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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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- - - - Dispatch 10 (8/26/04) Librarian Confessions When I tell patrons to lower their voice in the library, I like to say it in a loud voice. I tell patrons the library is closing in five minutes even though it's closing in ten minutes, just to make them think it's closing so they'll check out their books. Sometimes I tell parents that their child's library card is showing a fine of $57.20 when it is actually showing a fine of 20 cents. After their eyes widen, I tell them I was just kidding. I like to make up stories about people who work at the library. One day, for instance, two young boys were looking for books on wrestlers; I pointed to the man shelving books and said they should talk to him because he is a former pro wrestler. They spent 10 minutes asking him about various wrestlers he had beaten, even though he repeatedly denied that he was a pro wrestler. When a patron asks what we do with the money we collect from fines, I tell them it's a Christmas slush fund and at the end of the year we buy each other presents. When a kid asks for the fourth Harry Potter book, I tend to say, "Is that the one where Harry dies? Oh wait, no, that's in the fifth one—my bad." When the fifth Harry Potter book arrived at the library before it was scheduled to be released to the public, I opened it up and read the first sentence just because I knew I wasn't supposed to. I am frequently nicer to female patrons than to male patrons. Sometimes I act like I don't know very much about computers just so I won't have to help a patron on the computer. When a kid comes to the reference desk and asks, "Where are the books on dinosaurs?," I frequently will point very broadly at the rows of bookshelves and say, "Over there." In the break room, I frequently complain to other workers about patrons who smell funny. - - - -
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