An afternoon in the life of a (volunteer) librarian...

[maharetr]

I do one afternoon a week volunteering at my local library, usually 1-6pm ish. Mostly, this is to jack up my chances of getting accepted into Librarianship/Records Manager grad dip next year. And also, because it's also quite a lot of fun. I live in a great suburb, to borrow a phrase from sarren  there is a very low degree of Specialness in our patrons: we get great old people and the cutest little kids (maybe because I only need to be around them for 10-15 mins, but they look cute, okay? :)).

We have four computers hooked up for 'net use by the public, (yup, four, count 'em) 2 are for general net searches (email is blocked) and they are free and you can print from them. The other 2 are more specifically for email and you pay for them and you also cannot print from them.

This afternoon we get a guy in who wants to print an email. I glance at said email and see it's one of those  saccharine-sweet type things that has been forwarded a billion times before so>>>it>>always looks >>something>like>>this. In this case it was "I met this 80 year old who was doing my uni course and life is always about *learning* and *living* and *you're only as young as you think you are* etc". But, the thing about librarians is we have this gut-level urge to help people, "specifically figuring things out, finding things" how to help people.

So, we try to copy horribly-formatted text of email to a disk and carry it over to a station you can print from. Something's wrong with the disk, it's corrupted and won't do it. Another patron suggests forwarding email to someone who has a printer, and we end up emailing it to one of the staff computers. I inform poor, unsuspecting staff member whose computer it is what's going on and she immediately starts stressing because email turns out to be an attachment. Finally, attachment is opened and is non-virused. I, with a sigh of relief, print document from the printer behind the counter. 2 pages, which equals forty cents, which this guy pays. He then hands me this horribly formatted, nauseatingly sweet and essentially meaningless piece of text saying "I'd like to donate this to you (the library) maybe you could put it on the counter or something."

At which point I go on autopilot, smile inanely and say something along the lines of "how kind," and escape to computer far back from the front desk and proceed to be Very Busy. *sigh*

I feel better now, I do.