You may wind up being a dog wrangler and community sleuth

The Story:  Here I am, minding my own business, womanning the desk on a slow weekday morning, when a golden bundle of fur streaks across the library, heading straight for the preschool play area.  Up I jump in a flash and I find the dog sniffing and briskly walking through the area.  It goes up to a couple of people but then quickly turns away, as if they're not what it's looking for.  I slowly approach it once it stops for a minute, but then it bolts across to the other side of the children's room.  It slows down and walks down an aisle of non-fiction towards me, and I crouch low and try to coax it towards me.  It comes up to me, sniffs me, and sits down.  I see it's got a collar with several tags, and then it's fairly easy to grab it by the collar and walk with it into the administrator's office, which happens to be one of the only rooms with a closable door.

Myself and my two bosses start chasing down leads, while the dog sits herself on the floor and calmly enjoys being pet while we read off tag information.  Her name, apparently, is Grace Louise.  One of the tags leads to a phone that is out of service.  The next one is an online lost pet service, and eventually leads to a shelter in the South that adopted the dog to its owner up here in New England, and they have the same old phone number as we do.  They reveal, however, that the dog was well-cared-for down there until its owner died and it was surrendered to their shelter before being fostered then adopted up north.  The third tag leads to a local vet, who tells us that the owner up here is deceased, and they don't know who is currently caring for the dog.  We get the former owner's name from the vet and call the police to see if they know who next-of-kin is and if they might be able to track down the dog's new caretaker.  We then realize that this is the exact same dog that ran through the library a few months ago with its now-deceased owner on its heels after she had gotten loose during a walk.  This dog got loose and came to the library several times over the years, according to my coworkers, who took turns coming in to the office to pet the dog while we worked on finding its caretaker, though this was the first time it happened on my watch with this particular dog.

The owner's death was a well-known incident in town, as it was a fatal hit-and-run that people were still talking about in its own right.  We go on facebook, of all places, on a well-trafficked community forum on there, and find out who is caring for the animals from comments on the thread about the crash.  Then animal control comes and gets Grace Louise and confirms that they also believe they know who is taking care of her, and it is the neighbor we identified from the forums.  So, off they go to reunite this poor, sweet dog with owner #3.  The shelter down south offered to take the dog back to one of its northern partner shelters and foster it/find it a new home, if we did not locate the owners or it didn't work out for whatever reason.  Hopefully, that won't be necessary.

The Lesson:  Keep up with local news.  Though print newspapers are slowly dying, town papers and related websites are still heavily read in most places; it doesn't matter if you are in a big city or small town.  People still want to know what's going on around them, and they will often flock to online forums to talk about it as well.  As soon as we got a name, we recognized it from the headlines, and knew we needed to adjust our approach.  Even if you don't live in the same town as you work in, take some time to at least skim the newspaper.  Fifteen minutes or so a week of reading on the clock is perfectly justifiable professional development, because you never know when community connections will come in handy.

Learn how to behave around stray/lost/frightened animals.  I read up later about how to catch a skittish dog, and while some of it may make you look and feel foolish, there are some basic principles there that make sense.  When I was running at the dog, it also ran.  When I stopped moving and crouched, I was no longer a threat, and it approached me.  This particular dog was very social and seemed to think the running was a game rather than fleeing in fear of me, but still.  Me changing my behavior cued the dog to change hers.  Obviously every situation is different, but it helps to be able to get a dog to come to you.  A dog will pretty much always be able to outrun you; they've got twice as many legs, and have a very low likelihood of wearing movement-restricting clothing.

Expect the unexpected.  This particular instance happened in a public library setting, but I have seen dogs running amuck in university libraries too, albeit less frequently.  Any place with automatic doors has the potential for animals to let themselves in.

Resources:
Local newspaper
Facebook/local online forum
Pet tags and pet-location services, such as 24PetWatch
How to behave around lost pets
How to catch a stray dog

You may wind up with flour on your ass

The story:  This was the scene the other day in the children's room as I frantically mixed salt dough to prepare for this weekend's special craft program.  I had help from one of my library assistants who is super-crafty, which is a good thing, because I probably would have taken four times as long and messed it up somehow had I done it on my own.  And here's why:  I was multi-tasking, badly.

Due to scheduling abnormalities, I would have no other time to make this stuff for the weekend, and I would also have no other time to have a meeting with my cataloger, and I also would have no other time to set up for an after school program that day.  So, all of this had to happen at once.

We started mixing the salt dough (recipe here), and I very quickly realized that I was ill-dressed for the occasion.  I had decided to wear a black pencil skirt that day, completely forgetting what I'd be doing.  My hands were gooped up with dough and flour and there was already a white spot on my skirt, so I went to get an apron, thinking I'd prevent further mess to my outfit.  I tied the apron on myself, and only when it was too late did I realize that in tying it behind me I deposited further flour mess onto my backside, and that trying to wipe it off with dirty hands would only make it worse.  So, to Hell with it.  I went back to the children's room, and mixed some more dough, and had a very professional, in-depth conversation with our new cataloger about my cataloging philosophy and specific examples of inconsistencies and inaccuracies that needed remedying.  We discussed how many decimal places a children's non-fiction book really needs, whether climate change belongs in the three hundreds or five hundreds, and when a personal account crosses over into biography...all while my coworkers politely ignored the smear on my rear.

And then the leader of the after school program walks up, and has to awkwardly shake my floury hand.

The Lesson:  Plan your schedule, have extra clothing and an apron at work (and actually remember to change into it BEFORE you get messy), think about asking for help before you make an even bigger mess, and don't get phased by a little white powder.  I took several children's literature classes in library school, and while we touched on children's programming, I never really foresaw myself as a children's librarian, so if there were classes on crafting (I don't think there were), I missed them.  I think my biggest realization throughout my career is exactly how physically messy this job can be.  Luckily, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.  (Or my skirt for that matter.)

Resources:  
Salt dough recipe
Not that you don't already have your own Dewey schedules, but here:
000
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900

What's it all about?

Library school taught us many things about being a librarian.  However, the field is always changing, and there are new things that we'd never dream were going to be part of our job descriptions when we started studying for our MLS/MLIS.  There are also things that we probably should have been taught, but somehow or another, those things slipped through the cracks in the education system.  And then there are the un-teachable things, the interactions and personal experiences that shape how we view the world and our profession.  In this blog, myself and other librarians hope to chronicle some of these experiences to help current and future librarians be prepared for the road ahead.  Also, everybody needs to vent and have a good laugh about what they do for a living, and this can be the place for that also.  If you've got an experience you'd like to share, let us know, because we'd love for this to become a collective blog, widening the breadth and deepening the depth of what we can teach and learn.