Carolyn and I got interested in this whole library volunteer stuff about three years ago when she saw an notice in the local newspaper that the library needed volunteers to repair damaged books. There was to be a class in how to do this as well as an orientation to volunteering time to the library to actually repair the books.
We called but the class was full. "But," the librarian continued, "we do need volunteers for other activities." She suggested they really needed re-shelvers badly as the volume of traffic in the library was overwhelming their staff. Still interested in helping in some way, we agreed to meet Jane for an orientation in shelving and soon found ourselves spending every Tuesday evening from 6:30 to closing time putting books back onto the shelves that other patrons had checked out and brought back or simply had taken off the shelves. There were lots of signs asking library patrons not to reshelve their own books. That was left to the "experts" like Carolyn and me.
Our local branch library closed for remodel after we had spent a little over a year volunteering there and we've had to be content with serving on the Friends of the Sacramento Public Library in a totally different capacity.
Well, the local branch is once again open and the call for volunteers has once again gone out, especially to those who were volunteering before. Today, I was trained in a new task - picking. And Jane again was my trainer.
Our county library system allows patrons to request books from any library in the system to be delivered to their local library. So even if you live near a very small branch, you have access to the capacity of the entire system. These requests are routed through the computer to the branch where the requested book sits on the shelf. Then the librarians or trained "pickers" like me find the book and start it on its way to the person who requested it. It's just the reverse of the shelving operation. Instead of looking for the place a book belongs and putting it there, we look for the place a book belongs and pull it out if it's there. If it's not there, we become little private investigators trying to track down where it could be. Even that is fun.
So the next time you request a book that is in the Carmichael Library, I just may be the person that retrieves your book.
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