 It feels like January has been 34 years long. It's just one thing after another after another. As a DC resident, the news of the plane crash in the Potomac hit me especially hard. Normally, I consume current events with abandon. This week, I found I just couldn't do it any more. My inbox was awash in breaking news alerts about the crash, new presidential administration, events in the Middle East, and various local concerns. It was all just too much.
But I can't completely stop paying attention. It's important to be informed. The issue is how to be informed without being overwhelmed. The chaos this week reminded me of the webinar I gave last summer about creating your news diet. The session focused on how to keep up with current events while maintaining your mental health. The webinar is worth a watch, but I thought I would tl;dr the most important points below.
How do you stay informed without becoming too stressed?
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A few months ago, we hosted our kiddo's birthday party at a local bowling alley. While it was a roll-in/roll-out event, it was not cheap. Last year, we held her birthday party at a local playground with a splashpad. We had to get a park permit, purchase lots of food, put together goodie bags, decorate, and handle all the set up and break down ourselves. When it comes to kid parties, it seems that your options are cheap but hard or easy but expensive.
That got me thinking, why can't the local library be a birthday venue? For a small fee, you book a custom story time based around the kiddo that includes a few books, songs, and maybe a game. The library would plan and provide the materials for that. Then, you wrap up the event with a quick cake or dessert the family provides. That's it! Everyone leaves happy and no one is stretched too thin in terms of money or time. But, I also get why this is not a thing. Libraries already do too much. They are social work centers, healthcare providers, and daycares. They are on the frontlines of the overdose crisis. During disasters, they become hubs for Wi-Fi access and recovery services. And they do all of this with decreasing budgets and staffing. Libraries are places that hold communities together and the staff are tired. They don't need one more thing to worry about. But a parent can dream, can't she? This summer, our family opted to get a membership to a local hotel pool. Our kiddo adores being in the water and we thought it would be a lot of fun. We were right about that. What I was not expecting was how interested I would be in the poolside reading choices. Since this is a hotel, there are a ton of folks on vacation or simply spending some time away from "real life." When I'm not supervising our kiddo, I keep peeping the book covers. (Call it a professional hazard.)
First, I'm struck by how few e-readers are at the pool. It's possible people are worried about being splashed but given the amount of phones I see, I'm not entirely sure that's the case. I think there's just something about reading a physical book at the pool that feels leisurely. Plus, I've seen some folks set up Instagram shots with their chosen titles. A kindle is just not as photogenic. I've also noticed that a lot of the books are hardcovers. That's surprising! Paperbacks are easier to travel with and not nearly as heavy. I always find it quite daring when people get into the pool with their book so they can cool off while they read. This pool always has splashing kids and it amazes me that these readers can keep their books dry. Next, in terms of what titles I see, the vast majority of books - easily over 75% - are fiction. It's a lot of your typical beach reads, romance, and easy fiction. Weirdly, I have yet to see a YA book. How I've gone an entire summer without spotting Iron Flame is beyond me. I figured that would be all over the place. Here are some of the books I have spotted:
Of all the reading I've spotted, the one that tickled me most was when a heavily pregnant woman had her feet propped up with towels on a lounger and a snack on her belly as she read Bringing Up Bébé. What would you read at the pool? *Bookshop.org affiliate links At the core of being a librarian is the idea that we will help anyone with their information needs. Anyone looking for anything. (Putting aside the obvious illegal activity.) We are not there to judge. We are not there to inscribe intent. We are there to assist and support.
While not common in my work, there have been instances where I’ve had to help find materials abhorrent to me. Specifically, I’m thinking about one phone reference transaction from a few years back. This person called and started asking if we had specific titles in our library. I did not know if they were a student, faculty member, or just some random researcher. It didn’t matter. They called our library for support, and we are open to everyone. After a few titles, I realized that this person was seeking titles supportive of the men’s rights movement. It was book after book after book of material degrading women, feminism, and equal rights. As a staunch feminist, I had to grit my teeth through this one. Thankfully, we did not have any of these titles, but the person wanted alternatives, so I directed them to other libraries and commercial vendors that had them. The last thing I wanted to do was drive money to these sorts of creators, but my job was to help this person with their research request. I hated every minute of this reference transaction, but I did it nonetheless. Why? Well, first, it’s my job. Second, I had no clue as to this person’s reason for seeking out these books. Maybe they believed in it. Maybe they were doing research into the history or danger of the movement. Maybe they wanted to create countering material. I had no clue – because it did not matter. The person was respectful, polite, and gave me a hearty thank you before we hung. That interaction left me with a foul taste in my mouth and the feeling that I needed to take a shower. I didn’t like it at all – but I provided the same level of support as I would for any other person who asked me a reference question. When you’re a librarian, you need to set your biases aside as much as you can. That’s hard. I have my own thoughts and opinions. I am firm in my beliefs. But I can’t let that cloud my ability to help those who seek my assistance. I think this ability to compartmentalize is one reason why a trial lawyer I know said they love to seat librarians on juries. We can listen without pretense. We may judge but we have the ability push through our discomfort and dislike to focus on the facts. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s what we try to do. I’m at a library conference right now, and I’m seeing a lot of cardigans. Librarians are mostly women and conference centers are often too cold, so this is unsurprising. Cardigans are also considered stereotypical parts of the librarian’s wardrobe – along with sensible shoes, glasses, and pencils through our hair buns. Most of those stereotypes aren’t true (minus the sensible shoes) but the cardigans really do hold up.
Seeing all these cardigans on my colleagues got me thinking, why do librarians wear so many cardigans? First, they are comfy. One can never knock the comfort of an item of clothing. Next, they are warm but not too warm. Libraries are often public spaces and have to follow OSHA standards - that means things can be chillier than you’d like. Or your reference desk shift is slow and, since you’re moving less, things get cold. A cardigan can keep you warm. But library spaces and library work are also highly variable. Sometimes spaces are just hot. Sometimes you’re shelving or pushing a book cart and the exertion makes you warm. Cardigans can be unbuttoned or you can roll up the sleeves with ease. If things are really hot, they come off easy and the rest of your outfit is still work appropriate. Plus, cardigans offer more freedom of movement than, say, a blazer. In a single workday, I’ve had to do squats to clear a copier paper jam, I’ve stood on my tippy-toes and reached to get books on top shelves, I’ve contorted myself to set up exhibits in weird spaces, and I’ve crawled under desks to deal with power plug issues. Blazers are more restricting. I need the ability to bend and stretch at will. But I also still need to look presentable at meetings. Also, cardigans are not so precious that you’re worried about something happening to them. Mine have been covered in red rot, toner, dust, and coffee spills. They’re easy to toss in the laundry to clean. I don’t need to worry about adding a trip to the dry cleaner to my to-do list. Finally, I think wearing a cardigan helps reduce the vocational awe that happens with librarians. It can help us come across more like Mr. Rogers and less like a business tycoon. It can be hard to walk up to a librarian and ask a question. If that librarian is wearing a business suit, that hurdle is even higher. Something about a cardigan makes us less intimidating. I work at an academic library. Until this morning, we had not received one single question about eclipse classes. Today, between the hours of 9AM and 1PM, I had nearly a dozen.
Why were so many people calling my library? Whelp, most of the public libraries in our area spent the last few weeks handing out free eclipse glasses. When they ran out, people started to call us. One person even said, "I thought I was being sneaky by calling an academic library." It's eclipse glasses right now. It's going to be tax forms until next week. Depending on your area, the library may hand out toiletry kits for the unhoused, arts and crafts bins, COVID tests, government forms, Narcan, museum passes, or any other myriad of things. The library is more than books. When a moment like the eclipse happens, people are reminded of that. Why the library? It's simple. We are a known place for people to come and get information they need. Sometimes that information takes the form of an object. Libraries, particularly public ones, are well placed to serve the needs of a specific community. They know what's happening. They know what people need and want. They understand the positives and the negatives. Sometimes, it's just as simple as they are there. The library is a place where people provide help. This is National Library Week. Show your local library some love because, yup, they can probably do that. Every year, I try to give my digital life one good deep clean. Generally, I find it easy to delete, remove, and unsubscribe from things that I no longer care about or need. I love freeing up all that memory - both on my hard drive and in my brain.
And then I get to my TBR boards on Pinterest. (See my personal and professional boards.) Try as I might, I can't ever seem to remove books from these lists. I go in with the best of intentions to remove things that no longer interest me and I fail every time. Some items have been there for years and, still, I can't remove them. Even when I'm close to hitting delete, something about the cover design, title, or subject matter strikes my fancy again and it remains on the list. Even with oldest books, I'm intrigued all over again. I think I just love the possibility of it all. One day, I will be able to sit down, hot beverage in hand, and enjoy that particular book. Right now, I am in a reading sweet spot. I'm enjoying the titles I pick up, look forward to reading in bed every night, and have a short stack of TBR items that I'm hankering to get to.
Reading has always been my favorite leisure activity but, when I'm in a sweet spot, it just hits different. In a sweet spot, there's extra excitement. That excitement makes me want to ditch whatever else I'm doing so I can devote more time to reading. When I can't, my brain eagerly looks forward to when I can set everything aside and pick up a book. It provides a motivation to knock stuff off my to do list quickly so I have more time for reading. I find this sweet spot about twice a year. Usually, it's tied to whatever books I'm reading. Romance and YA have a stronger ability to put me in a sweet spot. Authors I enjoy most can also provide a boost. Sometimes, it's the weather or what's happening on the calendar. Right now, my sweet spot is coming from a bit of all three. Work is in a bit of a lull so I'm less stressed; a brief vacation is on the horizon to boot. Plus, it's now full on DC summer which means being indoors is less frowned upon. Finally, I found a romance series that perfectly fit my mood. Not only am I loving my current book, I know there are several more to come. I don't know how long this sweet spot will last - sometimes it's days, sometimes it weeks - but I'm going to ride the thrill of it for as long as it lasts. This week, I developed a blog post for work about local news sources. Since it's just a blog post, I focused on the main sources with a few relevant niche sources. As I was writing, I realized just how overwhelming a single project like this could be.
What qualifies as news? Do I mention bias? Do I include hyperlocal neighborhoods? Do I split by subject matter or area of the city? Do I include all the ways you could follow one source? Do I expand to include neighborhoods over the border? I ended up saving loads of resources to put into an expanded research guide that our users could reference later. Said research guide will still be curated but, more importantly, it will be organized for easier navigation. Most importantly, it will include some descriptive information to put each source in context to help the user decide what they really need to look at. This is not the first time I've had to navigate through these waters. With each research guide, video, or tutorial, I'm making choices on what to include. I'm deciding what works best at this moment and for this audience. That necessarily means that I am deliberately omitting certain sources and information. My main goal with these projects is to funnel information in such a way that they are useful and not an inundation. It would be so easy to just smack a person in the face with ALL THE INFORMATION. That's a bad idea. Instead, I see my work as a librarian to wrangle information in such a way that it is easy to navigate, digest, and understand. Right now, I have a mental image in my head of a cowboy lassoing a single cat out of a whole herd on the wide open plains. That's an absurd mental image, but it's not wrong. In a world where there's more and more information every second, not everyone can take the time to delicately pick out exactly what they need from the masses. That's where I come in. I look at the whole landscape, make a short list, and then share that curated list with the person in front of me. I manage our condo's community library. Once a week, I review all the books and magazines that have accrued since my last check. Most of the material is great stuff worth leaving for others to view. Sometimes, however, I collect a big stack of stuff to chuck in our recycling bins. Usually, it's just a few outdated magazine issues or paperbacks in awful shape. Occasionally, however, someone will drop off a massive stack of material that has no purpose in being on the bookcase.
Those stacks are often composed of one of the following:
I've lost count of how many times I've had to lug twenty pounds of back issues of a single magazine title to our trash room. There is something in particular about the readership of these two magazine titles - they seem unable to just toss them in the recycling bin. It's always these two titles that are donated en masse. I am here to tell you, as a former preservation librarian, that it is okay to recycle these items. Really! I mean it! In my day job as an academic librarian, we often get calls asking if we take donations of these items. We don't. We don't want them. No library wants them. One of my former library school professors worked at National Geographic. They got calls regularly where people wanted to donate an entire archive of issues of their own magazine. Trust me when I say, they already have plenty of copies. When unsolicited donations of these materials show up, it actually costs a library money to weed through and dispose of them. Donations are not free. It takes not only staff time and work space but also funds to recycle or trash large amounts of material. Even great items are not cost-free. Material must be sorted to see if it's friend sale worthy or, rarely, worth adding to the collection. If an item is to be added to a library's shelves, it has to be cataloged, barcoded, labeled, and, finally, placed in the stacks. As a fellow book lover and reader, I understand the fear when it comes to tossing out books. We attach emotions to these items in our memories of reading them. We want to share those memories with others. We don't want to dispose of them like regular garbage. It's just so hard to do. But, as a librarian, I'm here to tell you that it's okay. It's okay to throw away damaged, wet, or moldy books. It's okay to recycle old paperbacks, magazines, and outdated manuals. Really. I promise. The librarians will thank you. |
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