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.