We had our Silly Circus here at FRL today, and it was fun, though it got a little crazy. (For future reference: snowcones + library carpet = bad idea.) This snowcone dye is pretty stubborn too - I've washed my hands several times and it still hasn't come off. (Miss Annette cleaned it off her hands using Comet...but I'm not that anxious to get it off!) Good times all around - and our new manager really proved himself today.:)
One of my coworkers has recently started grad school for her MLIS, which is what I will be doing around this time next year. The reading I can handle - it's the starting classes again and writing papers with actual deadlines that I'm a bit nervous about. The fact that I'm planning on getting a degree in library science lead to a discussion on the future of libraries in general, and librarians in particular. For my part, I see both libraries and librarians becoming increasingly high tech, and I think that will lead to a higher demand for qualified librarians. When I was in elementary school, I practically lived at the local library, which was a decent-sized, two-story building...about the same size as FRL, actually. Know how many librarians worked there? About 6. (Compare that with FRL's staff of over 20!) There just wasn't as much demand for them - the only times they interacted with the public were when they were doing programs, checking out materials, or helping someone find a book - I'd say around 75% of their time was spent shelving and keeping the building in order. We still do all of that, but we also spend a lot of our time showing people how to use the computers, envisionware machines, search PACs, and so on. As I have been typing this post from the lab, in fact, I have had to pause to restart a computer where someone didn't close out of their session, show a patron how to copy and paste a webpage into MS Word to make it print the full page, show a patron how to paste pictures into word, and help a patron add extra rows in a table for their resume. Libraries have always been about learning. In the past, books were the main source of learning - now it's predominantly computers. Librarians of the future are going to be the ones showing people how to use all of this new technology, and libraries are going to be the place people come to to play with it and learn about it.

Which is what this whole Learning 2.0 program is about, right?:)

*P.S. Right as I was about to close out this window, the patron I had shown how to copy and paste webpages into Word stopped by my station, smiled at me and said, "You just taught me something tonight." That sums up a large part of what my job is, I think.;)*