… but not annoyed at me.  🙂
I have  six children.  Five of them are readers.  All six watch movies.  Four of them like to listen to audiobooks at bedtime…  Since the post title mentions a librarian, you can probably guess where this is leading:  I am an enthusiastic patron of the public library system, and it’s a rare day that I don’t have twenty or more items checked out on my account. Â
My house is not immaculate. Â My children are noted for their intelligence and creativity, not their neatness and organization skills. Â We frequently bring back items late, and every few months we lose one. Â But amount this costs me in late fines and replacement fees is negligible compared to what it would cost to buy enough stuff to keep them all in reading/listening/watching material. Â So I don’t really fret much when I get emails from the library saying I have overdue books, I just call their computer up, and hit the ‘renew all’ button, and then make a mental note to remind the kids to check their bedrooms and the area around the CD-player for library materials the next time we head off to the library.
But when four of the books I checked out to feed my own reading habit appear on the overdue list, and I cannot find them in my room, or on the shelf in the livingroom that is the designated drop point for library books, I start to wonder. Â And when a month and a couple renewals later there are still several items missing, all of which had been checked out at roughly the same time, I start to think the problem isn’t us, for once.
So today when I went to the library with a couple of my kids, I stopped at the front desk, had them print out a list of the stuff still out on my card, and started circling the ones that I recognized as items that should have been brought back at least a month before, and made a request for a shelf-check. Â Then with librarian-in-tow I headed out into the stacks.
“Well look at this! Â This dvd…on the list. Â It isn’t one of ours, it belongs to Beavercreek [one of the other branches in the county system].” “Oh, right, we had to request it.” Â “We’ll have to phone them up and ask them to do the check. Â What about this one, Mary Poppins… is this a cd then?” “Um, yeah, it would be on cd. Â I don’t like the kids to check out the other kinds.” Â “Well it isn’t here.” Â “Um, okay. Â That was one of the ones I really wasn’t sure about.” Â “What’s next… the Scarlet Pimpernel?” Â “That’s general fiction.” Â “We’ll have to go back to the desk and look it up, this doesn’t say who it’s by.” Â “Oh, I know who it’s by. Â Baroness Orczy.” Â “What’s the last name?” Â “Orczy? Â Starts with an O.” Â I led the way through the stacks to the right spot, and sure enough there were the two Scarlet Pimpernel books on our list. Â “Well, what do you know!” she exclaims, soundling slightly disgusted, and looks the next book on the list. Â “The Lieber Chronicles?” Â “In Science Fiction.” Â “Do you know who it’s by?” Â “Lieber.” Â She starts checking the shelves and I spot a familiar looking book and pulling it off the shelf I hand it to her so she can check the barcode. Â She frowns. Â Once again the barcode matches. Â “Mother of Kings is by Anderson.” I tell her, leading the way to the start of the Science Fiction section. Â Here I again locate the book before she does. Â “This one.” Â “That’s misshelved!” Â “Well, yeah, they had it under Kevin J. instead of of Poul. Â Tsk!”
“I can’t believe this!” she mutters as we head back to the front desk. Â “When you brought them back did you put them in the slot?” Â “Sometimes I stack them on top of the desk, if someone is there, and they ask me to.” Â “How could they possibly have missed all these? Â The scanner is right THERE!” Â “Well, yeah, but you only missed once, you know. Â It was just a very big once.” Â “We’d better call Beavercreek and tell them to look for that dvd.” Â While she is on the phone waiting for Beavercreek to check their shelves, my daughter Lissa wanders up with her selections, and I inform her that we have found a bunch of the things they said we hadn’t brought back, but not the Mary Poppins. Â “That must still be in one of you girls’ bedrooms.” Â Lissa nods. Â “I remember, it’s a book on cd.” Â The library looks up from her phone call. Â “It’s a BOOK on cd?” Â “Uh, yeah,” I answer. Â “I thought it was just a cd. Â I didn’t know it was a book.” Â “Let me guess… we looked for it in the wrong place.” Â “Yes we did.” Â She hands me her phone. Â “You hold this, I’m going to go check again.” Â Off she goes. Â Meanwhile the librarian at Beavercreek picks up the line and tells me they don’t have that dvd on their shelves. Â I thank her and hang up, and a few minutes later my own librarian comes back. “You found it?” Â “Yes, and on a hunch I stopped by the dvd shelves…” she holds up the missing dvd, and says in outraged tones. Â “It says right on it that it belongs to Beavercreek!!” Â
A double check of my account allowed me to spot yet another long overdue book, and so back we went to the stacks, and sure enough, that one was there too. Â “How long ago did you bring these back?” she asked as she removed late fees from my account. Â “It must have been over a month ago.” Â “Unbelievable.” Â
Another librarian standing next to her at the desk smiled cheerfully and said, “You know what? Â The next time someone comes in saying ‘I know I brought that back!’…
…we might just have to believe them.”
🙂