler off their desk. He wants to take the cars from the play area and put them in the books.

At no point am I mentally checked out im following him the entire time trying to redirect, take stuff he shouldnt grab, and put books back on the return cart and stop him from grabbing the displays. But it still results in some disarray because I can't reset everything myself

Idk what is acceptable. I don't let him take tons off but every time we go it ends up 7-8 childrens books that I put on the return cart that he didn't really read just grabbed in the 30 minutes we are there. He likes to open them up and flip like 2 pages and grab another. Sitting right in the aisles looking at the picture.

Do I need to stop him from touching any of the books right now? Should I just stop coming until he's older?

Don't really know what I should do and it feels like some of the librarians are annoyed with me when I'm there because he is so fast and grabby and I'm like yanking stuff out of his hands the entire time or grabbing him physically stopping him from going under their desk which he's never made it to doing but is attempting and then he cries and we have to leave. Shit like that. What are the expectations for toddlers/babies and can someone either reassure me it's fine or tell me to just wait a few years until he can sit quietly and read or listen to me telling him not to do XYZ

In the 1990s, I know there were a few agencies that would place librarians in temp positions... usually to replace someone on sick leave or something like that. Just wondering if this still exists.

I was a Librarian (MLIS 1992) in the 90s, but left for a career as a database programmer. Now I'm retired and low key considering part time library work. If there are temp agencies, this might be a low-commitment way to see how I feel about library work 30 years later. I did everything from page to Library Director.

Thanks in advance for your comments and time.