We librarians are easily exasperated by our patrons. There are entire online communities devoted to anti-patron sentiments, such as The Society for Librarians who Say MotherF***er and Library Workers Against Stupid Patrons. I’ll admit I read these blogs daily, and have on occasion contributed to them. While some patrons really are horrible and toxic, most are simply people who are not familiar with the library, through no fault of their own. I think that many librarians have lost the ability to empathize with the people we serve.

We get a lot of inane questions like, “Where is the bathroom?” and “Where are your DVDs?” The answers seem so obvious to us. Everything is exactly where it has always been, not to mention that there are squillions of helpful signs to point the disoriented patron in the right direction. Do we think patrons are numbskulls? Many times, yes. In my opinion, this is partly due to the fact that we don’t view them as individuals, we see them as branches of the same entity. Surely if we tell one patron where the New Fiction Section is in the morning, we shouldn’t have to tell another patron the same thing in the afternoon. Didn’t they get the memo?

I think we lose empathy for our patrons because we forget what it is like to be one of them. I don’t know many librarians who visit other libraries as a patron. To see how they do things at that library, sure. But to check out a novel? Use the internet? Sit around and read? Of course not. We can do that at work.

Recently I was forced to be a library patron. It was Tax Day, and I had yet to make photocopies of my W-2s to send in with my forms. Unfortunately, it was also my day off from work, and it didn’t make sense to make the 20-mile round trip commute to use the copying machine when there was another library (that likely had its own copier) less than two miles away. So what did I do? I went to my neighborhood library for the very first time.

I walked through the doors and scanned the area hoping the photocopier would be obvious, but after a few seconds I gave up and went up to the information desk. When it was my turn, I politely asked if the library had a copier. The staff person just pointed wordlessly over my right shoulder. Oh. It was right behind me.

But it was not the same kind of photocopier that I was used to! It was completely different! The staff person had to leave her desk and (patiently, to her credit) show me where to insert my coins and where the copies would come out.

Thoroughly embarrassed, I quickly made the necessary copies and left. Spending forty hours a week in one library did not mean that I could find my way around any library. Who knew? Taken from my home turf, I was just like the people who make me want to tear my hair out on a daily basis.

To serve the community well, library employees need to be library patrons too. The extra time and effort will be worth the understanding we will gain. Maybe then there will be less fodder for angry, patron-dissing blogs.

Posted by: Eva Mays

Library patrons are a very diverse bunch. Stand any two next to each other, and nine times out of ten the only thing they will have in common is that they both patronize the library. The characteristic that varies the most is age—most libraries profess to serve infants, senior citizens, and every age group in between. In my time as a librarian, however, I have noticed that “Generation Y”, or people between the ages of 18 and 30, make up a very small amount of the people I serve every day.

It’s not that twenty-somethings aren’t using the library. In fact, some research suggests that they are more likely than the older generations to use library services to find solutions for problems they encounter in life. What concerns me is that, while they may drop by for help finding a job or to pick up tax forms, they aren’t using the library for its most basic service: access to free books.

As an eighties-baby myself, I see this in my personal life as well as my professional life. None of my friends get their reading material from the library. My own sisters, avid readers all, buy their books at chain stores and politely refuse when I offer to teach them to use Inter Library Loan! Not only that, but I am convinced that twenty-somethings who read for recreation are in the minority. This is probably because those who are in college view reading as a chore (I know I did), and those who are just entering the work force are too busy submitting resumes and worrying about paying off student loans to spend time on any luxuries, least of all cozying up with the latest NY Times Bestseller.

I like to argue that checking out books from the library not only saves the environment, but it also saves the library user a good chunk of change. I try to keep track of how much I read with GoodReads.com, and recently I thought it would be a fun experiment to add up all the books I had read in the last year and calculate the amount of many it would have cost me if I had bought them at Barnes & Noble instead of checking them out from the library. I would have spent about $1,300 on my reading habit last year alone. Yikes.

My husband thinks this a terrible argument; because as a librarian, I a) am required to read more than the average person, and b) as I work in a library, I have easy access to library services like interlibrary loan and am free of hassles like late fines. I simply have easier access and more incentive to read for fun than the average person my age. While I’ll admit he is right on that point, I won’t back down from my stance that my peers are simply not reading for fun, and when they do they are purchasing books with money that could be better spent elsewhere (i.e. those pesky student loans).

I think it is important for libraries to market more to the twenty-something crowd. Libraries tend to pay a lot of attention to the extremes—early literacy and services to senior citizens. All age groups both need and deserve a daily dose of free reading, and we need to find ways to convince Generation Y to take advantage of what their public library offers!  

Posted by: Eva Mays

How much is a Master of Library and Information Science worth?

In my opinion, not much more than the vellum the diploma is printed on.

Here’s the thing: When I encounter a problem or challenge in my work life, I don’t close my eyes and try to recall a reading or lecture I imbibed while in graduate school. Instead, I call on my on-the-job experience or consult with co-workers and peers. Library Science is not something that can be taught in a lecture hall; it can only be learned in a library!

This realization makes me a little bit cranky (as it does many other degreed librarians) because no one likes to admit that they wasted tens of thousands of dollars and several years of their life on an education that does not prepare them for the career they chose. An MLIS is useful for exactly one thing: landing a dream job in a well-funded library. The degree is nearly useless when actually doing that job.

Here’s another thing: While so many companies now require advanced degrees of their employees, libraries cannot afford to be so selective. Many will fill a vacant position with an un-degreed librarian as long as the price is right. I think it is because, deep down, library administrators know that an MLIS-less librarian can do the same quality of work as one who spent an extra year or two in the halls of academia, but can be paid a lower salary and given the unflattering title of Library Assistant.

I have met librarians with degrees who look down their noses at those without; as if no matter how many years of experience they may have they will always be thirty-six credits short of being a true librarian. I hold to the belief that anyone who works in a library is a librarian. Enough quibbling over titles like library assistant, library worker, library support staff, library technician, and clerk. There are so many better uses of our time!

I have come to the conclusion that the MLIS degree was created by a group of overworked and underpaid librarians who were sick of being disrespected in the professional world and tired of the public ignoring their efforts to contribute to society. What better way to boost confidence and morale than an impressive-sounding acronym to clip onto the end of one’s name? I wish I could tell all librarians not to be so insecure. We are superheroes, with or without the acronym. It’s the wonderful things that we do that make us librarians, not how much money we forked over for a piece of fancy paper.

Posted by: Eva Mays

I decided to become a Youth Service Librarian because I wanted to share my love of reading with young people. When dreaming of my future career while slogging through my MLIS program, I envisioned myself quietly overseeing dedicated young readers as they pursued knowledge, enlightenment, and entertainment. I am a tad embarrassed about how naïve and old-fashioned I was. Luckily, my misconceptions about the librarian job description did not survive my first week on the job in a real-life public library.

Most of the children I work with come from troubled homes. Their parents are usually unwilling or unable to provide any kind of guidance for their children, so the parental duties are left hanging until a responsible adult decides to take them up. Most public libraries are awash with unsupervised children and teens, and librarians are obligated to assume to role of caretaker and disciplinarian in order to keep the peace. That is just one of the many things they don’t think to tell you in library school.

During the course of my employment at the library, I have had to do some things that my pre-librarian self would never have guessed. I have had to pull brawling kids off each other on more than one occasion. I constantly admonish teenagers for calling each other “ugly”, “ignorant”, or a variety of other names that I don’t recognize but am pretty sure are derogatory. I have tried to explain why violence is wrong and why every person should be treated with respect. I have launched a campaign to reinstate “please” and “thank you” into their vocabularies. I have tried to instill a sense of self-worth in them all. And all the while, I have tried to inspire in them a love of reading. Not an easy task!

Contrary to the two-dimensional librarians of yesteryear, today’s librarians have a responsibility to foster not just the intellectual development of children and teens, but the social and emotional development as well. While most librarians take up this mantle willingly, I think the job would be that much sweeter if we could know for certain that our considerable efforts have the power to turn a life around. Do they listen to us? Do they remember what we say? Does our good opinion factor into their decision-making process? And most of all, will we ever convince them that reading is fun?

There are times when it seems that the kids see me as a piece of furniture, but I have to remind myself that because of my close involvement it is difficult to see clearly. Several times in the past year I have had to take a step back from the situation in order to look at the big picture and make sense of it all. When the times get tough and I begin to forget why I ever chose to become a librarian, I reflect the times when I have succeeded (although they are always fewer than I would prefer). I remember all the times when I have been able to get a reluctant reader to sit down with a book, all the times that a child has asked me “please” when before they would have demanded, and especially all the times I have seen some of the local children “play librarian” when they think I’m not looking.

Someone recently reminded me that small adjustments are the least painful and the most successful. Although this person was not referring to library services, I think all librarians should take this aphorism to heart. It is the little changes I see every day, even the ones so subtle they are barely noticeable, that convince me that librarians have the power to inspire, teach, and lead in many different ways (not just by shelving dusty tomes and memorizing the Dewey Decimal System).

Posted by: Eva Mays

Where do the books that surface into the used book market come from? Some rise from the lowest realms, picked from dumpsters or eviction piles, packed into garbage bags by denizens of alleys and transported in grocery carts to be resold on corners. Others descend from the highest, auctioned off in marble halls after the death of a collector, the stuff of newspaper articles and memoirs. But most commonly an unwanted book will travel from bookshelf to yard sale, and then to the donation box at a church, library or thrift store. There it will be piled with hundreds of other discarded books in a basement shop, or prepared for the annual sale.  Here enters the book scout.

Most scouts that I have known are men, many of indeterminate age. There are a few women as well, and I must count myself among them as I scout for my own store. They range from the pathetically small scale, such as Peggy, who lives on the Chicago El and finds a few paperbacks a week to resell for a pittance, to sophisticated operators utilizing ISBN scanners that give them real time prices and sales rankings for tens of books at a time. They mob library sales to the point where many libraries have created elaborate rules and in some cases banned their devices in an effort to keep the peace. They are known to arrive at estate sales in the pre-dawn hours to obtain a precious numbered scrap of paper for early entrance.

Are these cut-throat scrambles really worth it? In most cases, yes. Because the books at these sales are indiscriminately priced at a dollar or less, finding a handful of gems in the piles can bring a very nice return. But there are a finite number of sellable books in every pile, so the scout must learn how to spot them quickly and grab them first.  Having a deep knowledge and remarkable memory of valuable books and authors is helpful, as is having a rotund gut and an unpleasant odor. But the electronic device has become absolutely essential for any serious scout, for the fluctuating prices of hundreds of thousands of titles are impossible to remember or predict.

Most of the scouts one encounters these days sell for themselves on the internet. A few, however, still sell to other book dealers, continuing a centuries old tradition.  Some are notorious in their regions. In Chicago, there is Pete.

Booksellers groan as they spot Pete's form outside their windows, frantically conveying overstuffed bags of books from the curb to their doors, haggling with the cab driver (most certainly not leaving a tip), grunting and wiping the sweat and snow from his bald crown into his remaining limp shoulder length hair. He will prop the door open with one of his bags, despite the freezing cold, despite the number of times he has been told not to do this, and barge through lines of customers with his dense shoulders. Many dealers have banned him from their shops, but a few have not, either out of pity or because the process of banning him is actually more difficult than simply buying a few of his books and sending him on. Like an impish toddler Pete has a remarkable ability to get away with whatever he likes by raising such a fuss that it isn't worth the effort to deny him.

He will have bags and bags of books of all levels of mediocrity, and he will insist that the buyer examine every one. (Often a book of worth will surface in one of his bags, but he will snatch it back and hide it away.) Rumors about his life abound, but few things are certain. He lived with his parents until well into his forties. I still remember the shrill nasal voice of his mother, who would call the bookstores looking for him. "Is Peter there? This is his mother!" And if he was there he would emit a low groan and roll his eyes like a teenager before dutifully trudging to the phone. A story goes that one day the ceiling in his mother's kitchen started to crack under the weight of the books in his room. She was unable to force him to leave, so she sold the house without telling him and moved out. Pete wasn't seen for a while after this, and was living in a storage space while morosely looking for an apartment when he resurfaced.

He constantly complained about the soreness in his back, the result of nights spent on the floor of his room. Why did he not sleep in his bed? Because it was covered in books of course! Sometimes piles of them would fall on him as he slept. He would relate these events as one would describe a storm in the night. To Pete the arrangement of books in his room was as much an act of god as the weather. Any suggestion to the contrary would be met with baffled anger and a sigh of frustration. He disliked sleep, and would often mention the large doses of ephedrine he would take to avoid it.

An old story circulates that Pete actually had a bookstore once. The problem was that he didn't want to sell any of his books, would stare down customers as they browsed, then refuse to let them purchase what they had found. Eventually he stopped opening the store and hung up a "By Appointment Only" sign. However he wouldn't answer the door or the phone, fearing it was his landlord attempting to collect the rent.

Did he ever read his books? "I look at parts of every one! I open them up and read a few paragraphs!" was his offended response when asked. The only interests he ever mentioned were figure skating and LSD.  He seemed to have some occult inclinations, and wore a holographic medallion around his neck that he refused to speak about. One bookstore clerk in a fit of exasperation asked Pete if his medallion would make him disappear, and if so, would he please rub it?

I hear that he comes around less often now, and many of the dealers who once bought from him have retired. Some day his hoarded pile will also be frantically picked through by scouts, then dispersed around the globe...

Posted by: Adrienne Eaton

In my last entry I addressed the rise of internet bookselling and its effect on brick and mortar used bookstores. This week I would like to look at the nature of the growing online used book marketplace.

What books are selling there? Certainly the same titles that are selling everywhere else. The paperbacks that were piled up at Cosco last month flood the internet today. These books will sell quickly and profitably online for a brief period, then their prices will rapidly drop to pennies a piece as the public finishes them, discards them, and moves on to the next new thing. Over 1,000 copies of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" are now available on Amazon.com, most at a price of under one dollar. Yet why would anyone want to pay even that when a call to one's aunt or a tour around the block is likely to yield a copy for free?  
      
The intelligent used bookseller soon learns to avoid yesterday's fads and focus instead on obscure and overlooked titles of the past. The surest sellers are books that never appealed to the masses, but remain persistently interesting to a few. Those few have often been searching and will happily purchase when they find.

I can look through my records and find a week last year when the following titles sold:

Alaska's Mushrooms
Forensic Entomology
Sex Toy Tricks
Weaving Contemporary Rag Rugs
Radical Street Performance
Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology
Stick Fighting: Techniques of Self-Defense
The Healthy Bird Cookbook

Some are out-of-print, some are otherwise difficult to acquire. (One, at least, might cause embarrassment at the register.) All are not what one would expect to find at the local Borders, and many were shipped to places where there is no local Borders. I often ship books to soldiers and prisoners, to rural areas and developing nations. These people and places make up a part of the growing market in used books--a market that previously had limited access to any extensive and affordable selection.

Interesting connections can now be made between books and readers that could rarely have happened before.  I recently sold a book on the history of Kentucky place names, acquired in Chicago, to a woman in northern California, and also a book on Chinese cinema, published in France, to a professor in Brazil. I believe that I have sold obscure biographies to the children of their subjects (although I didn't ask), and I know that I have sold signed copies of books to their authors, many years after the fact. Last week I found an interesting book in a basement: a hefty commemoration of the destruction of the Jewish population of the Polish town of Ostrowiec during WWII, that was written by the survivors and their descendants in the 1960s. I look forward to seeing where it will go. Most likely it will cross an ocean.

We cannot see these new connections being made, they are not framed by quaint bookshops, but they represent a change in access to material that affects many lives. Fifteen years ago, the transactions that I have described above would have been lengthy and costly for the customer, in many cases prohibitively so, and perhaps impossible. The customer may not have even known that the titles existed, but can now become aware of them through the many excellent online book databases with subject descriptions and reader reviews.

The future of this industry can, I think, only become more interesting. New online used-book marketplaces continue to develop in all parts of the world and are becoming increasingly interconnected. Every year more books surface on the internet as booksellers continue to list their inventories and as basements and closets are dredged by book scouts around the world. This brings the prices of books down (causing us dealers to grumble), but it also brings in new customers and new readers. It is difficult to predict what long term effects these changes will have on readership, as the advent of e-books and other digital information sources will likely overshadow most developments in used bookselling, but a globally accessible book marketplace is something the world has not yet seen, and is nothing to get depressed about.

Posted by: Adrienne Eaton

What is the used-book market? It is for the most part a prosaic place: dingy, dusty, occasionally shady; yet there are rumors of ancient treasure, marvelous happenstance, and secrets of the dead and famous lining its walls. The richest and the poorest have their respective places in it, as do the in-between, sometimes unknowingly. It exists (as it always has) in bookshops, basements, and closets; yet also on computers and networks, in libraries and on lawns. It is a place that throughout its history has been looked upon with great nostalgia: it is eternally dying, its most glorious era always a few decades past. Yet, it continues to live. In fact, it is currently healthy and growing.

It is healthy and growing? We find this a bit hard to admit. In fact, it is terribly unromantic. What we find even more unromantic and objectionable is that its healthy new life is being lived on the internet, a new-fangled place teeming with teenagers, hoaxers and pornographers. Hardly the spot for the great cultural wealth in our cherished dusty volumes! How could they mix with such a crowd? Where will our marvelous happenstance happen if we must use a search engine? How will we ever stumble across the ancient treasure if it is perched atop a web-page for all to see? Our circumstantial bliss is gone! This cannot happen! Our books must remain where they were, in the keep of the old and the bearded, in a shop on the street, where our hands can paw and our imaginations can wander.

Yes this would be nice, wouldn't it?  But, before we get too upset, let us look closer at what is happening. Perhaps the future isn't as terrible as we think, and the past might be different than we remember. In these blogs I would like to look at some common perceptions of used-bookselling, and try to sort the reality from the nostalgia.

Today I'd like to discuss the much bemoaned disappearance of independent bookstores, and the factors in their demise.

We must first make the distinction between the new and used book markets. When new bookstores were badly hit by the arrival of internet bookselling (among other things), used bookstores suddenly found themselves with a much expanded marketplace and opportunities for efficiencies that had never existed before. When the independent new bookseller had to compete with a big box retailer and an internet giant for the sale of a new Sue Grafton novel, our old and bearded friend was excited to finally find a buyer for an obscure book on Scandinavian fishing that had long lingered on his shelves. The used booksellers flocked to internet marketplaces, rapidly creating a large and efficient global book trade the likes of which they had only dreamed of in their catalog mailing pasts.

But still, we some used bookstores close their doors. Why? Consider this as a likely scenario: perhaps the old bearded curmudgeon we all miss so much wasn't as fond of us as we like to think. Why, he thinks, should he pay rent and utilities for this place for us to come in, molest his cat, mess up his shelves, stink up his bathroom, pester him with questions and then leave after dropping $10.36 on an old J.D. Salinger paperback and a gardening handbook? He has a guy in Japan who just spent $700 on a set of technical manuals that are stored in the back.  Why not close the door, unplug the coffee machine, head to a cheaper spot and do what he loves most: hang out with his books and his cat with some peace and quiet? So, while a few storefronts closed, giving the general public the impression that the industry was suffering, the stores had in fact just moved into back rooms and warehouses, their public faces now visible through a modem connection only.

Some storefronts have not closed, however. If you still have some independent bookstores in your area, there is a great likelihood that most or all of them are used bookstores. But why have they not all moved into back rooms? First, because most of these booksellers really do love their bookstores. They love the customers, the community, the serendipitous moments, the magical things that we all love about bookstores. Second, because while their in-store sales might not be growing, they aren't doing so badly either, as they can still give the big box stores some competition for value and selection. Third, because in most cases they own the building. While rising rent for retail locations in urban areas is not the most exciting factor in the demise of the independent bookstore, it is a significant factor that is often overshadowed in discussions by stories of corporate greed and rising illiteracy. An increase in rent is usually the deciding factor when our favorite bookstores go out of business, whether used or new. A good portion of the stores that still exist today do so because they bought their buildings and were able to weather many a storm that would have forced them out of business if their rent was raised or they had to move.

Yet still, I would argue that the most significant factor in keeping these stores alive is the internet. Without it, rising rents, declining readership, and all of the other familiar scourges would have forced these stores out of business along with their counterparts in the new book trade. A Book Industry Study Group report stated that in 2006 brick and mortar used bookstores relied on the internet for 40% of their sales. That is a make or break percentage, and I believe that most used booksellers would readily admit that without the internet they would not have open stores. So, while we might not have the number and variety of bookstores that we had in the past, we still have some wonderful places to browse and explore, many of which are expanding and preparing for their futures. And for this we must begrudgingly throw a little thanks to that baffling source of all that we find objectionable: the internet.

Posted by: Adrienne Eaton

I’ve been privileged to visit ForeWord as a guest blogger this month. I’ve written two posts as a reviewer. I’ve written two posts as a librarian. But I haven’t addressed the roles that are nearest and dearest to my heart, the duo of roles that inspires my blog title. I am a Mother and I am a Reader.

Here’s one of my favorite MotherReader stories. When my oldest daughter was five, she asked me to play house. “I’ll be the mommy and you’ll be the little girl,” she said. I agreed and prepared myself for my role. Meanwhile, she sat down on the couch, opened a book to read, and looking over the top said, “Go play with your sister.”

Never have I felt so much angst and pride at the same time. Of course, my mother guilt kicked in. Did she think that all I did was read? Did she feel so neglected? What kind of mom was I? But at the same time, I felt proud of the lesson she had picked up from me, namely that Moms read and reading’s important.

As a mother of two (now) school-aged girls, I get asked occasionally how I find time to read. I can only pat the questioner on the head with an air of pity (well, mentally), and answer that one doesn’t find time to read, one makes time to read. Looking at reading as something that that’s done when everything else is finished, means that you’ll never even crack open a People magazine. (Not that I read this particular journal, understand.) And this goes double, maybe triple for mothers. Every minute I read, I’ve carved that time away from something else. Sometimes I don’t put the laundry away. Sometimes I don’t shower, but I make the time to read.

While I’m taking time for myself in a self-care, Oprah kind of way, I’m also conveying an important message to my kids. Moms read books for fun. I couldn’t talk to them about reading being important and then never open a book myself.  My actions speak louder than my words ever could, and believe me, I can make my words LOUD.

I’ve also been asked by parents that with today’s busy lifestyle, how I find time for my kids to read. For this question, I allow a quick wide-eyed expression of shock so the questioner realizes the very seriousness of the inquiry. For me, it’s as if they’ve asked how I find time for my children to eat dinner. In my family, reading is a necessary and vital part of our day. We formed the habit early, and rarely break it.

Since my daughters were babies, the last part of every evening has been given over to reading. When the girls were younger, my husband or I read to them. Then each child went through a stage where we would alternate fun picture books with the beginning readers series of the month. Now sometimes we read a book to them – a great picture book or chapters from a harder book – and sometimes we all read our own books. Often one daughter and I will recline on the couch, each leaning against the opposite side arms and our legs sharing the space in the middle. It’s comfy. It’s fun. The dishes can wait.

Want to raise a reader? Then read. Read to them, read with them, read beside them. Take it from a MotherReader.

Posted by: Pam Coughlan