Location: Walt Disney Magnet School
Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012; 6-8 pm
I returned back to the Walt
Disney Magnet School for the next round of library maintenance, two weeks after
my first visit. It was nice to see that
some of the volunteers from our earlier session had returned as well. For the benefit of the new comers, our
volunteer leader Laura went through the program and why we had assembled. As we went up to the library on the second
floor, I looked around and saw the familiar Mickey and Minnie stuffed toys
resting on a couch. And even though it
was just my second visit, somehow it all felt very familiar.
As soon as Laura announced the
two tasks: re-shelving vs. new books maintenance, I volunteered for the
shelving part. Just as before, I started
with the non-fiction books, which mean the Dewey system. It was amazing to see the number of books
that had accumulated over the past two weeks.
This meant that a lot of books were being checked out and that lot of
kids was reading. That is good
thing.
 |
| Oh Dewey! |
Dewey decimal system, while an
efficient way of categorizing books, can be very tedious for re-shelving. As soon as I started getting to multiple
decimal points and letters and other additions, I became more determined that
each book should be placed precisely. Uh
oh, I knew I was in trouble when I started re-organizing some of the other
books (already on shelves) which needed to be a few slots down or up. Plus there were moments where I was
questioning the logic of having a basketball book next to a martial arts one
and which sent me looking for other basketball and martial arts books. “Just
trust the system" my brain screamed.
This entire activity appeared to be fun initially, but after a few dozen
trips to carry books and squats to find the correct slots, every inch of my
body was aching. But I was not the only
person doing this. Similar to before, a
lot of volunteers had shown up and sometimes we had to wait till someone was
done with their shelving before moving into that spot in the aisle.
After all the non-fiction had
been done, I turned my attention to the Fiction books. These were organized by the Author name and
once again, my borderline compulsive behavior was making me arrange books not
only by the author, but also the sequence of release. For example, I would not have Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince shelved before
Harry Potter and The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Even with these petty issues that I had created for myself, it is ennobling to be amongst books –
and especially books for children. Even
today there are days when I am drawn to books of my childhood and youth. They are part of who I am and I can almost
remember the place and the feeling when I read all of them for the first
time. As I rearranged these books, I
became nostalgic for the all my visits to a library while I was growing
up. I remember my parents dropping me
off in the kids section of their library while they went about their business
in the main building. I remember accompanying my dad one evening to open my first library account. I remember my mom picking me up from school
at the end of my 7th grade final exams and taking me straight to the library for picking up the first of my books for that summer. I remember the disappointment of not getting a chance to pick up a library book in school because the time for library period had run out. I remember that one corner on the 2nd
floor of the main library at University of Connecticut where I spent many an afternoon
sitting on the window seat with a book in my hand and looking out at the beauty that is New England. And I remember spending hours and hours
sitting on the small step ladders in library aisles in almost all of the cities that I have lived in – something that I do to this day. Libraries are a part of our heritage and
something that we pass on to the next generation. So what if I was inconvenienced because of
bending down a few times.
I finished my shift for the
evening by putting bar codes on some of the new arrivals. I was sad to tell Laura that I would not be
able to come for a couple of months due to my classes on Tuesday evenings. She said that I would be welcome anytime I
choose to return. I was replying to a
few text messages and thus was one of the last volunteers to leave, along with
another girl. We promptly got lost in
the school and since there was no danger of us not finding the exit, I savored
the experience of walking down the halls full of pictures of Disney characters
and painted in bright colors that Disney inspires.
It had been a great evening, one that took me to different places in my long-forgotten memory. “Every part of my body and soul ache”, I had texted to a friend.
But the reasons for each had been different.
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