Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Drinks, Dribbling

If you are going to spill dribbles of tea or coffee onto the floor as you leave the library's break room, please be kind enough to leave a trail that leads all the way back to your office.  This courtesy will allow the custodians to easily track you down and beat you mercilessly with their mops.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Booktruck dance teams, Avoiding

Never agree to be on a library committee without first reading its charge.  Sometimes an innocuous sounding group, like the "Collection Assessment Revisioning Team," turns out to be the code name for your library's secret book cart dance troupe. And, yes, costumes are mandatory.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Handouts, Displaying

Never clean off your library's service desks.  Your display of outdated flyers, bookmarks, maps, comment cards, business cards, fast food coupons, calendars, newsletters, free newspapers, path finders, search tip sheets, and database help guides can just be buried beneath their new, more up-to-date replacements.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Victories, Celebrating

Librarians should celebrate monumental workplace victories with Gatorade showers. A meeting that lasts less than one hour? Give the committee chair a Gatorade shower! Faculty members who return books before their due dates? Give them a Gatorade shower! A class in which students make eye contact and respond to you? Give yourself a Gatorade shower! While costly clean-up can be an issue, the rarity of these events should minimize any damages.

Ask the readers: What "victories" would deserve a Gatorade shower @ your library?

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Law, Being above the

As a librarian, you have the authority to flagrantly disobey your library's food and drink policy. Have pizzas delivered to the circulation desk, answer reference questions while gnawing on a fried chicken leg, and shelve books while eating cotton candy. No librarian should ever have to go hungry while vigilantly enforcing the library's prohibitions on bottled water.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Perverted, Being

Librarians who attend the Public Library Association's National Conference should be on the lookout for the most perverse group of librarians that ever existed... those that present at library conferences with no consideration of tenure and promotion. /shudder/

Monday, March 22, 2010

Volume, Pump down the

Never admonish library patrons for listening to their headphones too loudly.  Instead, a librarian should stand beside the offending patron, dance a vigorous MC Hammer dance, and say, "Wow!  I'm really digging that jam!"  Your endorsement will render the patron's coolness null and void, and send him or her running out of the library in embarrassment.