Harriet the Spy - My Library Volunteer Hours

I volunteer at my public library.

Each shift, I pull patron requests, and this morning, one kid ordered every single tiger book in the entire branch, both English and Spanish.

I am intrigued.

I’m not allowed to pry into the identities of the requests, but I like to imagine it’s a kid like me, who went bonkers on “ocelots” one sixties summer at my childhood public library.

Yes, we volunteers have to sign confidentiality agreements, NDAs. It’s necessary! I privately laugh at all the improper things I could get up to, if allowed to run wild.

I could improperly call the woman (it’s gotta be a woman) who’s requesting the “God Has a Plan” titles. You know what I’d send her instead?

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On the sunny side, pulling requests is like a matchmaker game. There’s some requesters who move me, and if it wasn’t for that NDA, I could call them impetuously and say, “I just know we’d be friends.”

Here’s the people I “paired” with, in my imagination, this week:

1. The reader who ordered the obscure Arctic nonfiction hardcover from 1941, Kabloona, with no slipcover. You and me, babe.

   

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2. This one, for the cover alone: Discontent:

   

3. I want to cook with whomever asked for Kafka’s Soup.

   

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Here’s what I’m surprised by: People still request DVDs, VHS video, and physical audiotapes and CD’s. They are clearly having a great time not streaming. The library is wise to keep the collections going.

The Juvenile “easy” titles have a in-house library code, “JEASY”. I think the senior large-print titles should be acronym’d, SLEAZY.

As someone who was a foot-soldier in commercial publishing, it’s interesting to see where library tastes coincide, and where they diverge. Libraries drive the perennials market. Now that literacy itself is not in vogue, seeing who is reading at the library, is the canary in the coal mine.

Here’s the life cycle of the typical library patron:

First, you discover the children’s room as a child and love it. My first “borrow” was Little House in the Woods, from the Berkeley Public Library. I was in tears to see so many books that I could read.

What was yours?

Then you drift away from the library in puberty, even though the public library is doing everything they can think of, these days, to hold onto teens. Teenagers have their own separate room, their own collection. —Ditch your parents, escape from high school hell!

The average Jane or Joe forgets about the library . . . until they have kids, when all of a sudden, there’s “Storytime.”

“It’s the only day of the week some of these moms get out of the house,” one librarian told me. Every Tuesday at our branch there’s helpers, stories, and songs, a moment to relax and be playful.

While the young parent is there, they think, “Huh, we could get a movie or some music. Or a cookbook.” You are reminded the library is cool.

As an elder, you reach the final act, which I slid into like a glove. I started going back to my local branch on the regular, sitting by the fire in the winter, lying on the big pillows, reading the few magazines still going. Gossiping with librarians. This is my idea of luxury. Volunteering and running my own book club.

© Brenda Marston, with me at the Cornell Library, the Human Sexuality Collection.

Today we had the first meeting of my branch “in-person” book club. I couldn’t believe who came. Writer pals. Groovy Parents from the school where we raised our young kids.

One woman, who drove 60 miles, reminded me she was my author escort in Chicago, back in the day when writers like myself, routinely were on cross-country tours. The escort is the author lifeline, the person who takes care of you! One of my author escorts in Minneapolis, I kid you not, helped me find my grandmother’s grave in a city cemetery. Another replaced my glasses. Perhaps there was some hanky-panky involved. Uber drivers are not the same!

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