Hmm. I started putting up some images, but then I found that they don't show up on Explorer, or older Netscape. Oh well. I'm such an HTML baby.
I'm doing the night shift at the info desk tonight. In the hour I've been here, I've directed two people to different buildings on campus, and allowed one sort of good-looking guy to store his stuff behind the desk. It's all very glamorous and exciting.
Since I rarely mention the library, perhaps tonight I will while away the long, tedious hours (or at least a few minutes) by telling you about some of the staff here. I won't even change their names. I'm leaving, what do I care? Besides, if they find this page I think there's about a 99% chance they'll recognize themselves anyway.
1. Peter, the Outageously Dull Librarian.
I've mentioned Peter before. There's not much to say about Peter--he's tall, middle-aged, and Canadian. He's a cataloger, and like most catalogers, he is not a very skilled conversationalist, as conversation is something they tend to attempt maybe once or twice a year. Unluckily for me, Peter uses up all of his words talking to me at the information desk, usually about the weather here but sometimes also about the weather in other places, or about Canada. Rumour has it that he has a crush on me.
2. Kate, the Digital Services Librarian.
Kate is very nice. She is 28 years old but looks and seems older, and doesn't get out enough. She has a crush on Peter, which is the saddest thing about her.
3. Ed, the Art Librarian.
Ed is a study in anal retentiveness. He makes the Anal Retentive Chef on SNL look like a laid-back swinger. (I am probably the only person in the world who has never thought of this before, but I realized after working here for a few months that librarianism is a career made in heaven for OCD sufferers.) For fun, Ed enjoys frantically straightening books on the shelves so that they are all exactly the same length from the edge, and making extremely precise and inflexible orders at restaurants.
4. Steven, the Political Science/Reference Librarian.
Steven is a lot like Ed, only not nice.
5. Sara, the Women's Studies and Anthropology Librarian.
I thought Sara hated me all year, but then she wrote this letter to my bosses about how I'm the most brilliant library technician since the dawn of time. Wonders never cease.
6. Barbara, Queen of Information.
Barbara is my boss. She runs the info desk. She is seventy years old, has worked at the library 25 years, and reminds me more than anyone else of the Energizer Bunny. Last night I had a dream in which Barbara somehow stole a bunch of money from the library, and I found out about it and tried to get her to give me a cut.
7. Cecile, Access Services.
Cecile does not live up to her romantic French name. In fact, she is the saddest case in the library, which is saying a lot, believe me. She isn't very old, I don't think, but everything about her--clothes, voice, conversation, attitude--screams "old lady." She has a lot of mysterious health problems, some of which do not allow her to drive, so I took her to the grocery store the other day. She lives, it turns out, in an apartment smaller than my bedrooom, which has no windows and is basically depressing in every way. When I came to pick her up, she was watching a tiny black and white tv. For some reason this made me want to cry--I mean, not that many people in North America are still watching black and white tvs. I can't imagine that they pay her so little that she has to live like that, and wonder if she has some really horrible story that explains the poverty.
The only joy in Cecile's life is her cat, which she was planning on giving up for a while because of the aforementioned health problems.
These people are all really nice (except Steven, who is actually quite nice to me). But I do worry that spending your life in a library makes you weird. I'm weird already, and I don't really have any coolness to waste, so probably librarianism is not the best job for me, in that sense.
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