THE POLICE OFFICER LIBRARIAN

On Monday, I gave a presentation on safety and being a police officer at my son's day care. Two things occurred to me throughout preparation and during the event: One, I don't know why I didn't think of taking a book with me to read sooner. And, two, that was the most fun being a police officer I have had since I started with the department two and a half years ago. The sad thing is, it was my day off and I wasn't even getting paid.

Other things to share: talking to a group of 27, 3-5 year olds is very challenging. They have short attention spans. They are also very talkative. It's been awhile since I've been around kids of that age group. I'm still use to my son who just makes funny sounds and giggles.

Although I planned badly and wasn't able to find a halloween book to take with me, the children's librarian helped me find two really good books: "Keeping You Safe: A Book About Police Officers" by Ann Owen and "Officer Buckle and Gloria" by Peggy Rathman. I opted out of reading the latter because of the length and age group, but it's looks like a cute story, none-the-less for the right group. The first book had nice clear pictures and simple sentences that was perfect for the 3 and 4 year olds. It even featured lots of women police officers which is important in a room full of girls who want to be princesses when they grow up.

All in all, it was a very good day.

INTERVIEW OR INTERROGATION

As a police officer by day and librarian wannabe by night, I realized that while I don't spend much time working on my reference interview, I spend more than enough time "interviewing" the counties convicted felons and other mishaps. Let me just say, I've pulled out a few hairs over the inane, repetitive and mind-numbing questions I have to answer day after day. Let me put this into perspective for you so you don't think I'm the most anti-friendly cop out there. I work in a work-release center, where inmates are granted permission to go to work, school, appointments and job interviews. I'm basically a county-paid information center for inmates trying to make it on the outside, inside.
We have a process where all questions, regarding anything they have to ask, are written on request slips and collected three times daily, once on each shift. While this is a good method in theory, as it allows the deputies to answer the questions at their leisure and get back to the inmates when finished, attempting to get people to follow these rules, who can't follow rules on the outside is another story altogether.
And so, these past months I have become an interviewer not an interrogator, fielding for information from people who don't want to give it in order to help them with bus schedules, work schedules, appointments, huber law, criminal law and so on. It is tiring and tedious and I wish I were helping with books instead of bus routes, but such is life.

It's Hard to Be a Reader

It seems that reading is all around us. Directions, signs, mail, the infamous text message, email, work email, school email, all these nonchalant forms us reading just to make it through everyday life. Sometimes after a busy day at work when I've spent all day trying to read, and decipher, other people’s questions, it's surprising that I want to go home and read for fun.

The idea of reading for fun should be exactly that: fun. On the contrary, sometimes searching for that right book, the book that will hit that arbitrarily established, perfect selection is almost impossible to find. Why is this?

I have a few reasons and a few examples to suggest:

Reason #1:

My first answer to this frustrating question is publishing. Have you ever browsed through a bookstore and seen the massive amount of totally off the wall titles? I can't think of any off the top of my head, but there is a book dealing with anything you can think of. Has the publishing world even heard of the word discretion? Do they know the difference between utter garbage and useful, entertaining material? I'm not talking about bestsellers and children's books. I'm talking about the How to Manuals for everything under the sun. The plethora of self helps books that restate the same topics monthly. Do people actually read these books?? I'd just like to know? Are these the types of books that geniuses read so that they can win Jeopardy?

Reason #2

Great Expectations. Anyone who has ever read a really good book, a book that they absolutely just loved, now has their expectations too high to ever really enjoy a good book again. This is why reading a good book is bittersweet. You can no longer purely enjoy a book if you take the time to think about how much you're enjoying it, getting out of it, learning from it and the impression it's made on you. Oh, you can think about it and how much you like it, but in the back of your mind you're gradually counting down to the end.

It gets worse; after you've read that title that blows away all other options you spend the rest of your time trying to find something better. It's a vicious cycle.

#3

Here's a great example: I'm a huge Jane Austen fan. I absolutely love "Sense and Sensibility." Unfortunately, my love of all things Jane Austen does not automatically offshoots and topical related Jane Austen novels any good. I was recently reading "Austenland," a contemporary novel about a New York City writer, of course, lands a trip to a Pride and Prejudice inspired reality vacation. I made the mistake of reading 100 pages more than I should of, trying to trick myself since it's only a 200 page book. Alas, I finally gave up, being bored to death by generic clichés, an obvious story line and a wannabe Carrie Bradshaw. The thing that makes me the most frustrated is that I wasted minutes, hours of my life reading crap that will have no lasting impression. Ugh.

To counter this semi-negative essay I will include some of my favorite titles on the sidebar to the right.

Reading and Vocabulary

This month's cover story in American Libraries, "It's All about Books -- Not!," deals with the ever popular issue of teens and reading.

I think this is an interesting topic to discuss since it addresses the shift in teen reading behavior. I think it's good that the National Endowment for the Arts is going to study teen reading specifically. Although the adult report's definition of reading was a little bit stingy, it was very interesting. The area that I have trouble with is when the article includes reading text messages as a form of reading.

Let's be realistic. Text messaging is a quick form of communication comprised primarily of acronyms and gossip. I don't really see how texting, instant messaging and other like formats should really qualify as a shift in teen reading behavior. I understand that it's really popular and highly used, but how does that play into education and learning? It has been proven time and time again that the more a person reads the larger their vocabulary is and the better they do in school.

While the library can use these tools to get in touch with teens, schools and libraries still need to promote the concept of reading. And by reading I mean physical books, with words printed on the page. I doubt that teenagers are using complex words, spell check, or a thesaurus in their text messages to each other.

In this fast-paced world being able to sit still and read a book for fun is not often looked upon as important. Like I stated before, the effects of reading, especially classic literature has a huge effect on vocabulary development and comprehension.

One of the more prestigious Police Departments I applied for, uses as its first elimination step a reading and vocabulary exam. 1100 people took the exam with me and only 100 people made it onto the next step. I owe my high test score almost exclusively to the extra-curricular reading I did during high school and college. People might be surprised that fields like law enforcement require knowledge of reading comprehension and spelling, but it shows that these are the basic skills that everyone needs to be successful in this world. What's more embarrassing than having a police report, which is an legal document, full of errors and inaccuracies when it's read in a court room? Enough said.

Observations...

I would like to recount my trip to our local public library last night. The trip was an impromtu quasi-observation session so I could pick up my holds that were about to be sent back the next morning. Ironically, it turned out to be one of the best customer service experiences I've had.


Obersvations: Children

I took my lovely eight month old son with me. Did I mention he can stand and crawl like the speed of light. Always take the stoller inside with you, otherwise you will spend the entirety of the trip reshelving books that he has pulled out. Once they can stand, they can pretty much get at anything. While I did manage to grab a few books between reshelving books, chasing him down the stacks before someone stepped on him, and trying to hold onto him, checking out with an baby in your arms is very difficult. After I got all my books up by the self check out, I realized I didn't have my library card. So, I picked him up while trying to hold the stack in my other hand and proceeded to wait in line at the service check out.

Well, smart me had just renewed my overdue Knitting dvd's yesterday. Now the previous "overdue" items had $10.00 in fines, plus the three previous dollars that I liked to leave on my account for good measure. Needless to say, I only had two dollars on me. Long story short, the desk lady was super super nice, saw that I was struggling and knocked $5.00 off of my account, so I could check out my items with getting them sent back or going home to get more money. Uhhh, I felt embarrassed and extremely unorganized, but now I think I get that whole working, tired mom thing.

REFERENCE

After doing the reading for the previous weeks and seeing that reference desks were renaming themselves and restructuring the design of the desks, I was curious to really look and see what my public library's reference area looked like.

Now, this is not a branch library. It is a public library in a new, Craftsman style building that serves a growing community of 10,000.

I was surprised to see that the sign, hanging from the ceiling above the librarians desk said "INFORMATION." Another nearby sign stated, " Homework Help, Reference, Readers Advisory" and three other services that I can't remember off hand. My point is that I liked that the secondary sign made it clear exactly what the librarian can help with. This sign is also very visible and it lets patrons know that the librarian is there for things besides just findingbooks.

The "REFERENCE" sign actually hung over the reference collection, which sits directly in front of the Information desk. My only complaint with the system is that the information desk is sort of hidden behind the reference collection. Granted the reference collection isn't on overly tall shelves, but the desk does tend to be hidden from three sides. Fortunately, the library has very good directional signs hanging from the ceiling.