The other night, I went to a Chinese buffet with some friends. The fortune cookie I received at the end of the meal read, "Give yourself a day off - at least give yourself a relaxing evening."
Even the fortune cookies know that I need a vacation.
I do tend to drop off the blogging map around November anyway, because of National Novel Writing Month. I participated again this year, and made it to 50,000 words again. Maybe I'll do something with my writing this time. It needs to be finished and edited (possibly entirely rewritten, as it may do better in first-person narrative instead of third-person limited), but I'm keeping my hands off it for now because I'm not feeling much love for it at the moment.
And the calendar year is the end of my fiscal year.
I feel like my previous director position had training wheels on it. Despite serving a smaller population, it had a larger budget because it actually has a millage to support it. It was also its own entity. My current library is a city library (though it also serves a township), and falls under the city budget. Most of my budget is decided by the whims of the city council, and also, my money doesn't roll over to the next fiscal year. Spend it or lose it.
I found myself with more money than expected at the end of November. Oops. So I had to carefully figure out how to spend it, while knowing that it was probably too late to make an order with our main vendor. We do most of our ordering through Baker & Taylor, but they have a tendency to take their sweet time sending books to libraries. For example, Tom Clancy's Full Force and Effect was released December 2. It came in the mail to the library a couple days ago. So I didn't want to order from them, because the merchandise might not arrive until after the end of the year, and thus not be part of this fiscal year.
On the bright side, this meant ordering from some small vendors I like, and also buying some local authors' books at my favorite book store.
I've also been very busy with programming at both libraries. First, I introduced a story time for all ages at the public library. It's been well-attended, mostly by children between the ages of 2 and 6 years, and their moms. However, my generic story time has apparently not been good enough for mothers with babies; they have started demanding a baby story time. I initially tried pointing out that the larger libraries that are only five miles away to the east and west offer them. "That's too far." Seriously?
So, I have to create baby story times. This has had me in a panic, and even given me honest-to-goodness nightmares. I like to say that I enjoy children as long as they're potty-trained and literate. But also, in doing research into baby programming and early literacy, I've discovered just how important not only reading to infants but also talking, singing, and playing is to their future literacy. I feel like I need an early childhood development degree to do this! No pressure or anything, to create quality programming.
Something that I can be proud of myself for, at least, is how I've stepped up my teaching at the school library. There are a couple of classes that I've started focusing on, for two reasons. One, they are at a good age to learn how to use a library and develop lifelong skills in navigating a library and performing research. Two, these classes drive me insane and tend to leave the library looking as though a tornado struck. If you teach them, you can direct them toward correct behavior.
I found a Dewey Decimal Bingo game online, and adapted it to an appropriate reading level. Made it a bit more generic (590 for wild animals, rather than 599.774 for foxes, for example), and included pictures of books actually in the library. I've been playing it with these classes for the past two weeks, and they love it. I'm also seeing them check out books from the subject areas highlighted in the game. It's awesome.
I do intend to use the next two, slower weeks to catch up on some reviews. My partner will be out of town, and I do have the days of the actual holidays off. Maybe I can actually heed the fortune cookie and relax.
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