#library shit

Of course! Here's a non-exhaustive list of things I got to do at my library last week! It's also important to know that I work in a *very* small library (we serve under 1k people) and so my experience as a librarian is not necessarily the norm, but it is a pretty fucking cool job.

catalog new books

listen to this one patron talk about God for 20 minutes

look at the blue prints for our NEW LIBRARY (coming Fall 2026) and make notes

Start planning our summer program

Tell pre-teens to be quiet

Make new book displays

The whole ass town newsletter (monthly, it's the bane of my existence and also my pride and joy)

Email volunteers about the monthly schedule

Shelve books (just kidding, I make volunteers do that)

'Fix' the patron computer 10000 times

Check out books

Play in my statistics spreadsheet

Inter-Libray Loan a billion books (also one of my favorite things)

Think about making graphics for summer program

Read new picture books when they come in

Read my own book when I run out of tasks to do (or just get burnt out)

Chat with patrons (we're free therapy I swear)

Get all the tea about the drama happening in the 6th grade class at the school (incredible)

Talk about books, research books, wonder how to make people read more books.

Refill the sticker box

Weed books (take out books that don't circulate anymore)

Start planning future book group reads (and a NEW non-fiction book group)

Try not to plan so much summer programing I want to die (impossible)

“It’ll be safe,” they said.

In my time as not even a librarian but a degreeless tech I’ve:

- Been sexually harassed over the phone and now possess a deep seated hatred of Stephen King because of it.

- Had a library card thrown at me like the fucker was Gambit because an angry white elderly patron decided me and the only other Hispanic in the building who have never spoken to this man before in our lives and who we didn’t even know came to this library were racist. Just us. No one else.

- Been threatened. Multiple times. Mainly just a few months ago but its slowly coming back with the covid curbside only service because guess who isn’t a human being again? Me.

- Gotten yelled at multiple times by patrons for reasons I can’t actually go in to or hint at because of actual legal reasons which fucking piss me off.  

- Seen far too many random strangers dicks because for some stupid fucking reason people enjoy flashing librarians their junk and jacking off in the most in the open spot in the library.

That’s not even counting the shit I went through as a page both at my current job or in college. Like I love my job but some nights it honestly is really hard to keep going. I’m more stressed than someone with my job should be and I’m just so tired of being treated as something less than human because “oh you just work at a library, you probably just read books all day” and living in fear of an entitled mom getting pissed off that we’re doing curbside and sending the big boss whose already stressed to hell about how shitty the staff is and how we should all get fired.