another day of adventures for our favorite neighborhood librarian

woke up early this morning and thought to myself, "self ... why not actually get your lazy ass out of bed and do something with this extra time." so i did.

last night at my writing class everyone was oooohing and aaaaaahing over my novel, it was very affirming. but there were many comparisons to bridget jones' diary, which i guess is okay because bridget jones was a very successful book and i would be lucky to have that type of success, even though i fancy myself more edgy than that. anyway, as they were all making these comparisons i thought that maybe i should read this book so that i understand what they are talking about. then i thought better of reading it and decided i would just get the audiobook.

should this be difficult? procurring a well-known audiobook? shouldn't be difficult as i am a librarian and i currently work at a large library with one of the highest circulations in the country.

so i decide to use my early morning time to look up the book online, and when i see that they have it at Central i decide to take a little field trip over there. of course i first stop at the kurdish bodega for tea and organic poptarts and i drop off a choose your own adventure novel for their son. then i am off to central. yay!

i get to central with plenty o' time, and i walk past the security guard, showing him my ID badge. then i walk into the media center and i realize that no one is around. but i rationalize that it doesn't matter since the media center has self-checkout machines. so i find my audiobook on the shelf and walk it over the self-checkout machine, which is turned on and appears to be in working order. but when i get to the point where it asks for my PIN number it freezes up. so i try this a few times hoping that it will eventually work if i just do the same thing over and over again. it doesn't. then someone comes up to me and says that i can't check anything out before 10. then she tells me to "come back at 10" as if i am riffraff off the street who snuck into the library before it opened.

"i can't come back at ten," i tell her, "i have to be at my branch at 10. that's why i am here now."

she stands her ground that nothing can be checked out before 10. then i ask her if there is anyone in the building who can check this out to me. and she says, ever so helpfully, "no. come back at ten."

why can't something be checked out before 10? i am all for rules and regulations, if they make sense. for instance, the library bathrooms close 15 minutes before the library. good rule! don't try to sneak into our bathroom at 5:58 and make us all stay late because you need to do whatever nefarious things you are doing in our public bathroom. but who does it hurt if i check out an item at 9:20? this is a good thing! i am a librarian trying to use the library! but no, i am not allowed.

so i put the audiobook back and head over to my branch, a good 30 minutes early and audiobook free.

you might be wondering why we don't have this audiobook at my branch. well, i will tell you. our collection sucks. i am looking at our audiobook collection right now and i can tell you we have less than 60 audiobooks on the shelf. this is including both CDs and cassettes AND both fiction, non-fiction, and language CDs. it is pathetic.

now, being one of the highest circulating libraries in the country you would think that i could possibly request this item from another library and have it sent here, as we do with books. but no, we do not send media items. because back about 20 or so years ago when libraries first started stocking media items we handled them with kid gloves. oh don't put that VHS tape in the book drop! oh my, what would happen if we put a CD in a bin to be sent to another library?! it could be damaged! oh my! just keep it safe in the library and NO ONE TOUCH IT!

get over it people! this is 2008. you can put an audiobook in a van and send it over here. nothing will happen to it. except of course someone actually getting some use out of it, which i guess is unheard of.