I've worked at the Crowell Public Library in San Marino since January 2008.  I don't want to jinx anything by saying this but, I love working there.  I've loved it from day one, and that feeling has nothing to do with the building, or the patrons, or anything else.  The main reason I love working there is the people.  I have been lucky to work with a group of people that are kind, generous, and good.  In a place as large as Los Angeles I've found this haven of good people, which is a rare thing.  Maybe I've been lucky in that my life has been filled with kind people, though not always.  Never have I been in the company of such good people in the whole.  I cherish that more than anything.

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD-780, Taken: 5.10.2009, Altered w/: Photoshop

Since I was hired I've worked Sundays at the library, by my own choice.  "The Sunday Bunch," as I have come to call us, consists of two clerks, my co-worker Laurel and myself, a page, Holly, and Jeff, the reference librarian, along with Lynda, a library assistant.  The original Sunday Bunch consisted of my still co-worker Lillian, and a former co-worker Christi.  I say this to chronicle the changes some day in the future.  Suffice to say The Sunday Bunch has the best group of clerk/page combination of all the days.  But, of course I would say that.

This is the patio outside the library.  It's a nice open area where one can sit and read.  It's not unusual to find a group of kids sitting outside on a weekday, but on Sundays the patio is mostly used by the church that has their services in the morning before the library opens.  On the day I took this picture the church was still in session, but shortly after this patio was filled with people having a Mother's day lunch.

Upon arrival at work I head up to the employee lounge to prepare for work.  A few months ago we got lockers to put our stuff in.  Only a few of the employees actually use the lockers.  I use two lockers I have so much junk.

This is my locker, and its contents, lucky locker number 13.  It's a good thing I'm not superstitious or I'd think that my bad luck is because I use locker number 13 at work.  The contents of my locker is: a work shirt, Ritz crackers, a small pale; paycheck stubs for the last few months, a couple of pens, a pencil, a fine tip sharpie; some loose change, and several blue cups.  That's what I remember off-hand, there could be more for all I know.  Oh, and a few cards on the door.  In the other locker I use I have: two work shirts, a paper bag, four or five pencils; some gift goodies given to the staff by our boss a few months ago, napkins, and probably more loose change.  Clearly I've made myself at home.

This is the sorting room, where the "magic" happens... not really.  I spend some time here on Sundays, but not on other days of the week.  The books I check in end up here, where they are sorted and then returned to the shelves by the pages.  It's a never-ending process.  On Sunday mornings Holly and I usually sort the books left on the carts by "The Saturday Bunch," because they aren't as efficient as we are on Sundays.  I like having that rivalry with the other crews.

This is, what you might call, my menagerie of found items.  I put these items on the window looking into the back room (shown in the previous picture).  It's my little collection that no one seems to touch, thankfully.  As you can see there's an R2D2 "action" figure, a button that says "Catch the Reading Bug, and a little doll, for lack of a better word, I think goes on a cellphone.  Not shown in this picture are the foreign coins along with a plastic skeleton, which are on the other side of the sill.

These are the date due cards that I place in every book I check out for the patrons.  Some people have commented how "quaint" it is that we still use cards, but there's is a practical reason why we use these cards.  I'll just say that it's our way of knowing if a book has been checked out.  On a given day I go through a couple of hundred of these cards by myself.  Volunteers stamp these cards days in advance in order for us to have plenty of them for check out.  The stack of cards that are stamped for each day is easily nine inches tall.  Some people insist on using the cards as bookmarks, and when they do the alarm sounds when they come in or exit.

Each book is like a person, unique.  There's a story to tell not just on the inside but on the outside.  New books are like new cars, nice to the touch.  They have new plastic covers, the graphics aren't faded, and they have a "new" sticker.  We've moved from the little red/pinkish stickers to the yellow stickers.  The old stickers didn't have good sticking qualities, and often get torn up, or lost, before their time.  Here one of the older stickers is kept on with a piece of scotch tape.

One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that some people still don't know where the bookdrop is located.  Part of the problem is that it's got a sign above it, so you can see how someone could miss it.  I will say that despite the fact that the sign is quite visible, the actual bookdrop slots are kinda hard to locate if you're not looking carefully.  Many a time people will come up the check-out desk with a stack of books that I think are going to be checked out, only to have them tell me that they're just returning the books.  I sometimes direct them back to the bookdrop, in order to educate them.  But, sometimes I just figure that I can't fix all the world's problems and let things be.