This coffee tastes like prison

On a power walk from my apartment to the Bull Run Library I spotted a sign for

"Spanish for Fun! Join the Spanish Conversation Club! Bring your lunch and chat with new friends in Spanish over coffee and dessert. A fluent Spanish-speaker is available to help with conversation"

The time when I arrived at the library was 11:30 precisely. I spent the next half hour debating with myself over whether I should go. Lately I've become less inclined to take risks and put myself out there. I don't know if it's because of lack of confidence or lack of luck with the job search but normally it doesn't take me half an hour to convince myself to do something. At 12:01 pm I arrived back at the library having run home to throw a lunch together. I ran into the conclusion of the English conversation club and then awaited for the arrival of the Spanish Conversation club.

Overall I want to chalk this up as a mediocre experience. I had no expectations when I got there but I did not expect the unstructured style of the two hour conversations between groups of people. The tables were too close together and it was difficult to hear one another shout in Spanish across the room. No one introduced themselves to me at first nor asked where I was from or how I had come to learn Spanish. I was literally a fly on the wall. I was sitting between an elderly man who was answering a volunteer's questions about grammar with another elderly man who kept looking over and smiling at me. To my right was a Chinese woman whose voice was so clipped it was hard to hear what she was saying. Imagine when you're crying so hard you can't speak except in gasps. That was how this woman spoke except without the sobbing. To her right was a man who didn't know a lick of Spanish at all, and next to him two elderly women who volunteered for the library (the know it alls). One woman's name was Judith and I don't recall the other woman's name. To their right and directly across from me were two woman, a blonde and a brunette. The brunette was very friendly and had an easy going personality. From speaking with her and correcting her grammar and pronunciations I learned that she teaches an ESL class for first graders at a local elementary school. The blonde woman had four children and I'm not sure what she did for a living.

Throughout the two hours of conversation I felt more and more isolated. I listened to the conversations going on around me and after about 45 minutes Judith introduced herself to me (one of the elderly ladies on the side table). To pass the time I got riled up about a project I wanted to with Lydia for an open mic night. Translate Nine Inch Nails' song "Hurt" and sing it with her accompanying on guitar. I asked a few questions to Judith pertaining to the lyrics and the conversation stalled from there. The only conversation I got was from the Chinese woman who couldn't speak very well. We talked about how hot it was in Texas and how much we both hated Indian food. It's not that I didn't have a good time interacting with people but I suppose I'm more used to structured conversations like I would get in high school or college. Step one: study this lesson, Step two: break up into groups and complete this activity. It looked like that was how the English Conversation Club was ran now that I think about it. I know I should have been more interactive with everyone. There were people in the room I didn't speak to the entire time. However it was my first time and despite popular belief I am an incredibly shy person. I immediately jumped up when Judith moved to the other side of the room and took her place between the two young women. Here was where the most conversation was happening. Here was where I spent the best part of my afternoon. Unfortunately the other woman who sat next to Judith was less than friendly. I know most elders are set in their ways but I detected a hint of condescension from this woman. I felt very ignorant sitting next to her and even I had had seven years of experience speaking Spanish. However, she and Judith had been talking about the rules for adding accents to words ending with vowels and even they admitted that they could be wrong.

The worst part for me was when everyone was leaving and the elderly woman turned to "the man who knew no Spanish" and asked him if he knew anything about the Chinese woman. He said he didn't but only that she'd been coming for a few weeks. I stayed in to listen and the woman said, "I don't know if it's just me, but her accent is so hard to understand. I can't hear anything she says. And I don't know if this makes me a bad person but I was actively ignoring her the entire time." I left fuming. If this was to be my example of how librarians (supposed library volunteers) viewed patrons I wanted no part of the group.

Overall Verdict: 2.5 out of 5 - I should probably go back because I need the practice for Spanish, but I think I'll check out what's available at other branches too.

Life on the Ref Desk

I was on The Desk the other day, which is to say it's the Reference Desk, the Desk where people ding hello or wait for you to stand around and notice them, or the Desk where people give their two cents. The strangest comment I heard came from a little boy who walked by me muttering, "There's a baby crawling around the library." I left the desk to investigate and did indeed find an infant crawling between fiction and young adult. Her mother was staring transfixed at some fiction titles. I went back to the desk thinking I'd never seen a baby crawl that fast.

While I'm on the desk, mothers and babysitters alike descend upon the library in one massive convergence to sign their children up for summer reading or apply for library cards. Now and again we'll get a very opinionated patron who wants to give her two cents on the .25 fine to reserve a book that's being instituted in September. I think one of the staff members told her, "Well, the library lost 1.5 million dollars in the budget last quarter so we had to come up with a unique way to charge patrons money that would make sense." I had a discussion about charging for holds with a librarian in DC during an informational interview. I told him I didn't think it was fair but he reminded me of the cost to transport holds from library to library and half of the time the patrons don't even pick them up. At least if they start charging, perhaps patrons will be more selective about which titles they choose.

Between shelving, pushing tiny carts around narrow shelves, and working the cash register I am having way too much fun at this volunteership. The ladies who work there have dubbed me "the Barefoot Librarian." Every week I stay a little longer past my 3 hour volunteer time slot to make sure I'm not leaving them with too much work. I love finding books in the free bin, leaving books in the free bin and seeing them disappear during my shift, checking out books to myself as patrons hand them in (yay Stephen King), and drinking coffee. I am so lucky to be able to work here, even if it's volunteering.

ALA Day #2 & #3

This day was spent with less volunteering and more attending events. I overshot my commute by an hour so I ended up re-organizing my backpack and writing poetry before my first event.

My first event was a Q&A session with Dennis Lehane, author of Gone Baby, Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island. I actually haven't read any of his books but I've seen several movie adaptations. Since it was fairly early in the morning and I hadn't had any coffee yet I was hoping that he'd be funny. The woman sitting next to me assured me that he wasn't. But lo and behold, he opens his lecture with a blond joke. Dennis Lehane looks like a combination of Simon Pegg and the principal from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a Bostonian accent and a very dry sense of humor. He read us a few chapters from his new book, Moonlight Mile, the sequel to Gone Baby, Gone. Afterward he took some audience questions.

Some interesting quotes about his writing style and where he gets his inspiration:
"I tend not to be a very judgmental human being and this attracts a lot of psychos to you because  I sit and listen to them. And they have the best stories"

"I'm a writer because of libraries." Dennis came from a working class family with no disposable income. They could not afford books so he got a library card for free and began to read books this way.

"I can't read books that don't have a love for the English language."

My second event was a Q&A session with young adult author, Ellen Hopkins. She authors books containing free verse and concrete poems centering around her real life daughter's addiction to meth. She writes other books on differing subjects, prostitution, abuse, but the format is still the same. She read from her newest book, Fallout, which chronicles the aftermath of the lives of Christina Snow's children and the affects her addiction has had on them. Her real life son is only 13 but Hopkins portrayed him to be 17. The other children in the novel are based on qualities from Snow's other five children, specifically the babies that were exposed to meth in utero: OCD, panic attacks. Her advice was to go back to your art, art heals. Discussing the books seemed a very painful ordeal for Hopkins, as she stumbled on her words a lot. I waited in line to get her autograph since they were giving away advanced reader copies of Fallout.

After the reading I had lunch with Danielle and her friend Rebecca where we discussed library shop and looking for jobs.

The rest of my day was spent sitting in on a meeting of the Best Fiction for Young Adults committee. I didn't get there in time to discuss the works I had read but did provide input on a few books. The committee was meeting early the next day to go over the last bit of the list of books and make their decision on what should make the list. There was one lone man on the committee and it was fascinating hearing them debate the merits of young adult literature. Another wonderful aspect of the committee was how they interpreted input from the teen committee who had reviewed the same books into their own critique. Even if no one on the committee liked the book in question, they agreed to push it through because the teens made it seem like the book mattered to them. The particular book in question that none of the adults seemed to like or felt was too graphic but the teens particularly enjoyed was By the time you read this I'll be dead, which discusses suicide and bullying.

I concluded the night by attending the Michael Printz Award Ceremony and Reception where I heard Libba Bray give the most fantastic acceptance speech as she received the Printz Award for her book, Going Bovine, something I recommend everyone pick up. Not all of the speakers were great, some were funny, some were loud, very loud, and some were less than personable. But they'd written something that impacted the Printz committee enough to want to nominate them, so they have important things to say.

Day 3 was uneventful. I was so exhausted from the events of Day 1 and 2 that I did not choose to go to the Library Advocacy Day Rally. I ended up watching a video of the events later on, but at that point I was so exhausted I could not imagine dealing with the sweltering heat and large crowds.

All in all I'd say it was a good Con. I want to go to the PLA conference in Philadelphia in 2011 now so I'd better start saving.

ALA Day #1

I was very excited and anxious at the same time at the thought of attending my first professional conference for the American Librarian Association. I described it to friends who asked me what I was doing, "What's the ALA Conference?" It's where hundreds of librarians and awesome bibliophiles descend on DC to talk about books and wreak advocacy havoc. Well, maybe not that last part, but definitely a lot of cool and awe inspiring people converging into one place. A few people I spoke to said, "I hear those conference can get pretty crazy." This made me flash back to an invitation I'd received to go to the ALA Dance Party which was Prince themed. All I did was nod and smile in response. Unfortunately, I did not get to attend the Thursday, Friday, or Saturday events of the conference as I had agreed to be in a friend's wedding. This was also before I knew the dates of ALA and could not back out of the wedding as a result without causing offense. So as we begin, my launch date for the conference was Sunday, June 27th at 10:30 am.

I had planned on attending various events starting at 8 am. I was surprised with a visit from long time friends from Leesburg and that turned into late night conversations, bad science fiction, and chips and salsa until 2 in the morning. When I left the apartment at 8:30 am I made it into the conference, registered and breathlessly stumbled into my first event with the ALSC (Association of Library Services to Children), Celebrating the Spoken Word with Poetry for Young People, a program which discusses and sings the praises of using poetry to impact children and literacy. The speakers included Mary Ann Hoberman, Children's Poet Laureate; Stephen Young, Program Director, Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest; Sylvia Vardell, Professor, Texas Woman's University, School of Library and Information Science. I recall the youngest speaker, Amber Rose Johnson, most vividly. She was the winner of the 2010 Poetry Out Loud Winner, and is a senior at at a high school in Providence, Rhode Island. The Recitation Contest involved the student picking and memorizing three poems of their choice and then delivering them in front of a panel of judges. I recall her second poem choice, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, in honor of her parents and Margaret Walker's For My People. She recited the last poem for us and to hear her speak moved the entire room into a stunned silence. It's almost as if we weren't listening to poetry but rather the dreams and hopes of a young black woman speaking of the struggles of African Americans over the past few centuries.

Some of my takeaways from this event about poetry were:

• "Rhymers will be readers" = Literacy --> Poems --> Children --> READ.
• We should be looking at what poems do and how they use language when using them with children.
• The best poetry informs all of our senses.
• Having kids read poetry along with you, even if they're ESL kids and can only focus on one word, is a great way to get them to participate and into poetry
• Children who have at least 4 nursery rhymes memorized will be reading at higher grade levels by the time they reach elementary school.
• As quoted by the Amber Johnson, "A poem is a reflection of you, who you are, a reflection of the author, and a reflection of yourself."

I was volunteering at this event for the ALSC and helped hand out handouts (which disappeared faster than you can say, "Free food in the exhibit hall!") Once the handouts ran out I struck up a conversation with a woman volunteering at the event too, a librarian from Montgomery County. I was excited to find a kindred spirit and proceeded to ask her question about working with children in library services. I was disappointed when I came to find that she's looking to change careers because, as she put it, "She's tired of working with children and tired of all the bureaucracy she has to put up with." She's not even a member of ALA she told me. I met with my friend Miranda after this who told me she couldn't stand how negative people were being and usually tuned them out when they spoke like this. I can't tell what my path as a librarian is going to put me through, but I hope not to come out of it jaded and worn.

I accompanied this librarian into the overwhelmingly crowded exhibit hall where we proceeded to chat. I told her I'd ran into the same man 4 times on the metro and throughout my morning at the conference:
"Have you played 'Cite the Librarian' Game?", she asked me.
"What's that?", I asked.
She replied, "Where you look at someone and ask yourself if they're a librarian or not."
"He definitely doesn't look like a librarian," I said.
"You don't look like a librarian either," she retorted.

This comment actually stung to hear. Especially when it was followed by one of the vendors asking me what high school I was from. My attire didn't make me look that young I hope. I had my hair down and undone so that may have been why. My confidence was boosted by a homeless man later on the metro who asked me if I was a librarian or a teacher. He loved us so much, he said, that he eventually wanted to marry a librarian.

Once the librarian and I parted ways on the exhibit floor I spent the rest of the day picking up swag and running into Laurie Halse Andersen, famous young adult author of Speak, Wintergirls, Twisted, Prom, and Chains. I ran into her at her mini Q&A at the Live at your Library Stage. She read an excerpt from her new book Forge which is a continuation of the storyline from Chains following a pair of young African American teens during the Revolutionary War. I clapped softly after her reading and she whipped her head around to me and said, "Don't clap! It's only the prologue. You don't know if the rest is going to be good or if it will suck." She was smiling when she said this though. A very humble writer, Laurie also shared that, "These books are not copy-edited, please don't hate me. I really don't know where commas go." As a gift to herself she has promised that once she finishes her three books surrounding this topic she will read M. T. Anderson's (no relation) similar books beginning with, The Astonishing Life of Ocatavian Nothing.

Laurie tweeted a photo of us at her reading. See if you can find me! It's hard, trust me!

After Laurie's Q&A I spent a lot of time wandering the exhibit hall where I picked up various amounts of swag. I will detail everything I picked up later in Day 3 but suffice to say I scored a gem finding a recorded book narrated by James Marsters for FREE! I also visited Alliance Entertainment booth who were GIVING AWAY FREE CDs and cleaned them out. I think I walked away with maybe 10 or 12 CDs total of popular and eclectic music. Best find ever was Massive Attack's latest album.

My second volunteer program for ALSC was called "Good Comics for Kids" which was a panel of librarians, most of whom were dressed in steampunk attire, recommending good graphic novels for kids up to middle school. I met Erin Burns here, a library associate from DC Public Library, and she gave me insightful advice on how to survive searching for a job. She had been unemployed for 8 months having being laid off from a position that hired her for not having an MLS and then let her go for the same reason. Her best piece of advice was to have a support group whether it be religious, family, or friends. Have a network of people to bring you back up when you're feeling low and discouraged. Also, have an activity that gets you out of house and prevents you from getting overwhelmed. She described a program that combined dance, improvisational theatre, and a third element that sounded very fun.

My third and final commitment for ALSC was volunteering for the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet at the Renaissance Hotel near Dupont Circle. On my way to the hotel I ran into my friend Miranda, a fellow grad student from UMD, on the bus. She's currently living in Rochester, NY and came down for the conference since a friend was letting her use his apartment to stay in (fairly sweet deal) while he was away on business. We talked shop on the bus about life after grad school, job searching, and living in general. She hung out with me on my volunteer stint, which involved guarding the doors to the banquet hall to prevent anyone from coming in early. Thankfully there was a reception across the hall we could usher them into to get distracted with wine and talk. Around 6:48 when the doors were supposed to be open, the librarians in line were definitely getting cranky and I had flashbacks of working special events for Parking Services at JMU. While waiting and watching people walk by I looked to my life and saw Laurie Halse Andersen in a stunning floor length blue and green gown, very faithful to her organic lifestyle. I was shocked at seeing her there. I had tried asking her a question at her book signing but didn't get the chance (I was very very shy). Not so here when the first words out of my mouth were, "MISS ANDERSEN!" She looked at me in surprise, walked over and said, "First of all, call me Laurie." From there her entourage went to look for something and that left me speaking with her for 10-15 minutes about her books, the movies her books were turned into, the possibility of Wintergirls being optioned for a film (probably not), raising her chickens, her writing cottage, her writing style, and how much her books impacted me and my friend Sarah and our high school book club. Laurie smiled and was very gracious throughout our conversation even stopping to hug me twice before she left with her escorts. I was glad I was able to tell an author how much reading their books meant to me and to be completely honest about what I thought of them. Wintergirls was especially hard to get through. Laurie started a trend that most of the authors I would hear and speak to followed up on, giving their two cents about Twilight. Laurie herself said that she couldn't finish reading the books. In fact, she nearly threw one across the room. But her opinion was that if it got the kids reading then she had no complaints about the quality of the literature. Since Laurie's books deal a lot with girls' destructive relationships and the boys involved in them, we compared Bella and Edward to Laurie's characters. I told her how most girls could see themselves in Bella not because she was a relatable character, but because she was a tabula rasa with unrealistic expectations for a relationship and absolutely no sense of self or self-worth. At any rate, Laurie hugged me goodbye and left for the banquet and I was left with a very good end to my evening and my first day at ALA Annual 2010.

 Newbery/Caldecott Banquet. Snazzy fest with dinner!

We're everywhere!

Just the other day, Saturday, I was in Philadelphia for the 2010 Comic Con at the Philly Convention Center. Cons, generally speaking, are an excuse for large crowds of nerds and huge fans of a certain subject (in this case, science fiction, animation, movies, TV shows, and actors) to gather in one place and share in their collective love for all of the aforementioned subjects. The only downside about conventions are the long lines, usually resulting from so many people waiting to be in the same room as a celebrity presence. Case in point, the line for Bruce Campbell's Question and Answer session nearly reached the length of the line just to get into the convention center. It was in this line to get into the Con that my friend Sarah and I ran into two men. One was much older and had a black T-shirt which said, "Today is a good day, to read!" We came to find out that he is a librarian! It amazed me how many librarians are in the world and how cool it is when we find each other in the strangest places. We exchanged business cards in celebration. Later that day at the James Marsters (Spike from the TV show, Buffy) Question & Answer Session I met up with my friend Michelle, who is a librarian in DC. We talked shop and I brought her up to speed on the job process and how things were going. Pictured here she and I await the arrival of James Marsters. She's dressed up as another character from the show Buffy, Drusilla. Might I mention that she made her dress and her necklace herself! Later, during lunch, I received a call from a college friend's mother. She and I had recently gotten in touch once I'd moved to Manassas and she's become a contact for me as far as finding library jobs in the Manassas area. We talked shop for a bit and she updated me on the available jobs which I'd already applied for. It seems that even when I take a mini-vacation, the librarians and jobs follow me. It's not a bad thing, though. On the contrary, seeing Michelle at the Con was a nice treat considering it had been about a year since I'd met her at another strange gathering. But that's another story for another time.

Another fabulous part of the trip was seeing my friend's aunt's amazing apartment. I'll provide an example of her far wall that had built-in bookshelves. My first question to her was how she cataloged everything. This is only a small sample of her collection of books, too.

Settling Down and Keying Up

After a few weeks settling in Manassas, VA I've had a few more changes happen. Just yesterday I got a placement in the Gainesville Library for a volunteership. I start on June 17th and will be coming in for 4 hours every week on Thursday. My friends in the area say that it's a very small library and the Volunteer Coordinator for Prince William County assures me that the need there is great. I'm very excited to start.

In the past few weeks I've had two professional interviews: one for a children's librarian in MD and one for an academic library in VA. I was rejected for both of them, but I remain optimistic and continue to apply for jobs daily. I wanted to start a tally for the number of jobs I've applied for each day, but I find it more productive to keep track of interviews I receive instead. I haven't yet started beating the roads yet with my resume, though I did see a man in the Bull Run Library doing the same thing. I felt a hint of sympathy for him because he came in very nicely dressed with an attache case, asking for work. The woman behind the information desk politely informed him that there weren't any positions available at the moment, but that he can look into volunteering with the library instead. A few places I'm looking at in Manassas are Barnes & Noble or McCabe's Used Books, possibly working part time or volunteering to help shelve. We'll see how it goes.

ALA Annual is in a little over two weeks. I'm very excited and nervous so I've been stocking up on information to prep. I've saved event calendars for Public Libraries Association (PLA), YALSA, and ALSC. I don't know how many events I'm going to be able to go to along with visiting the Job Fair, but I at least want to have the information. I'm trying to get a friend to let me spend a night in her DC apartment so I can save a few bucks on commuting.

I've left both my part-time job and volunteer position in Maryland. The commute from Manassas takes about an hour and it's become too stressful, specifically when I have to fight traffic every day. Both of my employers seem very understanding and support the fact that I've relocated and need to find work where I am now.

I'm feeling very relaxed since graduating. I realize that I'm not going to get a full time job tomorrow and don't need to stress myself out trying to find one, but I am open to the possibility. Until then I can only take things one day at a time and continue to network the DC Libraries, JMU, and UMD.

Changes

Amazing how things can change in the span of a few days. As of tomorrow I will end my two year run as a Graduate Student Assistant with the Humanities Department at my current University. I could not have asked to be put with a more eclectic, intelligent, kind, and resourceful group of librarians. I had fun and learned a lot from my five bosses, and will miss them each as I move away. Pat presented me with a goodbye card signed by all the team members and a travel coffee pot as a parting gift. Even more meaningful is that before she went onto the desk she showed me how to finagle the fax machine.

I have found a subleaser for my apartment and am attempting to move out in the next few weeks and by few I mean two. Next week brings an information interview in DC and even more surprises. Did I mention I graduate in a few days? It's a scary feeling.

I won't forget the University of Maryland and the wonderful faculty that have impacted me and challenged me during my time there. I hope to keep in contact with them as I move to Manassas.