Signatures, Using email

Put a little spice into your correspondents' lives by adding a personality-filled signature line at the end of all your outgoing email messages. In addition to your name and contact information, include a quippy quotation from A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette, a particularly poigniant Bible verse, or your favorite Garfield quote ("I hate Mondays"). This extra little gem at the end will make it worth your readers' time to wade through your boring everyday library talk.

Vacation, Going on

If you go on vacation, be sure to come back to work with a photo album or scrapbook, a tan, and souvenirs for everyone. It's important to remind everyone that you were off having fun while they were at the library working. Plus, if you don't celebrate your own return, you may come to the painful realization that no one even noticed that you were gone.

Faculty, Addressing

Teaching faculty are very important people. Be sure to address a faculty member by his or her earned title, "Dr. Smith," rather than by the familiar name, "Sally." This shows the important teaching faculty that you respect them. They will no doubt reciprocate this respect by letting you pull their books from the stacks, forgive their overdue fines, and babysit their classes while they're away at conferences.

Territorial, Being

Librarians often find themselves in uncomfortable situations where there is not a clear consensus on who has jurisdiction over a certain library collection or service. Some examples:

• Who orders the DSM-IV for the reference collection -- the head of reference or the subject bibliographer?
• Should the music education collection be managed by the music librarian or the education librarian?
• Who controls the web page to which everyone contributes?
• Who has the final say on how the public catalog records display -- reference librarians or catalogers?
  

Confused as to how one stakes a claim on a given collection or service?

Pee on it.

Yep, like a dog. Pee on your call number range in the reference collection. Pee on the music education books. Pee on the web page. Pee on the catalog. While you're at it, pee in your office. Pee on your favorite chair in the director's conference room. Pee on the reference desk. Pee on your coffee cup.

Note: Do not pee on people, even if they do report to you.

Drink lots of fluids. It can take a lot out of you to have so much control.

Jobs, (Desperately) Looking for

There is nothing wrong with religiously checking for new library job ad listings a few times each workday. It does, however, border on tacky when you start cold-calling libraries that just sound like cool places to work to see if anyone there is expected to retire or die soon.

"Uh, hello? Vanderbilt University's reference desk? Are any of your reference librarians sickly?"

Email, Setting up

Apparently this whole electronic mail thing (a.k.a. "email" or "the email") is really catching on. To stay in the loop, you might want to set up an account and make yourself contactable. Don't know anyone who has email? Sign up for a listserv to make some new library friends.

Or send a message to your newly-emailable (yet ever anonymous) editors of A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette at polite.librarian@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Panic, Inducing

When your next library committee meeting works its way down to Other Items on the agenda, ask the room, "What if we eliminated the use of costly LC Subject headings in favor of patron-initiated tagging and social bookmarking in our catalog?"

As mass hysteria ensues, quietly slip out and return to your office for a quiet cup of coffee and a few hours of Text Twist.