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 Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 11:46 pm
Destiny City Central Library was not the closest one to Ian's house, but he ventured out there today anyway. He had been through about all the books his local library had on Chinese history and philosophy, and the computers had promised that there were more at the regional library. Of course, he could have easily just gotten them through inter-library loan, but Ian also looked forward to the walk.
Though he was in decent shape for someone whose idea of a sport was table tennis, it was a bit of a longer walk than it had appeared on MapQuest. Or, well, the hills had not shown up on MapQuest, anyway. The bus ran this way, too, and probably would have gotten him there faster, but walking was cheaper. As he paused a moment on the step to catch his breath, Ian decided that he could make this a regular routine and maybe get himself into better shape.
Taking off his glasses for a moment, he rubbed his eye as he stepped inside, and then put them on and stopped just inside the door to smile excitedly at all the shelves of books. Ian noted the help desk once his glasses were back on, and wandered towards it, taking his time to look around (not to mention his legs were still a little tired from that last hill).
Once he reached the information desk, Ian leaned on it with both hands and tipped forward, looking for signs of a librarian to go with it. He instead found a small bell left out on the desk - actually pretty close to his hand, go figure - and so he stood up straight again and rang it.
-- And winced as the sound echoed through the silence of the library like a very loud and rude pin dropping.
Well, the faded paper taped to the desk beside the bell had said, "Please Ring", so he had not done anything really wrong....
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 9:17 pm
Anthony Darrow was engaged in an intense game of rough sorting. He hadn't done it in a while, and apparently neither had any of the student workers who were supposed to be helping him, so there were three carts of books to try and put up on the shelves by section before putting them in order and taking them back out into the library to be properly shelved.
The rough sorting room, called the work room most of the time, was just a small area with a cheap light in the back of the Circulation area. It flickered and did very little to help him see things, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with the bulb itself. fixing the light was very low on the priority list for the library, and Tony only ever thought about it during moments like these, when he was sorting the books.
The process was simple. Books were returned in depositories or at the front desk, and were then checked in and put on carts. Those carts were brought back when they were full, and left to be rough sorted by student workers, usually. The small room was lined with shelves on three walls, each with a different letter. Books from different call locations starting with those letters were put together, though they usually weren't put in perfect order. That came when carts, or 'book trucks' were made up and then taken to be shelved.
None of that was really on Tony's mind at the moment, however, because he was so focused on trying to read the faded numbers on some of the books in the dark room.
He nearly jumped when he heard the bell, dropping a book but catching it before it fell to the floor. He put it on the cart and returned to the front desk, smiling in a friendly way at the boy he saw standing there.
"Hello there!" He said, cheerful as ever, "what can I do for you?"
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Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 7:20 pm
Simon was typically one to use the library found at Hillworth for all his book-reading, book-borrowing and book-returning needs. It was closer to home, so to speak, so there was less chance of having a run-in with something nasty before he was able to hide away in his dorm with his literature. However, sometimes there were some obstacles that left him needing to go all the way out to the city library.
For one, Hillworth's book selection wasn't always the greatest, and some of what they had was barely in condition to be read. Once Simon had picked out a book on model ships whose cover had been chewed up beyond recognition -- literally, chewed, and not by a dog, the mess of bite marks around the cover's edge had been distinctly human, some student there from a few years back with some compulsion. Several students there had compulsions. Samson had all the nervous twitchiness of a coke-addicted leprechaun, once he'd torn a page of his chemistry textbook to shreds from frustration over one homework problem.
Other times, though, it was just an elaborate measure of avoidance. There had been someone stalking the portion of hallway outside the library's large double doors, like some caged tiger, that he wasn't particularly keen on running into, and with spring having arrived it felt a lot more appealing to go out and spend his Saturday at a place with bigger windows and a coffee shop across the street. Maybe he'd even get lucky and run into Alba or Carter, or Charlie.
No Charlie or Carter or Alba in sight, unfortunately -- but the library was pleasantly quiet, not too crowded, and Mr. Darrow was never a very threatening man. Simon positioned himself in line behind Ian, pondering over the crumpled list of books he needed for a research paper that had been hastily shoved into a pocket on the way out of campus.
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Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 8:18 pm
Ian clasped his hands together as the librarian appeared, and smiled a bit nervously.
"Hi, um," he began, then cleared his throat, and started again, hoping that he was audible but not too loud. "Hi, I haven't been here before, or at least not in a long time, and I was wondering if you could tell me where the Chinese history section is?"
He hoped the man would not mind him asking. Because Ian probably could have found it himself if he had looked around. He was just terrible, and, for all the time that he spent in libraries, and for all that he could memorize dates with relative ease, the red-haired boy had surprising trouble remembering Dewey Decimal numbers. But on the other hand, that was why the librarian was here, right, at the information desk? To answer questions faster than Ian would be able to answer them himself.
And then the boy noticed another kid step in line behind him; Ian glanced back at him and flashed a quick smile before returning his attention to the Info desk librarian.
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Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 9:31 am
Tony looked at the young man, smiling in an effort to put him more at ease. He looked rather nervous for someone just trying to find some books. The library really wasn't a place to be scared of, save for the off chance of a monster attack.
Other than that, though, it was pretty safe.
"Of course," Tony said, moving to the computer at the counter. He normally showed people how to look things up on the computer, but he didn't mind just doing it himself this time. If the boy needed the computer, chances were good that he would know how to use it.
Kids these days.
Feeling that he had just subconsciously aged himself more than was necessary, he looked up some call numbers of books on Chinese history and wrote them down, sliding the paper over to the young man.
"Upstairs, on the second floor. Mostly in the DS section, for general history, though if you need more you can always broaden you search with one of the computers." The library was organized by the Library of Congress method, which often confused patrons expecting something else. Tony looked to see another person in line, but was in no rush to send this one on his way unless he was finished.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?"
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