Stressful Sushi Scenario

This week our library's anime/manga club had a professional sushi chef give a demonstration on how to make sushi and he provided free samples to a large crowd of excited teenagers.

However, getting this event to happen was not an easy task. I live in the "sushi district" of the city so I knew which places to scout out for a chef. I personally visited each restaurant and politely explained the situation and our library's need for a sushi chef. I got a very chilly reception. To even talk to a sushi chef in person was a feat since they were well protected by their staff. I even got a very rude brush off from one server saying "our chefs don't do that." After a few weeks of sending out my card and looking I was feeling down when one of the chefs from a well-regarded restaurant called me back and said he would be happy to do the demonstration. I was ecstatic.

I immediately began advertising for the program and soon I had teenagers asking me almost every day, "when is the sushi chef coming?" When the chef told me he was coming it was two weeks before the event. As the day drew closer I had heard nothing from him. He didn't tell me anything he needed; he didn't ask for directions. I heard nothing. This week I started to get anxious. I called over at the restaurant and was unable to talk to the chef personally; I kept getting nervous. The day of I paced the floor imagining hordes of teenagers with pitchforks chanting "sushi, sushi!" My back up plan was feeble: it consisted of Japanese snacks and DVDs. I knew it would not pacify them.

Then suddenly. He shows up and puts on the most wonderful program with his daughter. They educated the teens on how to use chopsticks, what the ingredients were for, and even taught them some Japanese. I later found out he faxed the library he was coming but no one checks the fax machine and I never received the fax. I hope he agrees to come out next year.

Online Databases vs. the Internet

In our library system, as I'm sure many others, there has been great emphasis on using the library's databases. These libraries pay big bucks for these things and I know they want them used so I understand their concern. Currently in our system we're going through database training in order to know all the myriad numbers of databases out there.

My problem in using these databases is that they just take too long. When you have a patron sitting there waiting for information, sometimes with three screaming kids, what they are most concerned about is how quickly you can get it to them, not how many citations the article has or how many times it has been peer reviewed.

The databases take too long because first I must access them through our library's home page. Then I must select out of many dozens of databases which one to search through. Sometimes the answer isn't easy: is what the customer wants a history question or should I be looking for magazines and newspapers? It is difficult to find the right database. Next, after hopefully finding the right database usually I must hone down my search :select full text, use delimiters, narrow it down by type of resource etc. By the time I get to this point the patron is usually tapping their heels. After all this sometimes I don't even end up with something the patron wants. I have to go through page after page of sources.

Perhaps in academic libraries databases are much more beneficial but in public libraries speed is of the essence and for speed you need the Internet. I have found that a patron is happier with a inferior article that I attained in a minute rather than the superior article I attained in five. Isn't pleasing patrons the most important thing anyways?

Child Computer Genius

A young girl came up to the reference desk a few weeks a little girl and asked to put a few items on hold. She couldn't have been older than 8. She was using her mother's library card and I told her that when her books came in the library would send an e-mail to her mother's e-mail address telling her that the books were there. The girl then looked at me very seriously and said "Well I'll have to help her with that, my mother doesn't understand computers." I could not help laughing a bit and after I laughed she looked even more stern. She told me, "It's not funny. It's a real serious problem." The encounter made me wonder how many eight-year-olds are the computer geniuses of their households.

Just Twenty Minutes

I had a "rain" storytime this week. I was really hoping the weather would work out for me but it snowed instead. Still the kids enjoyed making a thunderstorm with their hands and their feet and making the sun and rainbows come out.

Despite the fun they were having I started losing them at about twenty minutes. That seems to be the cut off point for their attention span. I have more to do but at that point I usually have a third playing with each other or running around. The first part of storytime they are all very attentive and focused on me but twenty minutes seems to be their breaking point. However, I'm sure with continued reading and more storytimes their attention spans will increase. Reading increases children's attention spans. Maybe by the end of the year I can make it to thirty minutes.

Abundance of Angst

I was on our library system's Teen Tech week committee and for Teen Tech week we had a song lyric contest. This week we all met all judged the lyrics from all the entries. Although there were many talented entries, they were almost all heartbreaking tales of woe. Song after song detailed breakups, unrequited love, infidelity and sometimes death. The few songs that spoke of love as a beautiful, happy thing were few and far between. One committee member commented that if she saw the rhyme "heart" and "apart" one more time she was immediately taking points off.

The lyrics of all those sad songs brought me back to my teen days when a breakup truly was the end of the world. I tried to look at it through that perspective as I shuffled through the loneliness of the words. In the end though the best originality and imagery came not through heartbreak but from a thoughtful poem about music. It had perfect scores from all the judges.

Unscripted Anime

At an anime/manga club meeting a few weeks ago at my library the presidency wanted to have an activity where the members would write scripts with anime characters and themes and then act them out at the next meeting. So between the meetings I gently reminded the kids to work on their scripts. They all told me they were hard at work.

At the meeting I asked, "So, who wants to share their script?" There were no scripts, even from the presidency who came up with the idea in the first place. I knew the Japanese snacks would not hold all these energetic teenagers for long. I had to think fast. "Okay," I said, "Everyone pick out what character you would like to be and then just make up whatever you want." I held my breath and hoped this wouldn't be a total bust.

The teens immediately got into it. They first picked out characters for half an hour. There were fights over who could be Sakura from Naruto, we had a surplus of ninjas, someone insisted that they be a dog, and everyone else changed their characters half a dozen times.

Once that was finally figured out they could finally act it out. I expected half the teens to stand at the sidelines looking cynical but everyone participated. Somehow the story devolved into a giant ninja fight with a barking dog. I had to remind some teens several times that we are "play fighting." They were a little too into it. Next meeting they want to do it again with full costumes, props and a video camera. Let's just hope they don't bring real swords.