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.

You may find that aprons are just not enough (Butterfly Garden Part 4)

The Story:  Things get a little messy and disorganized at our second meeting, where we planted the stratified seeds from the first meeting in starter pods to help them germinate.  We also painted garden stones to identify what each plant is once they're in the ground.  The names of each plant were written on the bags they were stratified in, and I only put one bag per table, and one seed starter pallet per table, in the hopes that they would maybe kind of stay together, but they didn't.  Some kids put seeds in the plant pods faster than others, and went over to help other kids.  Some seed bags had more seeds than others, some kids wanted to paint more stones than others, some people took seeds from other tables, and some kids took seeds that weren't stratified from the bags of wildflower seed mixes which were on the cart for the after-project (making more take-home planters for those that finished with the seeds and the stones faster than others).  Once seed pod trays were full, they went to the window ledge where I tried to write names on the lids of the trays in a timely manner, but sometimes people just put them on the windows without telling me (I was frequently busy assisting/supervising) and I had to guess which plants were in there later.  It was all rather chaotic.  After the program, I had to find room in staff areas of the building with wide enough window ledges to support all the trays (7 total).  I knew that leaving them unattended in publicly accessible areas of the building would prove disastrous.  So for at least a month, everyone's office and break room was graced with the presence of (sometimes) sprouting plants.  They were all pretty good sports about it, thankfully.

The Lesson:  Be prepared to be messy.  We had aprons for the patrons, but that did not contain the amount of mess to be cleaned up afterwards.  Paper was put down on tables to keep them from being painted, but water was necessary to start the pods, and of course some people managed to spill almost whole pitchers of water on the table, making the paper's paint-catching qualities non-existent.  Thankfully acrylic paint washes off pretty easily, I made sure I had extra time to clean up, and I wore clothing I didn't care about.  I don't think I can reiterate enough on this blog how messy being a librarian is.  They don't tell you about this part of the job in library school, so consider yourself warned.

The Resources:  I already had paints and brushes, and I bought large river rocks at a craft store for the painted garden stones.  I felt it was better to do this in person rather than online, so I could pick the bags that had the best sizes and shapes of rocks for painting (smooth, semi-flat, palm-sized or bigger).  I used this seed pod starter, but got it from the local hardware store.

If you thought this was the end of the story, you can think again.  So keep your eyes peeled for more butterfly garden silliness.

You may have an urgent need to become the resident botany expert (Butterfly Garden Part 3)

The Story:  You find all these great butterfly garden seed mixes and kits online, so you order a bulk native seed kit/mix from a native gardening site, but when it comes in, you realize that many of the seeds are pre-mixed.  When it listed which species there were, it didn't mean they'd come separated out.  This throws off your whole game, because you had super-cool plans to have the kids learn to identify different plants and make garden markers and all sorts of stuff to inform visitors to the garden about what was growing there.  So, you put this aside, and use it for a completely different tween program, still with tons left over.  Then, you go back to the native seeds site, and order individual packets of most of the plants in the seed mix, substituting other ones that you've determined through way too much online research into monarch butterflies to be the best species of milkweed for your soon-to-be habitat.  You discover, however, upon further investigation, that your timeline will have to be pushed back a bit, because despite all the hubub about planting seeds in spring, this is not how most native wildflowers operate.  They need to experience winter in order to sprout in the spring.  So, you have to trick the plant seeds into germinating through a process called cold stratification.  Basically, you put the seeds on a damp paper towel, put that into a ziplock bag, and put them in the refrigerator for several weeks.  As you look more and more into it, you are dismayed to learn that most seeds require multiple months in the fridge.  Well, to heck with that; you don't have that kind of time.  You decide to put them in for one month, maximum, and let nature handle the rest.

You run your program, the kids and their respective parents and grandparents help them prepare the seeds for cold stratification.  You explain the science behind it, teach the kids some new big words, and since you know this won't take the whole hour, or at least you hope you'll have enough people there that it won't, and you want to give them something to take home, you plan a craft project.  Using newspaper, masking tape (because it's biodegradable, as you've just recently learned), and a mason jar as a mold, you teach the kids to craft their own plantable, biodegradable starter pots.  They love these, make multiples, and fill them with soil and seeds from your earlier botanical botch-up.  Win-win.  Though you still have a ton of leftover wildflower/native grass seed mix.

The Lesson:  It pays to do your research on many levels, and it also pays to be flexible and to have a boss who doesn't ask too many questions about how much money you're spending on seeds.  Even if you've done a thing at home for a while as a hobby, changing any bit of it to bring it in to your library for a program is going to throw you out of your comfort zone.  I'd been native gardening in my yard for a couple years now and thought I had a handle on the situation.  I'd mostly bought already-grown plants from nurseries in the spring, and seeds that I bought in the spring and threw in the ground in my garden sprouted anyway (or some of them, at least).  But when I wanted to ensure a bigger success rate for the library garden for the patrons, I realized how much extra work it would be.  However, everything is a learning opportunity, for both yourself and your patrons, and without knowing about my seed-buying mishap, all the kids really enjoyed participating in all this preparatory activity, and the adults came up to me after and said how great it was that their kids are seeing plants from the very beginning and how even though they themselves had been gardening for years at home, they didn't know about cold stratification and they congratulated me on being able to teach them something new.

The resources:  I bought my seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery.  They have lots of different kinds of milkweed, and each plant has a range map so you can figure out if it is native to your area, as despite what many "wildflower mix" seed packets will tell you, there are very few plants that actually belong on the whole continent, and to make your garden serve a purpose for butterflies or other wildlife, it's best to plant something they can actually use.

I figured out the minimum amount of time I could simulate seed hibernation online from a variety of sources, but here are some of the best places to read about how to properly start and grow milkweed:
Monarch Butterfly Garden
American Meadows
Prairie Moon.

I got my directions for a biodegradable planter here, but there are tons of other options out there on the mommy blogs, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and post all about it here.  Just find one that works for your own purposes and run with it.

Fear not, for there is more nonsense to come in the garden saga.

You may come upon some fairy tale haters

The Story:  Unbeknownst to anyone on library staff, a patron comes in looking for a DVD of a 3 Little Pigs story.  They search it up in the catalog, and as luck would have it, only one of the several versions we have is available at the moment:  the Fairy Tale Theatre version.  As anyone who has seen even a snippet of these movies knows, these are some strange films.  They're technically for children, and not inappropriate, but they take a 5-minute fairy tale and turn it into an hour-long production, which includes some jokes and references that only adults would get.  Honestly, the biggest problem with showing this version of any fairy tale to a young child is that they will get bored.  However, this patron seemed to be incredibly offended that the library would have this available for preschoolers.  What one needs to keep in mind, however, is that it is cataloged as a juvenile non-fiction DVD, which is on the opposite end of the shelving unit from the preschool-aged DVDs.  We actually have them separated.  JJ DVDs for younger children, J DVDs for older children, and J Non-fiction DVDs after that.  This movie was not sitting next to Barney or Caillou.  It is even on the top shelf, where small hands can't reach it accidentally.  The real problem is that all the preschool-geared versions were out at the moment, and the patron never bothered to ask a librarian for help.  Had they done so, we would have recommended that they request a different version from another library, as this one is a little long for four-year olds.

I do appreciate a few things about this patron's complaint, though.  Firstly, it was done so nicely, handwritten, on nice stationary, sealed and dropped off with the DVD in question upon return.  Secondly, they didn't seem to want a confrontation, as they wrote the note and left.  They didn't march in demanding to speak to the person in charge.  We later did look them up and call them, offering to put other versions of the story on hold for them, and explaining that had they asked, we wouldn't have recommended this particular title for a four-year-old.  Thirdly, they didn't foam at the mouth and demand that all traces of this item's existence be removed from the library at once.  They merely thought it should be kept in a section for older children, which, ironically, it already was.

The Lesson/Resources:  Basically, just know your stuff.  Know your collection, categorize it appropriately, and have your policies to fall back on should a real challenge appear.  In that case, ALA has some good resources here, here, and here.  While library school did try to prepare us for dealing with book challenges and the like, they didn't prepare us for the non-challenge that happened here.  "Keep this movie in the section for older children!"  Okay, job's done!

You may have to get your hands dirty...very dirty (Butterfly GardenPart 2)

The Story:  After removing all that gravel, you discover that underneath, from years of heavy gravel and rainwater unabsorbed by plants, there is a hard clay-dust-rock-like substance that is in no way arable land.  Much like a martian landscape, your garden area is barren and incapable of supporting life.  So, off to the local hardware store you go, after measuring the garden and calculating how many square feet of soil you're going to need to buy.  You schedule a delivery of what should be more than enough soil, and when it gets there (three days after the scheduled delivery date), it sits on the sidewalk next to the garden while it rains for a week.  Meanwhile, your actual planting date is looming ever closer, because before you actually dug out the garden space, you've been hosting programs where the children helped prepare the plants (more on that in another post).  And now they're sprouting.

Finally, you get a nice enough day to get out there with a shovel and a garden rake, you put the dirt down, and discover you're still, somehow, a little bit short.  Back to the hardware store for another delivery.  This eventually comes and you cover up the rest of the barren garden bed, just in time for the first sprout planting program with the kids.

The Lesson & Resources:  Be prepared to get your hands seriously dirty and muddy, and bring clothing and shoes you don't care about to change into before you start dumping dirt.  You may wind up doing most of this part yourself due to scheduling, weather, etc.  Allow more time and more resources than you think you actually need, and then allow for more.  You'll always be over-budget and barely on time.  You will, however, eventually end up with a plantable garden, and kids who are excited to do the planting.

Stay tuned for more misadventures in planning a library butterfly garden.

You may have to shovel gravel for multiple hours (Butterfly Garden Part 1)

The Story:  Spring is coming, and you decide it would be a great learning experience for the children to raise butterflies at the library.  Then, you think how great it would be for them to do some good for the planet and build a butterfly garden.  You have the perfect spot in mind:  plenty of sun, nothing growing there now, and it even gets some visibility as people drive by on their way to the book drop.  The only problem is that it is covered in gravel at least three inches thick, on top of a weed barrier cloth, on top of hard-packed clay.  You don't know any of this yet.

Here is the before picture:

So you enlist the help of the custodian, who is the only person on staff accustomed to physical labor, as you know nobody else will volunteer for this task, and you start shoveling.  Of course you have to talk to the boss to get off-desk time for the project and permission to wear ratty jeans while you're working.  Ever try to garden in business casual?  I don't recommend it.

You think this will take a couple of hours.  When you estimated this for the boss, you didn't take into account how dense this gravel was, and you didn't realize how deep it was either.  There's also the task of redistributing the gravel to other beds once you've removed it from this one.  Two or three hours is not enough.

I can't tell you how many hours we spent in total, but it was a lot.  It took multiple sessions of a couple or more hours at a time to get the appropriate amount of gravel cleared away.  I was sore for a day or two after each time, but it was the good soreness that can only come from knowing you've worked physically hard and accomplished something.

The Lesson:  It will always take longer than you think it will.  A bin full of gravel takes two people to lift.  The weather will not cooperate with your availability schedule.  There will be problems that you did not foresee, and you will just have to deal with them.  You've already started this garden project, and it's too late to back out now.

The Resources:  Hopefully you have a few good, sturdy shovels on hand for digging.  In the absence of a wheelbarrow, a low, flat book cart with plastic bins on them makes a good gravel transport.  Having deodorant in your work locker is something you'll be grateful that you already do after a day of shoveling gravel when you have to get presentable again for your shift at the desk.

Stay tuned for more mishaps and adventures in creating a library butterfly garden from scratch.

You may find books as old as the library itself

The Story:  This book, shockingly, did not get discovered while weeding.  We hadn't gotten to that section yet.  No, no.  We discovered this book because someone checked it out.  I'll let that sink in for a moment as you take a look at the age and condition of this title.

So, somebody saw this haggard old thing with yellowed, brittle pages, a strong rotten-book smell, and a gross misunderstanding of the word, "modern", and said, "Yes, this is the book for me.".  I'm sure at one point in its life, namely 1934 when it was published, this book would have been considered modern.  Now, however, anything whose published date starts with "19-anything", cannot rightly use the word "modern" to describe it.

What is more strange about this book still existing and actually being checked out is the fact that someone wanted to convey the message that they enjoyed it, so they wrote "good book" multiple times on it in barely disguised handwriting all from the same person throughout the front matter (a couple examples pictured above).  Like this glowing review is going to save this book from being ditched the second a librarian lays eyes on it.

As you can see, the book is in horrendous shape.  The pages are so yellow that they're brown, practically the same color as a wooden desk.

Aside from the one check-out which alerted staff to this book's existence, the thing hadn't been checked out at all since we moved away from stamping books in the late '90s.  What gets me is that at some point, someone had to add a barcode to this thing and create a digital record for it.  Nobody ever paused to think, "Maybe this title's not worth it."

1934, the year our library officially opened in its present building location, is the copyright date of this book.

Surprisingly, it has one color plate illustration in it, which I'm sure was very advanced technology for the time.

All condition notes aside, take a gander at the actual poems, intended for children, and their accompanying pictures.  These poems are not even in an actual language, though bearing minimal resemblance to English, and by today's standards are horribly racist.  For instance, the poem above teaches children to call a person from Italy a Dago, which is a racial slur.  From the point of an Italian, they got mad when someone called them a Dago, but then accepted it and called the name-caller something back.  In this case, they called an Irish person a Mc (pronounced "Mick", but characterized in this poem as "Meeck" because they're making fun of the Italian speaker's accent), which is another racial slur.  The previous poem compares the music and marching of a white band and a colored band marching down the street, basically saying that the white people play music better but the black people dance better and make it more fun.  Not all pictures of black people in old books are necessarily offensive caricatures, and it's hard to say if this one is originally intended to be, or if it was an accurate representation of what it looked like at the time, the black band in a parade, but it likely would not fly in the present political climate. 

And here we have a final illustration of both the awful physical condition of the book, and the bizarre nature of the poems themselves.  I mean, who writes a poem about a dog who breaks his leg or a mouse being chased out of its home?  They're just weird.

The Lesson:  You'll find bad books when you least expect it, and patrons will sometimes amaze you with what they choose to borrow.  No resources for this post, as no amount of library literature will prepare you for the quirky-at-best books you'll discover in an old collection.  I've found a number of truly terrible books in my time, and I'm trying to do a better job of documenting them for my own amusement and hopefully that of my fellow librarians.

You may have been instrumental in someone's family planning without even knowing it

The Story:  I was cleaning up one evening before closing time, picking up used guest passes and whatnot near the computers in the children's room, and what do I find?  An empty medicine wrapper, complete with instructions and drug facts.  The pill in question is no cough drop or antihistamine; it is a morning-after pill.  

I like to imagine that after a night of passion, a woman realizes she forgot to take her birth control, and rather than risk it, she runs out and gets some insurance against an unwanted baby.  Then, for whatever reason, she has second thoughts, and wonders what it would be like if she were pregnant and if she did keep it.

"But how will I know what children are like without having one?" She asks herself.  "I know, I'll go to the library!"

Little did she know what children who hang out at the library are really like.  After an afternoon sitting amongst the video game obsessed pre-teens shouting over each other on the computers and watching the parade of children throwing temper tantrums as they're hauled out by their parents, she thinks to herself, "Fuck this!  I am never having kids." and dry-swallows it, not bothering to throw away her trash, walks away, and never looks back.

Now, I want to be clear that I support a woman's right to do whatever she pleases with her body, including choosing to not have a baby by any medically sound and legal methods available to her.  The person who left this at the library did just that, and I do not fault her for it.

However, she chose not to throw the wrapper in the trash, and by littering and leaving it for me to find and clean up, whoever this woman is has willingly made herself fodder for jokes.

No lesson or resources here, except to expect the unexpected, a constant in our profession, and take the laughs where you can.

You may find yourself acting as your own travel agent

The Story:  Huzzah!  Your library has approved your trip to ALA, and they've even agreed to pay for it.  Now, to book a plane, hotel, conference registration, and shuttle service in a city you've never been to, know nothing about, and are going to by yourself, all while trying to get the best deals.  No sweat, right?

You suddenly remember all the ads you've seen for travel websites, each claiming to be the best at getting you deals on flights, hotels, "and more!".  But who to trust?  You therefore spend hours, both at work and at home, combing every single one, debating the merits of taking a redeye or an unheard-of airline for a few dollars less, calculating the savings of booking your hotel with your flight versus with your conference registration, looking up public transportation, measuring and weighing your luggage in various arrangements, and in general, just going crazy about the whole thing.

The Lesson:  Don't sweat it.  You'll find that the same planes are flying at the same times for roughly the same prices no matter which website you book from or search from.  You'll find that no matter how carefully you read the regulations, you'll wind up paying for something unexpected (parking at the airport just a couple hours too short to get the week-long discount and instead paying for six days at full-price, for example, or finding that one airline gives you free checked baggage but is more expensive by the same amount of money it would cost to check your baggage on another, "cheaper", airline).  Always plan for at least $100 in miscellaneous expenses.  Save all your receipts and write on them what they were for, especially if it's not obvious.  If you can take advantage of flexible flights and travel in and out in the middle of the week as opposed to the weekend, you'll save probably a hundred dollars or more on your flight, but if your library can't afford to lose you for that long, be prepared for $300-$500 prices on economy-class flights anywhere within the USA.

Sometimes direct flights are actually cheaper than ones that have layovers, but other times not.  Don't sacrifice all your time and comfort for a bargain.  Three connecting flights might save you $50, but is it worth it to be traveling for an extra four hours and give the airlines three chances to lose your luggage?  Traveling out of the big-city international airport (and likely flying direct) may save you $100, but how much will it cost in gas/parking/train fare to get there as opposed to your smaller airport closer to home (and needing a connector), not to mention extra travel time and more opportunities for circumstances beyond your control to intervene and make you miss your flight?  You can book different airlines going there and going back, so don't be afraid to do some shopping around on your own on each airline's website in addition to all those travel websites, if you've got the time.  

Also, when booking your flights, don't forget to take into account what time you're actually allowed to check in at your hotel and how long it takes to get there from the airport using your transportation method of choice (rent a car? public transit? hire a shuttle?), or you may find yourself sitting in the lobby for two hours, sweaty and grumpy from travel, and desperately in need of a nap/food/shower/all of the above, or else lugging your whole entourage around the conference for half the day, or being that awkward person in pajamas with a suitcase and a travel pillow at the restaurant where you went to kill time while they got your room ready.  Suddenly that cheap early flight isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Don't forget snacks, even if they say they serve food on the plane, and bring an empty water bottle to fill after you pass security instead of paying exorbitant amounts of money for their duty-free-shop water.  Wear flip-flops to get through security faster, but pack a pair of warm socks in your carry-on for comfort on the plane.  Always pack underwear in your carry-on.  Even on a direct flight, never underestimate the ability of an airport to lose your baggage, and always have a couple extra pairs of underwear and enough clothing/toiletries for two days.  Trust me; this is not a lesson you want to learn the hard way.

The Resources:  Personally, I've had good luck with the travel websites JustFly, Google Flights, and Kayak, as well as the airlines Jet Blue, United, and Southwest.  However, I don't fly frequently enough to effectively rate every single one, and I do know that companies are constantly changing things, and new ones are coming on to the market all the time (like Skiplagged, for those who travel light), so your experiences may vary greatly from mine.  If you are going to the conference on your own dime, save money on a hotel by staying on someone's couch.  Couchsurfing is great for that, and it's pretty easy to find people anywhere on the planet willing to host someone for free.  You just have to be friendly and plan to spend some time getting to know your hosts and talking about yourself and what you're doing at the conference in return for their hospitality.  They've got a user feedback/ratings system, so you can choose only to contact potential hosts who have hosted people before with all positive feedback.  Also, don't be afraid to stay in a cheaper hotel, like Extended Stay America, which may have fewer frills, but you'll be spending all your time at the conference anyway, so what does it really matter?  If you do wind up staying in a hotel, use the app TraffickCam by ExchangeInitiative to do some good while you're traveling.  Take pictures of the room you're staying in and upload it to their database along with the hotel information.  The authorities then use these pictures to compare against the backgrounds of hotels in child and other illegal pornography, bringing them closer to finding out where these crimes are taking place and making it easier for authorities to track and bring to justice the people carrying out sex trafficking crimes.

Clear skies and happy travels, from one librarian-turned-travel-agent to another!