Today At The Desk....

This week I got to work a couple of extra shifts at the children's desk since my storytime-to-go program is on a holiday break right now and the children's department was really shorthanded due to one staff member on medical leave, another on bereavement leave, and others being in meetings or needing to take vacation time.  I was happy to help out and it was nice to spend some extra time back in the department.

Yesterday morning was the regular weekly storytime, and I was hoping one of our regular families would be there since I haven't seen them in a while.  They used to come to storytime every week until their youngest child started kindergarten; now we only see them during the summer and other school breaks, and I haven't seen them since I started working in Outreach 5 months ago.  But, unfortunately, they didn't come in.  But we did have several nice young families come for storytime and hang around for a while afterwards.  I stayed busy in between questions by looking for materials on the "missing" report, and checking in the ones I was able to find.  The rest are probably gone for good and will have to be replaced.  It's rewarding to find things, but discouraging that so many don't turn up.  Some may be truly lost, but many are unfortunately stolen.

Today it was pretty slow in the morning when I walked through, and when I first started my shift at the desk, but it quickly got fairly busy.  I joked with my co-worker that everyone must have been waiting for me.  Though we had quite a few families, it was relatively quiet and I just had some routine questions, and customers needing checkout assistance or help locating materials.  I also straightened up the shelves and filled displays, shelved one cartful of books and put two more in order since the department is still down a page, and pulled the few items put on hold and took them down to circulation.  It was a relatively quiet New Year's Eve, other than the phone ringing constantly from people calling to see if we were closing early or going to be open tomorrow.

I enjoyed having a week off of storytime duty and getting to spend it at the desk, and getting some collection development done, but I am looking forward to seeing all my kiddos again next week!