You may find yourself de facto quality control officer

The Story:  You've ordered a whole bunch of books for an author visit, because he's kind of a big deal and you know there will be hundreds of people in the audience.  You get them in, have your talk, and as you're handing him books people have bought for them to get autographed, you hear an awful CRACK!  He's opened the book to sign, and the cover and first page have come clean off!  You apologize profusely and grab another book for the author to sign for his fans.  Phew!  A couple books later, it happens again.  You replace it, and everyone moves on.  But then it happens a third time, and then a fourth, and a fifth, and it just keeps happening.  By now you realize that something is very wrong.  You pull in extra colleagues to quickly go through and open up every book on the sale table, as well as those in boxes on reserve, so that you're only selling good books to people to get signed by their favorite author.  You make it through this first event (there are more to come later in the day, though much smaller), and your author comments that he's never seen anything like it before, and how sad it makes him that all his books are broken.  He may have a word with his publisher.  You assure him that you can send back damaged books to your wholesaler, which makes everybody feel more at ease.  Eventually you all disperse to regroup for the later panels with this author, which go off without a hitch, as you've gone through most of the inventory, leaving a few boxes untouched that you know you won't need.

Later, you call your B&T rep to arrange return authorizations and you tell them about all the damaged ones.  They'll pay for shipping on the damaged but not the unopened or undamaged.  Well, undamaged is fair, but given that more than half of the ones opened were damaged, maybe they should pay for one of the unopened boxes to go back, you suggest.  They say that's not an option, so you say, "How about I open the boxes and count up the damaged ones and call you back with another number?" because that seems honest and fair, but the rep rejects that proposal as well, so you sigh and accept it.  You repack all the damaged ones back in their original boxes and affix the provided shipping labels and send them on their way.  The next day, you open the untouched boxes anyway, because you'll be damned if you're paying for shipping and insurance for broken books (after the post office lost three boxes of books that one year after an author event and you had to fax a form from the dead letter office to the book vendor to prove you actually shipped them back, you ALWAYS get postal insurance, which is probably just what the post office wants you to do).  You call back and get the same rep you spoke to yesterday, and ask for return labels for the new number of damaged books.  This time she sighs and accepts it.  Because both of you know that if she tries to argue with you, that you'll ask to speak to her manager.

But just because she wants to make your life more difficult, the shipping labels she sends you are not for two bigger boxes, which are what these books came in and you have so efficiently already packed and taped and are just awaiting a label, but a dozen smaller boxes.  Good thing you haven't been to the recycling bin yet and have extra boxes on hand, but now of course you have to unpack, make up return forms for, and repack over a hundred damaged books.  It's also a good thing you ordered way more than you would need, because if you'd estimated demand correctly, dozens of kids would be walking around with broken autographed books.

The Lesson:  Unbox and inspect all your books BEFORE your author arrives.  Count up all damages BEFORE you call your book rep.  Be prepared to play dirty, and don't be too efficient.

No resources this time, as I don't think this is one of those things they write articles about in library school.  In fact, the whole nuts-and-bolts of the ordering process was largely glossed over in terms too general to really comprehend, or else skipped entirely.  Preparing for an author visit should be a whole unit in a programming/events class, if your school even offers such a thing, but no such curriculum seemed to exist in library school for myself and many of my cohort/librarian generation, regardless of which school we graduated from.  They filled our heads with high ideals and principles, with some case study examples of problem patrons, but did very little to tackle a lot of the day-to-day stuff we'd be faced with.  Maybe I'm just not remembering it.  Maybe they did try to teach us and I wasn't paying attention, but this is the kind of thing I know I would've taken notes on.

You may find yourself holding a camera worth more than your paycheck with no idea how to use it

The Story:  It has been decided that the library needs a new camera, mainly for event documentation.  The one currently in use is owned by the children's department, as they take the most event photos (because let's face it--kids' programs take way more fun pictures than grown-up ones...there are only so many angles of person-talking-in-front-of-powerpoint to be shot).  However, it is the reference department that decides not only to get a camera, but which one to get, without any input from the library staff who actually use the current camera, an 8-year-old point-and-shoot that while simple to operate, has seen better days.
So, what you're left with is an expensive mystery that should be able to take the perfect shot every time, but somehow manages to fall short.  The shots are blurry, the camera takes forever to snap a picture and you've already missed about twelve shots while you're trying to get the right focus on the first one, plus what you see on the screen/through the viewfinder differ greatly from what gets uploaded to the computer.  There is a whole bunch of extra ceiling and floor space that doesn't show up on the screen or in the viewfinder, making all your pictures unnecessarily far away.  Sure, you can crop it, but who wants to sit there and do that for a hundred pictures that you're just going to dump on facebook for all the kids' parents to tag each other in the comments section of instead of hitting the share button?  Sorry, got a little off-topic there.
Not only that, but the pictures are much higher resolution than the ones your old camera used to take, which means they take up a whole lot more space on the memory card.  You'll have to buy a bigger one or else delete photos after every transfer so as not to slow down already pokey picture-taking to a crawl.  This wouldn't be a big deal if you sorted and uploaded your pictures in a timely manner, but since nobody else on your staff is presently comfortable with sorting pictures and uploading them online, this step of program documentation generally takes a backseat.
Having a staff that isn't necessarily 100% comfortable trying new technology can be a problem when something like this drops in your lap.  It can mean that they default to using the old camera, not knowing that the memory card is in the new one, and they don't notice the glaring error message popping up on the screen every time they press the shutter button telling them that the picture isn't actually being saved.  Or, it can mean that they don't like covering programs any more because they feel stressed and intimidated by the new camera.  You can solve this by having your staff practice taking pictures of displays in the library with the new camera, things that are not going anywhere, so there's nothing to "mess up".  It helps if you discover the automatic mode where it senses what kind of picture you're trying to take first, and if you discover the on-off toggle for auto-focus, and the toggle for stabilizers, and point these things out to your staff.  There is also a button to turn the screen on and off, and toggling it one way or another seems to help a little with the extra space problem, and also warn those using it to zoom in more than they think they need to, because there will be extra space on the borders regardless.


The Lesson:  If you're buying a camera or other equipment that is an upgrade and will be used by the whole library, maybe consult each department about what their plans for it are, what concerns they have, etc.  Communication here is key.  There's no reason to surprise a department with new technology.  Surprises are not always a good thing, and that department may not have the skills nor time to really develop them to actually make that surprise "upgrade" worthwhile.

The Resources:  Honestly, the user manuals, how-to camera books, online tutorials, etc., all got really damn technical.  I didn't have the time to take a whole photography class just to learn how to make the expensive new toy take a decent picture.  In an active program, which most children's programs are, I just need to point, shoot, repeat, in rapid succession.  I'm sure this camera could do that, but I didn't know how to make it.  Learning about the auto-focus and smart-shooting mode helped, but not enough.  We did have a professional photographer who said they'd come in and show us how to use the camera properly, but it wound up not being an issue.  See the aside for that story.

An Aside:  About six months after we got this camera, maybe a little more, it got stolen.  Someone from reference used it to take pictures of a program and forgot to lock it up after, leaving it sitting out on the desk.  While all librarians were distracted with helping patrons, somebody swiped it.  By this point, we had a new memory card in it so we could at least go back to the old camera with the old card for a while.  The higher-ups were so mad about the loss of camera that it looked like we'd be stuck with the 8-year-old model until it was old enough to drive.  Eventually, though, they were persuaded to replace the expensive mishap with a less-expensive, but still high-quality camera that had fewer bells and whistles.  Thankfully, this one was easier to operate, and now staff were very careful about putting it away after use.  The technophobic members of the staff were a bit more comfortable with it, and now that's the only one we use if we can help it.

You may occasionally get paid to color.

The Story:  In your readings of picture books for storytime and such, you come upon a title that would make a great storyboard.  Sequential, clear reference to objects, illustrations you can recreate in felt.  You've never made a felt story before, but you've been handling them for years and they're just shapes cut out and glued together and sometimes painted.  How hard could it be?  Well, if you'd chosen a simple story, with very easy illustrations to recreate and few of them, it wouldn't be hard at all.  Instead, you've chosen a story with more than a dozen animals to make out of felt, plus two people.  This is going to be quite the project, and so you decide to make the most difficult pieces first, to see if you can do it.  That way, if you can't, you haven't wasted all this time making pieces for a story you can't finish.  You look up various how-tos for making felt pieces, but you don't 100% love any of them, so you make it up as you go along.  And as it turns out, one of those steps involves coloring.  Yay!

Step 1 - Pick what picture is going to be made into felt from the illustration.  Usually, it is whatever animal or object that is referenced in the text of that page spread.  

Step 2 - Decide if a direct copy of the illustration is going to be recognizable and worth doing exactly, or if it is better to find a drawing of that thing online and copy that.

Step 3 - Trace the image from the book or internet.  If you don't have a light desk, which most libraries don't, you should photocopy the page, open a new publisher or word document and make the blank page fill the whole screen, then tape the photocopied page and the blank page to the monitor.  This will let you isolate the image you want from all the background noise, getting a clear line drawing of your object.

Step 4 - Make multiple copies of your line drawing.  You will need one for each piece of felt (or you can group them into pieces that don't overlap; see picture at bottom of post), because you'll need to cut them out separately, and sometimes one piece will overlap another.  If you only have one drawing to work from, you're screwed.

Step 5 - Color one of your copies, and keep each colored pencil/crayon/whatever so that you have your palette of colors.

Step 6 - Take your coloring implements to the craft closet or store and use them to choose which colors of felt to get.

Step 7 - Use a marker to outline what you're going to cut out of each piece of paper, making sure to leave extra room where things will be attached later, and figuring out which pieces are going to be doing the overlapping and which ones will be overlapped upon.

Step 8 - Make the cut.

Step 9 - Put the outline side down on the felt and trace the shape you just cut out using a sharpie or other marker.  This will give you the reverse of the shape you want to end with traced out.

Step 10 - Cut out the shape.  Flip it over.  If you were not exact with your cutting, any messy outlines leftover from tracing will now be on the back of the felt piece where nobody can see them.

Step 11 - Repeat for all the shapes that make up your story piece, and glue them together.  That industrial strength glue you got for fixing toys?  Perfect for felt crafting.  Put it on with a toothpick, and put scrap paper or cardboard down on your desk to reduce the marker stains and glue globs.

Step 12 - Paint or color any additional details on your felt piece.

Step 13 - Repeat for all of the pieces in your story.

The Lesson:  Sometimes, crafting can be fun, and while technically also work, it can also be a kind of zen-like release from the stresses of your other day-to-day work-related responsibilities.  So don't feel guilty about not doing "real work" when crafting.  Sometimes, you just have to get paid to color.

The Resources:  There are a million and a half tutorials on felt/flannel board story making online.  Some of them are cut-and-glue, others are print and iron-on, others are cut one shape and color/paint all the details.  Everyone has their preferences.  The method I used takes a bit more time, I feel, than the others seem like they would, but I like the quality of the pieces better.  I did use google image search quite a bit to come up with clip-art/line-drawing/coloring-page style animals to use for some of the characters where tracing what was on the page would not translate well.  Honestly, google image search and homeschooler/mommy-blogs will get you most any craft project you could think of.

You may have to have a flexible schedule (Butterfly Garden Part 5)

The Story:  The seeds you've started in the trays have started to sprout.  Huzzah!  Some of them are being more pokey than others and you realize that if you were to wait for more plants to germinate, the early risers would be wilted and smothered by waiting too long in those tiny pods.  Good thing you're flexible and don't mind having two different sprout-planting sessions, which wind up being about three weeks apart.  Even with two sessions, there is still about a whole tray's worth of pods that never grew anything.  In fact, some of them even started to mold, sitting in the miniature greenhouses that those starter trays are.  Eventually you just had to face the fact that seeds are so numerous because there is a built-in mortality rate, and dump the dead pods.

Another thing you have to be flexible about is the idea of a neat-looking, organized garden.  The idea of having all these lovely little native plants growing up in clearly-labeled sections with pretty hand-painted stones identifying which plants are which is so far from reality that you're laughing at the past you that had the naiveté to think that was even a possibility when children were involved.  Kids planted whatever pods they wanted, wherever they wanted, regardless of your suggestions and instructions to plant the ones from this tray here and that tray there.  The trays being what you thought they were in the first place was a bit of a gamble because of how the seed-starting session went (that story is here), so it makes sense that the actual planting would be equally disorganized.  And the painted stones actually being next to the plants they're labelled for?  Forget about it!

The Lesson:  Nature is chaos.  Embrace it.  In the wild, native plants can grow in bunches of the same variety, but they just as frequently grow in heterogeneous communities that look like they were haphazardly thrown there by a bunch of five-year-olds, and this actually creates the biodiversity and balance that all ecosystems need to survive.  So, when a bunch of children haphazardly plant your carefully selected native plant species here, there, and everywhere, they're just being true to nature.  You may have to rethink what you consider a success, and that the purpose of the butterfly garden is to provide a habitat for endangered monarchs and food for other native pollinators, not to look like it was clipped from a magazine.   "Clean" gardens that are more mulch than leaf, gardens that don't have plants growing up around each other, gardens that don't use as much of the space as possible to support plant life, are gardens that don't really contribute anything to the environment.  If you're going to spend the time to teach kids about native plants and build a garden at your library, you want that project to pull its weight.

The Resources:  Get some cheap hand trowels from your local hardware store and have some gardening gloves on hand.  Most of my kids didn't want them, because who doesn't expect dirt on their hands when they're planting?  But, it's good to have some for the kids and adults that do want to use them.  I brought in extras from home and borrowed some tools from gardening friends as well, because nobody wants to pay for dozens of tools that you're only going to use once or twice a year.

You may wind up not going to that off-site training after all

Stolen from the Google; impossible to tell who first took it

The Story:  I was notified by another town department that there were last-minute openings in a narcan (anti-overdose drug) training taking place off-site the next day in the evening, hosted by a local rehab clinic.  I got the OK from the boss, arranged after-work home plans, and emailed back the person from the other town department.  Huzzah, I got a reply the next day that I was signed up for that night's class.  I was told it was at such-and-such church the next town over.  I google said church, get an address, and head out.  The address takes me to a church whose name on the sign out front does not match the one I was given, but I figure it's got to be the right place because the address matches.  I drive around a little first just to make sure there isn't another church right up the road (because New England is lousy with churches and it's not uncommon to find them in clusters), but this one is all there is.

I get to the aforementioned church about ten minutes early, and walk straight into the middle of an AA meeting.  Someone in the meeting knows the rehab clinic people putting on my theoretical training, and tries to call them, but to no avail.  He then directs me to another church that while its name ALSO is not technically such-and-such, it is colloquially called that, and maybe that was the church the organizers meant.  So, I drive a few miles to the other church, and walk into the middle of a Christmas pageant rehearsal.  I ask a bewildered mom if there would be another such-and-such church, and she sends me to yet a third church whose name is not that, but that is sometimes called that.  I find my way there, and stumble upon a second Christmas pageant rehearsal.  A second bewildered mom tells me the only church she knows called such-and-such is the first one that I went to.  So, I go back there, find the AA meeting letting out, and ask someone if there is another meeting going on in the church proper or anywhere else that evening.  He says no, but that the pastor is in by now and maybe he can help me.  So, he takes me downstairs to the pastor's office, who has no clue about this meeting taking place at all, and he would be the one who does all the scheduling, so he would know.

He lets me use his computer, though, to check my email in case I got some stupid detail wrong, but I didn't, and I show him the email I got and he goes, "Well, that's us, and today, and the right time, but they're not here."  After shooting an email back to the organizer, I thanked him and left, and he wished me luck, but didn't bless me, which maybe means he knew there was no saving me from the type of lost I was.  I get in my car and call my boss, give him the short version of why after an hour of driving around I'm not going to the training, and decide to head home.  My phone then dies.  It was a miracle that it survived multiple GPS trips and a phone call as it was, but perhaps the divine destinations had something to do with that.  So, I head off in the direction I HOPE the highway is, and resolve to get some fast food on the way home for mollification, foregoing a pit stop at the liquor store.  Several hours after I get home, I get an email from the town department organizer, apologizing for giving me the wrong information.  Apparently it was at such-and-such library, not such-and-such church.

The Lesson:  The devil is in the details.  Piddly little things, like addresses, or the actual names of locations, can help attendees find their way to events.  Even if it seems straight-forward and obvious, always clarify these things before setting out.

The Resources:  I used old-fashioned printed google maps directions to get to the first location the first time, because I knew my phone was likely to die from a 15-minute GPS trip (even starting out at 100% charge, which it was), and I wanted to save it for in case I got well and truly lost.  Shockingly, this got me to the first church with no major hiccups.  After that, I just used the GPS app on my phone to get me to the other locations.  It did, in fact, die before making that phone call, and I sat in my car charging it for a while until it had enough juice to call my boss, before it died again completely.  It was 20 degrees and very dark out, and I didn't want to wait for it to charge again to maybe get me home, but I was lucky I had that car-to-phone charger handy anyway.

You may moonlight as a used furniture salesman.

Image credit:  Ikea

The Story:  You are getting new furniture, rearranging the library, and you've got a couple of things to get rid of.  You ask if you can post them on your local list-serv and what your director will accept for a price.  Then, you take some time crafting your post before you send it, and within an hour, you've got multiple offers on the table (figuratively and literally).  Yay, job's done!  Or so you think.  Your director now enlists you to help sell half a dozen other pieces of furniture you never knew existed because they were sitting in the boiler room or in town hall's storage facility.  And now you're spending way more time than you ever wanted to spend measuring, photographing, and describing items of furniture which were purchased years, or sometimes decades, ago and therefore nobody can find a catalog listing of them to copy and paste.  There's no real way out of it, though, so you chug along until you've cleaned out the library's closet to the director's contentment, and then get back to your regular job duties.

The Lesson:  No good deed goes unpunished.  Just kidding.  But really, though, if you prove yourself to be good at something, especially something that's not in the typical librarian job description, you will find yourself doing a lot more of it than you ever intended.  Thankfully, in this instance, there were finite numbers of furnishings to be re-allocated, but every time anyone revamps part of the library and needs to get rid of something, you'll be the one they turn to.  On the plus side, you've discovered a new skill set you can use should you ever tire of the librarian profession.

The Resources:  I trust your local MLS program to teach you what a list-serv is, and other librarians or google to tell you which ones are relevant to your professional interests, so I'll just share some tips for furniture selling.

1.  Think like a customer ~ If you were looking to purchase or claim a bit of furniture, think about what you'd like to be included in that listing to help you decide if it's right for you.  This may all seem like common sense, but I can't tell you how many listings I've seen go unanswered that basically say, "Do you want to buy my crap?" with no picture, no details, nothing.  Don't be that guy.

2.  Measure twice, cut once ~ Wait, wrong proverb.  You really should measure it though.  List accurate measurements for length, width, height, depth, volume, and any other dimension that makes sense.  Most people won't have a weight scale that can handle furniture, but you should at least tell potential buyers, who will be coming to pick up their furniture and will be really upset if they find out they'll need to come back later with more hands/a bigger truck/etc., what to expect.  Tell them, "This takes three people to move," or "It drags easily but is hard to pick up by yourself," or "For the love of God and all that is holy, lift with your knees on this sucker!"

3.  A picture is worth a thousand words ~ Take pictures from multiple angles, in good lighting, and if your furniture is adjustable or has moving parts, take pictures of those things in action as well as at rest.  Include a standard fiction book for scale, because even with all those measurements, someone will still show up and say, "That's bigger than I thought."  (Make sure to mention in your ad that the book is just for scale and is not included with their purchase.)  If you've made any modifications to it or it has significant damage, include that in the picture set.  This may seem counter-intuitive, but it brings me to my next point.

4.  Be honest ~ We're all in the same boat here, and the last thing we'd want is to get ripped off by another librarian, so don't be a dick and try to swindle one of your colleagues.  You'll run into them at conferences and workshops at some point anyway, and then it'll be awkward.  Plus, librarians are gossips, and as soon as one of us feels like buying your cast-offs is not a good investment, you'll have a harder time getting rid of anything in the future.  (Don't even try to tell me that librarians are not gossips; our profession is all about the sharing of information--we are professional gossips.)  So tell potential buyers about any wear and tear, damage, holes you've drilled, parts you've replaced, paint you've layered on, and why.  They'll understand.  If they could afford brand-new furniture in perfect condition, they won't be interested in your post anyway.  And this brings me to my final point.

5.  Set a reasonable price ~ You're never going to get anywhere near what you paid for it.  If it went for $1,000 ten years ago, you'd be lucky to $100 for it now, especially if some re-assembly is required.  You're not trying to turn a profit here, just maybe make a few extra dollars to buy some wish-list books or hire that actually talented magician whose tricks you can't see straight through, while getting rid of something you can't use anymore but which might be useful to others.  You're doing them a favor by selling deeply discounted but still usable furniture, and they're doing you a favor by not making you drag something heavy to the dump (which can cost staff time, vehicle time, or actual money depending on the method of disposal).  If there are no bites in a couple weeks, lower the price, list it again, or add "or best offer" to the post.  I guarantee you there is a librarian somewhere who is interested in that coat rack, but only if they can get it for $25 less than what you listed.  If the price really is non-negotiable (sometimes you don't have control over this), make that crystal clear in your posting.  Most libraries are not well-funded, and librarians are used to haggling and scouring for discounts.  We need to know up front if your wares are too rich for our blood; that way nobody's wasting each other's time haggling over furniture and we can all go back to reading books all day.  (HA!)

You may find yourself using some strange tools

The Story:  As a librarian, you have many intellectual tools in your toolbox:  querying databases, the art of the reference interview, organizing meta-data.  However, you may be unaware of the actual physical tools you will sometimes require to do your job effectively:  hammer and nails, box cutter, canned air, various industrial-strength glues, an assortment of screwdrivers, allan wrenches, pliers, scissors, and, yes, a toothbrush.  Things break in the library, and you will be called upon to know, or learn quickly, how to fix them.  This is especially true of new technology, or slightly less-new technology for which you may not have free or in-house tech support or replacement options.  If you want to do innovative crafts, you'll have to get your hands on some innovative tools, and not be afraid to use them.  All of the tools pictured above are things I have actually used in my workday to fix toys, prepare after-school maker/craft activities, and trouble-shoot new technology (a.k.a - the 3D printer is clogged again).

The Lesson:  Always be willing to learn, try, and fail before you succeed at fixing something physical.  Also, never underestimate the power of google.  There are so many how-tos and fix-it/DIY websites and forums out there, that you can learn to fix, replace, or take apart just about anything.  Don't be afraid to look beyond the manufacturer's website for help if your problem doesn't come up in their FAQ.  Also, if something is broken enough that you have been called upon to fix it, it's likely that you can't break it much worse if you're actually following some kind of directions rather than just tinkering and hoping for the best.  And once you do actually manage to fix the darn thing, it can be kind of fun and empowering, knowing that you were able to do this thing yourself.

The Resources:  Youtube, Instructables, WikiHow, Lifehacker, and iFixit (one of my personal favorites).  There are a ton more out there, too, devoted to any specific problems you might have.