Library Maintenance

Location: Walt Disney Magnet School

Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2012; 6-8 pm

When I saw this opportunity on Chicago Cares website, there were two reasons why I signed up.  The first was the name of the school.  Ever since I can remember, Walt Disney has been a part of my life.  From the day my dad bought me the first ‘Mickey & Donald’ comic book to recently seeing ‘Beauty And The Beast’ on stage, I have been indebted to Disney for some of my greatest childhood and adult memories.  This would be one way of paying back.  Secondly, I thought this would be an easy one.  Having spent a lot of time at the library in my long past life as a student, I had seen the library assistants shelving books and it seemed like they hardly ever broke a sweat.  Boy, was I mistaken!

I found myself taking the CTA Red Line to Sheridan and then heading up to Lake Shore Drive, where the school is located.  A very interesting thing happened as I was walking towards the school.  On one of the intersections, I came across a set of keys on the street.  This was a huge bunch with lots of keys and also had a group of discount cards attached to the key-chain   I looked around and saw a lady with a dog.  I stopped her and asked if these were her keys and she said no.  Nobody else was around and I did not feel like taking responsibility.  Hence I moved them to the side and went on my way. 

Walt Disney Magnet School

I arrived at the school, buzzed, went inside and saw that some of the volunteers had already arrived.  Our volunteer leader Laura told us that due to budget challenges, many of the teachers have had to double as librarians.  As teaching is their primary objective, it leaves little time for reshelving books and organizing the library.  That’s where the volunteers come in.  Every couple of weeks during the school semester, volunteers – led by Laura – come in for a couple of hours and do all the odd jobs that are critical to making a library accessible to the students.  As I heard this, the same thought as before crossed my mind, “Well this should be easy.  All we have to do is put a few books in the right place, make sure all is tidy and who knows, we may even have time to read”.  This was before we started the work for that evening. 

As soon as you walk inside the school, you are greeted with giant sized Mickey and Minnie stuffed figures settled in chairs.  In fact, the Disney theme is very prevalent all over the corridors and class rooms, thus giving school a very novel look.  The library itself was a very welcoming place, brightly lit and open spaces.  We were told that there were two main tasks that needed to be done.  First was the reshelving of books by category – Fiction, Non-Fiction or General.  The Fiction books were to be shelved by author while the Non-Fiction had the dreaded Dewey Decimal system.  Second task was to prepare the new incoming books for library by covering them in dust jackets and labeling them with bar codes.  Since my proclivity for any sort of crafts has been non-existent, I volunteered for the shelving job.  This was the first activity for the current school year and as such, there were a lot of books that required attending.  There were books on the incoming shelves, books on carts and some on tables.  I took the non-fiction books and the next 75 minutes or so was a non-stop activity of picking up the books, identifying the right stacks, finding out the precise location and then putting them in their proper place.  This was as physical an activity that I have done - so much for me thinking that shelving books was easy.  There were at least 6-8 other volunteers who were helping with the shelving, 3-4 working on the new books and 1-2 organizing the books at the source, in order to speed up this process.  Even with this efficiency, it took us most of the two hours to finish the task. 

After that, some of us turned our attention towards the labeling part and I did my best to make sure I did not make a mess of a simple task such as peeling off the bar codes and sticking one of the inside first page and one on the back.  Even then, one of the volunteers pointed out that I was doing it wrong and that the bar code needed to be turned around.  I wanted to argue that a laser scan can pick up the code irrespective of its direction, but somehow that would have been the wrong thing to say.  All of us were exhausted.  But even at the end of this session, this volunteer wanted to make sure I was doing the job correctly.  This small comment said a lot about the commitment that these people had towards the job.  The librarian thanked us profusely for our time and said that people like us help keep schools going.  With those words ringing in my ears, I promised Laura that I would return and walked out into the cool evening air with a greater appreciation for librarians as well as the assistants who make sure every book reaches the right place.  Plus for a short time that evening, I was a part of the Disney family.

Epilogue

There is an epilogue to this story.  As I retraced my steps back to the train station, I came to the same intersection where I had seen the keys more than two hours ago.  Lo and behold, they were still there.  I picked them up and perhaps it was due to what we had just done that evening, but I felt that I owed it to the owner to make an attempt at returning them.  I looked around for cops but none were to be seen.  I picked up the keys and started walking to the station.  I noticed that one of the discount cards was for ‘Jewel’ grocery stores.  My first clue!  I knew there was a Jewel store near the Grand Red station, where I usually disembark in downtown.  Upon arrival I went inside and asked for the store manager.  I explained what had happened and wondered if they could help trace the owner of the keys through their records and return it to them.  They were more than willing and promised to get the keys to the right person.  I was proud of everything that we had accomplished.  Not only had my fellow volunteers and I helped a school in need, but they had inspired me to try and return these keys to their owner. 

Some keys are special

As I walked back home it hit me that perhaps it would have been better for me to have delivered this to a Jewel store near Sheridan rather than downtown, since that’s perhaps where the person resided.  In any case, I hope that they got the keys back.  Maybe, just maybe there was one key in there that was irreplaceable.  Maybe there was one key that meant something special.  Maybe one key, whose return will inspire this person to be a hero.