My Job

Hello,

Sometimes I feel good if I know what I am doing and sometimes not.

Just last week someone wanted the movie “little brats”. They told me that we had it, but they could not find it on the shelf. I put in those words and no such movie title came to the forefront. “It seems we might not have that movie,” I told them.

“We know you do,” this mother and son assured me, “We have checked it out before.”

I put in just the word brats and came up with multiple titles, but no little brats DVD.

“Are you sure about the exact words of the title?” I asked them.

They were sure indeed as they walked resolutely back over to the shelf where they thought it should be to search fruitlessly once more.

I then looked at a source on the internet, but did not even find the title there. “That is crazy that you could not find it, as there is more than one title with this name,” they moaned, “We really want to watch this movie.”

I once again tried online, but watched carefully when I have put in the “bra” as in a movie. At that point I noticed a title with the word bratz in it. When I asked if that is how the name was spelled we found it in our catalogue with a different word than little in the title. I did not know whether to feel smart or stupid. Certainly I am culturally illiterate since I never thought to spell brats with a z.

Last night a boy wanted to know if we had gotten a new book that had just been published that was a fourth in a series he liked. We did not find it in our collection. Then I was sure we would want it and tried to put it on the book order spreadsheet, complete with ISBN. However there was no ISBN listed for it. It took some more serious searching to learn that it had not yet been published. Lesson learned? Approach all searches with an open mind no matter what patrons might firmly believe.

Paula