Disconnection

I've been away from library attending conferences and meetings, and I've discovered why it it is that the members of my library's administration seem to me to be smoking crack. It really doesn't take long to become immersed in a world of big schemes and big pictures and lose sight of the world of the average front-line librarian. I've been vacationing the world of Scratch, community engagement through video game playing and PMOGs. I feel like Dorothy in the poppy field, since my 'real' world involves:

• mopping vomit off the floor, toilet and walls of the mens' room
• helping people sign up for email for the first time and trying to communicate what email is and does
• calling the police because a fight broke out or a kid had his bike stolen
• surreptitiously slipping a brochure listing resources for pregnant teens into the hand of girl who is crying quietly at a computer
• helping people create resumes for the first time ever
  
• helping people find the online typing tutorial as part of their first-time-ever session on a computer
• making an embarrassed adult ELL feel okay about checking out a children's novel and audio recording of that novel so that they can work on their English
• walking people through the process of making an appointment with the INS online
• reserving magazines and audiobooks for old folks
  

I love my real-world job (except for the parts where I call the police and mop barf). I also like to swim around in the world of ideas and think about what might be. It is challenging--okay, impossible--to do the latter when immersed in the former. There are too many demands on my attention. I am gradually coming to the realization that administration isn't full of horses' asses. There are smart, even visionary, people up there. It's just that they have really, truly lost track of what we're really dealing with on a daily basis, since they don't do that anymore. (that, and some people in admin have never, ever worked a reference desk shift in their lives, but that's a different post...) I can't blame these folks, but what is the front-line librarian supposed to do, given that their work day can consist of 7 hours at a reference desk helping folks who truly need a lot of help?

I have these schemes--grand schemes involving awesome emergent technology. I don't know how the hell they're going to fit into my real world.