Library Work and Fannish Things
Mar. 13th, 2018 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseYesterday, at work, one of the librarians came over and asked me, "What's this thing you were a...speaker (?) at recently? Or maybe coming up?" I look at her for a long moment, because, honestly, I have a terrible time remembering the names of people I work with regularly, and I'm also thinking, 'do mundanes know about cons?' Hesitantly, I say, "Uh, well... I'm going to be a guest of honor at MiniCON over Easter weekend?" She shakes her head, "No, no this would be something recent." "MarsCON?" I offer in my squeakiest, most uncertain voice. She smiles with recognition. "Yes, that's it!"
Then, without missing a beat, she adds, "What *is* it?"
Which is good, because, briefly, I was totally freaking out that someone outside of our community might actually be aware of the local SF scene. I mean, heaven forbid! (TEASING. It would be lovely if regular people started knowing more about what we do.)
I've been wracking my brain ever since, trying to figure out how this person even heard of MarsCON in the first place. It occurs to me only just NOW that John, the branch manager at Roseville, called me Saturday morning hoping I could work a few hours. I told him that normally, I totally would, but that I was headed off to a panel at MarsCON. It's entirely possible that John mentioned that in passing (because I gave HIM a quick low-down on what MarsCON was, too) to other folks at the library. Probably people figured it was something as cool as ComiCON in San Deigo and were shocked that something like that existed here in Minnesota. (Don't worry, I put that idea to rest. I told the librarian "You can think ComiCON, but think on a significantly smaller scale with more nerds and fewer celebrities." I think that's fairly accurate, wouldn't you?)
That was one interesting thing that happened at work.
The other is that a few minutes later, I had to show something to the librarian... regarding their change in how graphic novels are going to be shelved. They've decided, I think wisely, to shelve by title. Okay, let me back up, here's what's dumb is that they kind of did this before, but it was somewhat haphazard. Like, they might collect a single copy of something, like AMERICAN BORN CHINESE and shelve it by author (makes sense) and then put all the SPIDER-MANs together (also makes sense, until you get to the fact that 9 out of 10 circulation staff don't READ comic books, don't bother to check the list to see which titles are series being collected, and don't understand how graphic novels are organized in terms of is Spider-Gwen and Spider-Man title, yes or no?) The previous "solution" (which actually worked fine for the most part) was to organize first by collected series title (Spider-Man) and then by author (Bendis) and then by volume (number.)
As any long-time superhero comic book reader will tell you that MOSTLY works, until, of course you hit the end of JMS's run of Spider-Man and the final volume in that series is actually written by someone else entire, since JMS quit over artistic differences. (which is, of course, very different than manga where the mangaka and the manga are inseparable. You could organize manga by author, since the author never changes. They do those by title, because that's how most readers look for manga.)
To solve this, the libraries figured that they would just switch to volume title and volume number. Hahahahahaha! Yeah, that's WORSE. Because they're not collecting individual comic books (which are, for the most part numbered sequentially) but graphic novels, which collect, say issues 147-153, but might be volume 5 of Fraction's run. So, I pulled out three AMAZING SPIDER-MAN volume 5s to show them this problem. I should have shown them the title page that explains which issues are collected, because honestly, if they organized this by ISSUE numbers they could mostly solve this.
But, the likelihood that they care this much about graphic novels is low. The comic book section will become a complete mess where Spider-Man will have 17 number 5s ALL FROM COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY ARCS and readers will be like, "WTF" and probably stop bothering to follow an arc.
Which is too bad, because, frankly, comic books/graphic novels are expensive and I feel like more comic book fans would read collections via the library if they knew they collected them (and how to find the ones they wanted.)
So, yeah, that was work.
Then, without missing a beat, she adds, "What *is* it?"
Which is good, because, briefly, I was totally freaking out that someone outside of our community might actually be aware of the local SF scene. I mean, heaven forbid! (TEASING. It would be lovely if regular people started knowing more about what we do.)
I've been wracking my brain ever since, trying to figure out how this person even heard of MarsCON in the first place. It occurs to me only just NOW that John, the branch manager at Roseville, called me Saturday morning hoping I could work a few hours. I told him that normally, I totally would, but that I was headed off to a panel at MarsCON. It's entirely possible that John mentioned that in passing (because I gave HIM a quick low-down on what MarsCON was, too) to other folks at the library. Probably people figured it was something as cool as ComiCON in San Deigo and were shocked that something like that existed here in Minnesota. (Don't worry, I put that idea to rest. I told the librarian "You can think ComiCON, but think on a significantly smaller scale with more nerds and fewer celebrities." I think that's fairly accurate, wouldn't you?)
That was one interesting thing that happened at work.
The other is that a few minutes later, I had to show something to the librarian... regarding their change in how graphic novels are going to be shelved. They've decided, I think wisely, to shelve by title. Okay, let me back up, here's what's dumb is that they kind of did this before, but it was somewhat haphazard. Like, they might collect a single copy of something, like AMERICAN BORN CHINESE and shelve it by author (makes sense) and then put all the SPIDER-MANs together (also makes sense, until you get to the fact that 9 out of 10 circulation staff don't READ comic books, don't bother to check the list to see which titles are series being collected, and don't understand how graphic novels are organized in terms of is Spider-Gwen and Spider-Man title, yes or no?) The previous "solution" (which actually worked fine for the most part) was to organize first by collected series title (Spider-Man) and then by author (Bendis) and then by volume (number.)
As any long-time superhero comic book reader will tell you that MOSTLY works, until, of course you hit the end of JMS's run of Spider-Man and the final volume in that series is actually written by someone else entire, since JMS quit over artistic differences. (which is, of course, very different than manga where the mangaka and the manga are inseparable. You could organize manga by author, since the author never changes. They do those by title, because that's how most readers look for manga.)
To solve this, the libraries figured that they would just switch to volume title and volume number. Hahahahahaha! Yeah, that's WORSE. Because they're not collecting individual comic books (which are, for the most part numbered sequentially) but graphic novels, which collect, say issues 147-153, but might be volume 5 of Fraction's run. So, I pulled out three AMAZING SPIDER-MAN volume 5s to show them this problem. I should have shown them the title page that explains which issues are collected, because honestly, if they organized this by ISSUE numbers they could mostly solve this.
But, the likelihood that they care this much about graphic novels is low. The comic book section will become a complete mess where Spider-Man will have 17 number 5s ALL FROM COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY ARCS and readers will be like, "WTF" and probably stop bothering to follow an arc.
Which is too bad, because, frankly, comic books/graphic novels are expensive and I feel like more comic book fans would read collections via the library if they knew they collected them (and how to find the ones they wanted.)
So, yeah, that was work.