Quiet Libraries

Quiet seems very much a thing of the past when it comes to libraries. That has positive and negative aspects, but I shan't go into that right now. I will soon, but not today.

Today I wanted to mention what it *is* like to be in a quiet library, but a library which is quiet in a rather dull way. Only 2 or 3 weeks ago I was actually shushing people (my first shushing as a librarian, how exciting!). Yesterday and today, however, silence, or at least great quiet, reigns in our space. This is, of course, because I work at a university library. The time between semesters is odd: nobody needs you, but there are many things you need to do. Simple things tend to be thrown my way, since I am the intern: check the shelves of the reference section, fix mistakes made by student workers (just because the TX's are here and the MR's are there does not mean that the label on the stacks should read "TX 472.37 --> MR 1253.C5 1998"), etc. I do not mind these tasks at all, and am glad that there is some non-hectic time during which I can do these things. But when I'm sitting at my desk waiting for the phone to ring, for someone to approach the desk, for someone to ping me on Live Chat, for someone to need me in some way...it seems very quiet indeed.

Why being a librarian can be uber fun, part I

Last week, I encountered a young man who had no idea what he was writing a paper about. He came to the reference desk and asked me to help him find books or articles on fashion and society. Clearly, this is an enormous topic and needed to be trimmed down. A lot. So we chatted about it and he explained, over time, what it was for. He had a class last semester (last year?) which he never finished and his teacher had told him to turn in a paper so he could be done. It was, apparently, a class essentially on globalization, or something to that effect. She had told him that, since he was interested in fashion, he should write his paper on fashion and *something*. So we talked and I suggested a number of things relating to fashion and its influence on society, particularly on gender roles and so forth. He loved this idea, so we found some books in the catalogue (unfortunately, many of them were at the university's *other* campus) and went upstairs to look at the books.

On our way to the section we needed to get to, he suddenly said to me "oh my god, that guy is *so* cute." We had already passed, so I did not see the young man, but I asked my patron about whom he was speaking. He described him slightly and I said I'd look on the way back. We found our books (not only the ones we were specifically looking for but a *ton* of others - let this be a lesson, researchers and librarians, do not underestimate the value of browsing) and headed back. He said to me "okay, don't forget to look, he'll be at the table to the right on the corner in a polo shirt". The man in question wasn't in a polo shirt, but I could identify easily who my patron meant: he was cute, and definitely the type I would have guessed my young patron would like. We discussed the gentleman's "adorableness" on the way downstairs, discussing the fact that what the young man was wearing probably contributed to his cuteness, since he was so neat and preppy (I figured we should discuss fashion and gender a little bit, since that was what I was getting him to write his paper on).

My patron and I parted as I returned to the reference desk with his great thanks and conspiratorial look which told me that he, like many similar young men, thought I was, as others have put it, "fabulous".

Being a librarian is fun.

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