Anniversary Again: My First Full-Time Job

It's now been thirty years since I started my first full-time job as a librarian.

I wrote this ten years ago for my twentieth anniversary: 

I had a part-time Library Adjunct position at the St. Pete Junior College Clearwater campus off Drew St. at the time.  It was nice, working the reference desk, helping students get on the CD-ROM databases and look for books in the two-story building.  I had just gotten my Masters degree in Library and Info Sciences at University of South Florida (GO BULLS) and was hoping to find a full-time spot at an academic-level library.

While it wasn't an academic library, I got a call from Broward County Libraries to interview.  The county system was this large, spread-out system that used regional libraries as nexus points for the smaller community libraries that dotted the packed urban/suburban landscape.  They were going with a novel idea at the time of sharing the large regional libraries with the Broward community college campuses.  They were building a brand new building for the BCC North Campus, and needed full-time staff to cover the expanding Reference desk (BCC provided two existing librarians to staff the desk as well)...

There was the rush of driving around the county with dad to find an apartment complex I could rent out within a month.  There was the hassle of figuring out what to pack and carry down.  There was the confusion of figuring out which roads to take and which led to nowhere (if Broward County had one thing going for it, it was that most of the roads were in a grid pattern: figuring out intersections became the easiest thing to do).

And then it was May.  My parents helped me move down from Pinellas County.  May 8th was my birthday (and also Mother's Day, which we celebrated at a nice restaurant, I forget where now) that Sunday.  I was twenty-four years old.  And then Monday May 9th I started my first full-time job at North Regional Library...

In those thirty years since, I'd learned a lot about being a reference librarian, and then the technology training aspects of it as our public services switched from finding things to helping patrons figure out their emails and smartphones.

When I wrote the 20-year remembrance, I had just been hired by Bartow Library after a four-year stint on unemployment. I had hoped then to make it a steady career when I got there, as the upheavals of going from Broward County to University of Florida to Pasco County didn't work out too well. 

I've been there now 11 years, the longest stint at one place I've done (North Regional was 6-plus years). Many of the staff who were there in 2013 when I joined have retired or moved on to other jobs. I'm the veteran of the place... which is still an unnerving sensation for me.

I still think of myself as starting out, still 24 years old, still learning the skill sets, still thinking I'm a rookie at all this librarianship when I'm really a 54-year-old survivor of the Midnight In the Garden of Good And Evil / Where The Crawdads Sing Shelf Wars.

My role as a reference librarian is coming to an end. There's little call for research assistance at the public library level when everyone can Google(tm) search it; and yet the need for experience research skills are greater because the information out there is no longer accurately vetted.

Where my expertise matter now is dealing with the adult patrons who still have tech issues and need training on the ever-changing personal devices we all have now (no jetpacks, but pocket phone cameras with computer processing power). We've gone from 3.5 inch floppies to CD-Recordable to USB flash to microSD card to straight-up wireless streaming.

We've even gone to where people would line up for hours to get on the public library computers - I can remember using clipboard sign-up sheets to manager 60-minute usage for patrons back in 1994, and people getting into fights over cutting in line - and then a ton of users getting online during the 2007-08 start of the Great Recession trying to get their unemployment benefits signed up. And then by 2015, the number of computer users just... dropping as the job market steadied, and the demand just... settled to normal.

We're still recovering from the COVID shutdown, it's been 4 years and only now have some of the Bartow regulars returned to check out books again. Sadly, some of the older ones - and our Friends volunteers - have passed on over the years. My awareness of my time as a librarian is drawing near to a close. I'm closer to my own retirement than to my own beginning...

Current Status of Bartow Public Library March 2020

With all that is happening in the world right now, one thing we need to do in Florida and the United States is to stay at home and avoid public places. A public library is as public as you can get, so my city of Bartow's library was ordered closed to the public back on March 17th. Sorry I haven't mentioned it until now.

(Staff is still coming to work because there are off-desk tasks we still need to perform to keep the library functioning. Until such time that the city orders us home if the COVID-19 outbreak gets any worse)

We still have a number of online resources available through our library webpage at https://pclc.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/bartow and we're trying to encourage people to use our Overdrive eBook access.

As for my previous workplaces Pasco County ( https://pascolibraries.org/ ) and Broward County ( https://www.broward.org/Library/Pages/default.aspx ) they're closed to the public until further notice, too.

Stay healthy, everybody!

Just a Weird Observation About Working at Bartow Library

It's just, in the three years I've been working at Bartow Library as the Reference and Computer Tech Support Librarian, I have gone through four boxes of business cards. In the years that I've had company business cards - since 1997 or so with Broward County up to 2003, up to 2006 at University of Florida, and between 2006 to 2008 with Pasco County - I barely finished off the single box of cards each place had given me.

It's a difference in the audience now. Previously, the business cards were just for professional courtesy between fellow librarians for conferences and conventions. At Bartow, it's the public who take the cards so they can call back later to schedule One-on-One sessions to teach them how to use their computers and tablets, or fix any glitches in the software/operating system (I don't have the tools or supplies to fix hardware, sorry).

Still, it just seems... nicer, to be able to say I'm handing out so many business cards like this.

Now, if I can just hand out my bookmarks promoting the ebooks I've got on sale at the same rate as my business cards...

Been Thinking About the Places I've Worked

I was chatting up a co-worker at the Bartow Library tonight about how things were at the other libraries we've each worked at, and I got to thinking about the ones I used to work at in Broward County.

I've posted before about being at North Regional in Coconut Creek.  But one of the things we did as a regional library was cover for the smaller nearby community libraries whenever their staffs were on vacation or short due to sickness/emergencies.  That was one of the advantages of working a large county-wide system: the chance for a change of scenery, different libraries and different patrons, different questions and different collections...

The surrounding north-and-northwest libraries were places I'd go to help as a Reference librarian, or in some cases as a Librarian-In-Charge (someone with the authority to panic if there was a crisis).  I'd go to branches like Coral Springs, a busy mid-sized library before it was replaced by its own Regional (Northwest Regional, where I would work as a full-timer for awhile... but that is another story).  I was a frequent LIC at the smaller Northwest (no relation, this was NW Pompano Beach city) and Margate branches.  I went twice to Beach branch (Pompano), one of the smallest libraries I had ever seen, with an absolutely beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean right across the street.  I covered the Reference desk about four, five times at Pompano Beach branch.  There was another library somewhere in the middle - not Lauderhill, but nearby - where I had to cover once, but I can't recall specifically which it was.  Might have been Tyrone Bryant.  Ah well.

When I went to work at South Regional for a year, I didn't cover other branches as much.  I was at Pembroke Pines community library once.  This was back in the older SR library building and not the newer regional library standing on the Broward College South Campus.  I still tell stories of that fateful summer Saturday afternoon where that college student sitting at Lab Computer #4 lost all his work to a thunderstorm brown-out and screamed the scream of the eternally damned...

Talking about the years I worked at Broward made me wonder how things are down there now.  I hadn't worked there since 2003, twelve years going on forever it seems.  So I looked at the website and checked out the map to see what was different.

I knew some of the buildings had changed.  South Regional, years ago, that old building was leaking every rainstorm so they needed a new place and got one.  West Regional when I was there had been built just before the need for public computers everywhere, so that was a smaller place one-story structure than the county residents deserved.  They replaced it with a larger two-story place, which looked nice the time I visited a few times.

I heard that tiny Beach branch finally closed: a storm in 2005 wiped out the Pompano pier  across the street, and the library itself was damaged.  They built a newer one further inland - which isn't far, seeing the Intercoastal Waterway is about a mile from the Atlantic - that looks like double the size.

The community Northwest looks like it has been replaced.  The old building was small, barely four rooms.  The photo on the locations page looks like a fancier, larger abode.  Pity they don't have more photos of what it looks like inside now.  Did they get a larger Children's room?

The photos of Margate look the same.  It was a good-sized library for the area it served, just needed more room for public computers.  The Pompano Beach building looks the same on the outside, I dunno if they revamped any of the interior.  I think someone mentioned to me when I visited North Regional for their anniversary that Pompano was due for renovations...

I noticed on the map that two libraries are no more: there were both a Tamarac Reading library and a West Atlantic (Blvd) Children's library.  The Tamarac Reading was meant to be a temporary location while the old Tamarac library phased out for a newer building, and the West Atlantic was meant to relieve some of the checkout demands at Coral Springs.  But they were both in major population areas - the suburbs - and when I left I heard their neighborhoods were fighting to keep them.  I thought at least the West Atlantic place would remain standing: partly because if you look at the map there's a need for a library west of Coral Springs Drive on Atlantic Blvd, partly because I knew the Northwest Regional up the road was one of the busiest and stressed-out libraries in need of some circulation relief.  Side note: if you look at that map - I can't add that as an image here due to formatting - the county needs another branch or two in Coconut Creek towards Parkland and somewhere off Sheridan and State Rd 7.

Ahh, I do miss a few things from South Florida... some of the co-workers I knew as friends... the occasional drive down the beach between Pompano and downtown Ft. Lauderdale... movies at Sawgrass... watching Bucs games at Hot Shots off University Dr.  Hmm, memories.

Anniversary: 20 Years of North Regional Broward County Library!

As I mentioned earlier and elsewhere, today is the official 20th anniversary of the North Regional Library in Broward County.  I showed up for the celebrations, and to document how the place looks today:

 BUT FIRST DUCKIES!  There was a parade of ducklings cutting across the Broward College campus (North Regional is a shared library with the community college here), so yes I had to take pictures!

They've added some additional signage out front over the years...

 The (in)famous stained-glass hanging art in the stairwell is no more.  Apparently Hurricane Wilma left a mark on the building.  Sad to say, but being a glass sculpture was a bit odd to hang in south Florida, especially with the sunlight focused off all that reflective mirrors up in the skylight above... we had one of the artwork shards shatter every so often, much to the staff's concern...  I don't know what the library system plans on putting up there to replace it... preferably something cloth?

 The stairwell itself.  Behind it there's a wall blocking off the college's Learning Resource Center: it's being enlarged/renovated, so here's hoping something nice comes out of it...

 These boats have been here in the Children's area since NR opened.  Also to note, the Young Adult/Teen room was being heavily used today, which is nice: when I started here we didn't have much teen activity, so it's good it's picked up...

 I was responsible for the collection management of the 900 Dewey shelves.  We never DID get enough books on Jamaica - History to satisfy demand, did we...?  Sigh.

 And... the party!  In the auditorium...

This was as the crowd was getting in.
The library hired a trio - Drum Cafe - to work an interactive show this afternoon, so it did get a bit noisy... I SAID IT GOT A BIT NOISY IN THE... NO, NOTHING TO DO WITH BAKING SODA, NO.  WHAT?  SPEAK LOUDER, THE PERCUSSION SECTION IS... WHAT?  HELLO?

I thought I had picture of cake.  Sigh.  Lemme go check my cell phone, await updates please... :)

Anniversary: My First Full-Time Job

Twenty years ago - Spring of 1994 - I was looking for full-time work.

I had a part-time Library Adjunct position at the St. Pete Junior College Clearwater campus off Drew St. at the time.  It was nice, working the reference desk, helping students get on the CD-ROM databases and look for books in the two-story building.  I had just gotten my Masters degree in Library and Info Sciences at University of South Florida (GO BULLS) and was hoping to find a full-time spot at an academic-level library.

While it wasn't an academic library, I got a call from Broward County Libraries to interview.  The county system was this large, spread-out system that used regional libraries as nexus points for the smaller community libraries that dotted the packed urban/suburban landscape.  They were going with a novel idea at the time of sharing the large regional libraries with the Broward community college campuses.  They were building a brand new building for the BCC North Campus, and needed full-time staff to cover the expanding Reference desk (BCC provided two existing librarians to staff the desk as well).

I had scored well on the civil service exam I took at the ALA convention back in 1993 apparently, and passed the phone interview well enough to get the face-to-face.  They had asked me to bring my MLS degree with me so they could photocopy it.  Foolishly, my parents already paid for it to get framed and we couldn't get it out of the mounting... so I lugged this bulky framed degree under my arm into the interview where I got hired.

There was the rush of driving around the county with dad to find an apartment complex I could rent out within a month.  There was the hassle of figuring out what to pack and carry down.  There was the confusion of figuring out which roads to take and which led to nowhere (if Broward County had one thing going for it, it was that most of the roads were in a grid pattern: figuring out intersections became the easiest thing to do).

And then it was May.  My parents helped me move down from Pinellas County.  May 8th was my birthday (and also Mother's Day, which we celebrated at a nice restaurant, I forget where now) that Sunday.  I was twenty-four years old.  And then Monday May 9th I started my first full-time job at North Regional Library.

The library itself was already open, at least on the first floor where the college students used the computer lab and study rooms available to get their work done.  Reference was on the second floor, and there was still a lot of work to get done before the official opening in June.  Books still to unpack and shelve: the county library system shipped us boxes of used, moldy reference books from a defunct East Regional library that had gotten flooded out.  We spent three days trying to integrate those books with their bad Dewey numbers and worse book bindings before our bosses were able to argue to the county to get rid of those poor things.

We had to set up our desk policies and our shifts.  We had to undergo a crash course on the weeding policies that Broward County required.  Our assistant reference department head at the time was very strict about collection management: I could never convince her that the college students we'd be getting would need history books on specific time-frames (to her, a book covering just one year of history wasn't for us: she seemed to think broad history books were the only ones worth having...).  She was right about weeding out travel books as quick as possible, though...

It was my first full-time job.  In a brand-spanking new library building with this open stairwell and pretty glass-framed sculpture dangling from the ceiling.  I had my own workdesk.  We shared two staff computers using WordPerfect 5.1 and then 6.0.  We had a spacious staff lounge, fresh carpeting, chairs with rollers...

It was twenty years ago.

A lot changed since then.  I've been to other branches in Broward County Libraries since then, and then went up to Gainesville to work at the University of Florida for a few years (my other alma mater, where I earned a Bachelors in Journalism).  From there I worked at Pasco County for some time, until that all went sour in the wrong ways and I found myself unemployed for four years (!) before Bartow in their infinite mercy hired me on as their reference/computer expert.  Where I hope I am flourishing.

North Regional, though, remains a fond memory, a good start to my career in libraries.  They're hosting a 20th Anniversary celebration in June.  I'd like to attend just to see the place, see any familiar faces, say hellos and farewells and whatnot.

I just wonder if they ever increased the Jamaica history book collection.  I had a hard time finding more books to order to fill the demand...