Library Volunteering

I was “supposed” to go to the library today, but I didn’t, and that feels strange.

I have recently concluded my two-month period of volunteering at the George Memorial Library. I had a nice and relatively flexible schedule of 2 hours on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. That doesn’t sound like much from a bird’s eye view, but Mondays and Thursdays are when the library has extended hours so I could volunteer directly after school (which is now over.)

I’d never volunteered for something before, but senior year I was invited to join NHS which begets some necessary volunteer hours, I think 10 at least.

I completed the required hours real quick; a month ago. It felt odd to just volunteer for what I needed and then dip, so I decided to stay for a month longer. For what? Just cause? A sense of pride and accomplishment? To not look like an absolute hooligan to the (very nice) librarians? One of those reasons.

It was fun, to have a reason to leave the house and exist, contribute to something greater than I, and examine the state of readers today, all in a nice, calm, quiet environment. There truly was no better place to volunteer, to me.

I was the very first!

I’d actually wanted to volunteer at the library for a long time, since before the pandemic started. I had the volunteer registration form in the summer of my freshman year, never got around to filling it out.

Then the prior mentioned event came around and suddenly I had an absolute wealth of free time, which I couldn’t contribute to ANY library in the Fort Bend area since none of them were accepting volunteers. And that fact didn’t change throughout the entirety of sophomore and junior year, I would know, since I checked weekly. But, on a fateful day early in the second semester of my senior year, I checked the site and found they were accepting volunteers again! Neat!

It’s entirely insensible to be laser-focused on one specific sector of volunteer work when there was a plethora of other places that could’ve taken me, I admit with embarrassment.

But this library had formed a pillar of my childhood. My family and I would come in regularly to check out some books, return them past due cause of X reason, and then check out some more. I always got the most books, I just had a hunger for the stuff. Reading’s still a very important pastime to me, and it’s the reason I love writing things. It’s all just applied reading. From elementary to around junior high, that library was my favorite place, and the only parts of it I had ever truly conceived were the kids/YA sections. There were entire segments of the library I hadn’t even looked at, and I was curious to see the extent of everything.

I figured it would be nice to reconnect, and so I did. I applied in early April, waited a long while for a return call, then called to ask for an update. I received that update and was actually invited to orientation! Met all the librarians, quite a friendly bunch. I was floored to be there, and even more floored to know I was the first volunteer they had since the pandemic. (There was a second volunteer whom I unfortunately never met, that applied around the same time but started after me.)

Fun Activities

that usually weren’t actually fun, but still good in their own ways included:

Shelving

My primary function at the library. I was normally shelving books that were in the designated adult section, which I believe was sensibly the largest. Shelving was a nice activity in that it was a straight hour or so of just walking around and placing things where they belong. Sounds lame, but it was also a lot of time to think to myself, and my supervisor was nice so she let me use headphones.

I actually rarely used headphones, cause the two or three times I did I felt I lost a lot of efficiency. That, and the music infringed upon my personal thinking time, which was the absolute best. I drafted concepts, write-ups, designs in that silent period, moving books practically unconsciously. I’ve never had so much quiet, uninterrupted time to think to myself before, so I always enjoyed shelving.

It was also fun to consider the context of what was being shelved. I remember a day where I had placed at least 10 books in the Animals section, and the books were primarily about cats! How odd to think about, one person checking out an entire catalogue of books for a cat. Or multiple. It was a lot of books, man.

The same odd phenomena would occur when I had to shelve a bunch of books about grilling, sometimes even about knitting. It was fun to imagine what people were checking these out and what they were doing with the knowledge therein.

Sometimes the context was less fun, like a plethora of self-help books I had to shelve once. That’s a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it; Why turn them all in at once, didn’t find anything you wanted to keep a bit longer? Did nothing work, or is everything resolved? It was only right to hope for the latter.

Decomissioning

I don’t actually know the word for this, as I only did it once. I took the books the library apparently no longer needed, cut off the tracking chip, blacked out identifying bar codes, and stamped something along the lines of “expunged” on the book.

Most “fun” activity overall, in my opinion, since my routine was quickly established and optimized.

Searching

I would find books that were listed as missing in the system. It’s strange to think about how that could happen even now, but I digress. It was a nice way of exploring all the library sections, as it was a generalized list and not just adult section stuff. I got to walk into the kids/YA sections again (for an actual reason!) to find whatever books I needed from there. Still felt weird being there, though nostalgia was amazing.

Shelf Reading

The worst activity, in my opinion. Involves reading the shelves to make sure everything’s in order, which sounds easy, but it’s taxing on the eyes and takes time. It still takes much more time, at least for me, to regard alphabetical ordering over simple numbers. Like, I could tell you on the spot that 11231231 is a bigger number than 99921, but is J after or before S? I’d have to think about it for a tiny bit. And those tiny bits add up, these shelves were large, and my eyesight is poor.

Thankfully, I only did this once.

10/10 would volunteer again

On my last day, I forgot to charge my headphones. But there was a band playing in our amphitheater! We have an outdoor amphitheater for community events and the like, and a band was practicing. Which is entirely ironic for a library, but hey, they were really good. I’ve even got a couple muffled recordings, since they were loud enough to hear throughout the building.

It added a bit of specialty to my final entry, since there was a pretty large volume of books to shelve. It was all quite nice.

I had a lovely two months overall, and while I wish I could’ve stayed longer I’m now in the general job market, meaning I probably wouldn’t have time for volunteering.

I don’t remember how many hours I had in total over the two months, but just guesstimating, I know the total was upwards of 30.

I’d recommended the library to another friend who needed volunteer work, and she’ll probably be there throughout the summer. I wish her the best.

Support your local libraries! I feel fortunate that I was really close to what I think is my county’s “most funded” library. I don’t actually know the metrics, I think the First Colony or University branches might also lay claim to that title.

Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful library inside and out, with a very efficient set of people working there. The diverse set of patrons I got to see was always nice, and it was particularly good to see kids enjoying reading. It allowed me to think back a bit.

Every library should be like this.