A few years ago our library boasted a staff numbering eighteen. Eighteen. Now with the economy we are down to nine, oh or is it eight. I like to think of it as 6.5 due to the fact that the Demented Miss D is still an employee and she rates a negative number. I hate to say it but thank goodness for our self-check out machines or we'd be sunk. Mr. Useless left us and we got a new Branch manager for four months before he retired. Said he couldn't take the 1.5 hour drive to get to work every day each way. So now we trudge on leaderless. The Head Honcho's seem to think all we need to do is step it up. It doesn't help that they hired a new employee last October and she has yet to start. I mean really. Really. What the FU*K is up with that?
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Plain English vs. Pirate
This morning a patron requested a copy of Treasure Island in plain English. Plain English? It seems she was helping her daughter read the book and neither could understand it. I asked her if she meant Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and she confirmed that yes that was the title. I was a little flummoxed I mean Treasure Island is in plain English. The woman explained that she and her daughter had difficulty with the way it was written she felt that something that was written in the 18th century was just too difficult for them to understand. I failed to correct her and mention that it was written in the late nineteenth century. I asked her if she'd like a copy of the cliff's notes and she had no idea what I was talking about. I mean how could anyone who ever attended an American high school not know what Cliff's Notes are? I explained what they were and how they could perhaps help them understand the literary work they were reading. The patron had no interest what so ever. I tried to explain to her that if someone else wrote a version of Treasure Island it wouldn't be well... Treasure Island. It was so difficult for me to try and explain that there really is no substitute for Treasure Island. Sure the vernacular is a little different and you might need a dictionary for some of the seafaring terms but it's not like it's Shakespeare for goodness sake. I ended up feeling bad for her kid's literary expectations because it's just going to be more of the same; Bronte's Jane Eyre, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter all written more than a century ago...a never ending tale of classics's that will be a required read. I'm not sure if they publish an idiots guide for those titles.
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