Snow and more snow...I'm in a blizzard here people!

Ok, I thought we got a lot of snow a week ago, but boy was I wrong. It has been snowing every day for eight days, and we've still got several more days of snow in the forecast. It's crazy here. We probably have at least two and a half to three feet of snow. I've been lucky enough to be able to trade with someone who lives up in Parkdale, so she's been working my shifts up there and I've been walking to work down here at the Hood River Library. We'll see what this next week brings, but if I don't have to drive, I'm happy not to. We can barely even walk around town. Nobody shovels their sidewalks, and with the plows piling the snow up on all the sidewalks, it's like thigh high. Even with snowshoes it's a freaking workout to walk down the street! But we're loving it and enjoying the heck out of it! Ika loves it too. When she tires to run in the snow that is deeper than her legs, she has to jump up out of it and it's so cute and gives her quite a workout! Anyway, that's the snow update for ya! Lots and lots, and lots more to come! A fabulous way to welcome winter...and our first real winter in seven years! Yay snow!

Snow, snow, snow, snow....snow!!!!!

It snowed!!! I woke up this morning to several inches of snow on the ground and flakes falling from the sky. It was awesome! The first snow of the winter, and it was a fabulous one! No wimpy little puny snow, this was a substantial snowfall. And Ika and I (and everybody else in Hood River) couldn't be happier!! Usually I take my time getting up and outside for the day, but today I jumped out of bed, put on all my cold weather winter gear, and headed outside with Ika and the camera. This was Ika's first snow (sure, she's seen snow in the mountians, but this was her first fresh powdery snow), and my first snow in many years (well, at least where I lived)! I had forgotten how exciting and fun snow is. Especailly the first snow of the year. All the kids run outside to go sledding or have snowball fights, the grown-ups run off to the ski slopes, and all the dogs frisk around in the fresh white powder. It's so beautiful and rejuvenating! I'm so happy today...like a kid in a candy store. Winter has officially arrived!

I'm Obsessed...

With the puppies!! Thanks a lot Tom! ;-) They are soooo freaking cute and I just can't stop watching them. All their little puppy noises and movements and puppy piles (the good kind where they pile on each other :-). They're just so silly and fun! I check on them several times a day and sometimes watch for a while. It's getting kinda ridiculous...but enjoyable!

And of course watching the puppies makes me think of Ika. When I look at the Shibas, I totally see Ika as a baby, but then I look over at her lying on the couch and it seems like a such a long time ago, even though it was only several months ago. They just grow so fast! Sometimes I want Ika to be that small again, and sometimes I'm very glad she's growing up. [Epiphany: maybe this is what it's like to have kids!] Ika still has that puppy energy (even if she is a lanky 60 pound dog now), and is still so super cute, but sometimes I miss being able to hold her in one hand. I also realize how much she missed out on by having all (but one) of her brothers and sisters taken away at 4 weeks. These puppies are having so much fun together!

Anyway, I'm wanting another puppy already! And I just might get one if our place wasn't so small. I just can't imagine two puppies bouncing around in our tiny apartment - mayhem! But when the time comes, a Shiba will for sure be on my list of puppies to consider.

Thank you for sharing your puppies, puppy parents!! This is the greatest internet fad in a long time!

Random Fun Stuff

Instead of a scanner, I have a laser pen! I remember the Tippecanoe County Library had these back in the day when I was a kid. I don't think I'd seen one since, until I came here.

My computer. We use SIRSI Symphony as our ILS. I think I like JAVA better. Symphony has some limitations and annoying quirks, and the online catalog for Symphony (Rooms) is way limited - it actually kinda sucks.

My laser pen. And the door to the library.

This is the cutest little homemade card/paper holder I've ever seen. It's things like this that make the Parkdale Library charming.

Other random things I love about my new library:

• Much less bureaucracy. It doesn't take approval from 5 different people to get things done/try new things. There is much less paperwork in general, and virtually none that we have to keep around for years for records (at least paperwork that I have to deal with).
• The flexibility we have in making decisions. When it comes to patron issues, it's basically up to us to decide what we want to do - cancel and work with patrons on fines, issue a limited checkout card for people with no ID, and lots more. We are allowed to check out to people by them just giving us their names. This is sometimes hard for me because I have strong feelings about privacy issues, and sometimes I'm uncomfortable doing this, but for the most part it is very convenient for both us and the patrons.
  

One bummer:

• The AV collection is lacking. We have no music cd collection at all, which kind of stinks. We do have downloadable audio books and movies, and I think if we did start a music collection, this would be a great way to go. Also, we don't really get very many new feature film type of movies, and coming from my libraries in FL, this is a huge change, and something I miss a lot because I used it all the time! In general the materials budget is very small, which kinda stinks, especially because it was so nice having a big budget in FL and getting all kinds of new stuff.

Overall I am really happy with and at my new library system. The main Hood River library is awesome (with some spectacualar views!), with that small town feeling - well, I guess because it is a small town. :-) And the Parkdale Library is so charming, and it's awesome to be able to "run" it and make decisions about the library for myself. It's fun! Now the only thing I can ask and hope for is a full time job with this wonderful library system.

The Organization

This is how much shelving I have to do in a typical week. Of course we're only open for 14 hours a week, so I couldn't acquire too much, but compared to the shelving I've had to do in previous libraries, this is shelving heaven!!! I probably spend 10-15 minutes a week shelving materials.

Now, we are presented with a paradox. Since the library is so small, it's very easy to keep everything in order. Not a lot of people come in and shuffle things around, and if they do it doesn't take much time to fix it. But, is it really necessary to keep everything in perfect order if you can find something relatively fast if it is misplaced because it's probably not very far away? It's just a shame that is has to be this way because I know how important it is to try and keep everything in order in a much bigger library, and also how much harder it is - almost impossible! Oh well.

One of the reasons it doesn't take long to shelve books, at least a lot of them, is because all the children's picture books, early readers, and paperbacks are shelved only by the first initial of the author's last name. It's sooo much easier than shelving those tiny books by the author's full last name. On the flip side though, it can be much tougher to find a specific book in these sections when you're looking for one. But usually it doesn't take that long, because even at the main branch there aren't a gazillion books to look through.

Another thing that makes shelving easy is the way we catalog non-fiction. Of course the book gets a dewey number, but it's usually not taken out to a really long decimal, which is nice, and then instead of the author's full last name it is only given the first inital of the author's last name. This makes it much easier to shelve because you can eyeball it pretty quickly. And again, since the collection isn't extremely huge, even at the main library, it doesn't take long to find the book you're looking for.

This is it!

The inside of my little library! And yes, it really is little! :-)

A look to the left as you walk in the door. Rotating collection that I bring from the Hood River Library, Fiction, Large Print, and Spanish books on the wall on the left. Magazines and Young Adult on the back wall to the left of the window, and public PCs.

Pan over a little to the right. The public PCs, the paperbacks on the middle shelf, and the Children's books on the wall under the windows and on the very back wall.

And this is the view looking straight ahead as you walk in the door. That's my desk straight ahead. Non-fiction on the wall to the right. Children's books are over by the windows.

The Old-School Book Drop

Peeking inside the front doors you can see a really old book drop on the wall to the right. For some reason it's really low - very close to the floor. I just think this is so interesting and novel and it's like a little piece of history.

The very low old-school book drop.

Close up of old book drop.

And this is where the old book drop goes - to a very small wooden box inside a very narrow closet in the library. Once in a while someone will drop something in there. If I'm there it scares the crap out of me. If I'm not, it could sit there for who knows how long cause I don't check it all that often.