Yestoknow

I’m inclined to say there is no point…at least when it comes to these familiar little things–yes, the golf pencil, the mini-pencil, or the nubby pencil as Helene, a PLCMC collegue, told me she calls them today. Whatever you call them, I think they are a perfect little example of old ideas or practices that aren’t really serving us any more in libraries–at least not effectively. My point in their pointlessness is this: We pay money for these tiny little things that last perhaps for 2 or 3 usages and then wind up in the garbage can. You can’t sharpen them as they get lost or stuck in the pencil sharpener…they have no eraser and wind up being more of an annoyance than anything. As I was thinking about this, I looked at the pen in my own hand. It was a nice padded grip pen that I received free from a promotional products rep…I then I looked at the pencil cup on my desk and it is filled with dozens of unused pens and pencils… I look around the workroom in my department–dozens, perhaps hundreds of unused pencils and pens! And still we are paying for these tiny little bothersome yellow pencils! My curiosity deepened on this small topic, so I made a few calls and found out how much these items cost–for a box of them (114) retail = $14! Wholesale (a real steal) = $8! I can confidently say that the library where I work each day could easily go through a box or more of these a day! I’ll let you do the math. We’re talking thousands of dollars here folks. But how could anything replace our familiar golf pencils? They’re as Library as, say bookends? For starters, how about just bringing out some of those hundreds of pens and pencils floating around in all the drawers and cups and bins in our offices…or, hmmm, remember that pen I mentioned earlier that had the name of a product rep on it? Don’t you just know that they (or another local agency) would likely jump head over heals to have their pens with their logo and info used in a building that serves thousands of people daily. Even better, what if the Library took the thousands of dollars it’s spending on these short-lived items and had inexpensive pens or pencils printed. “Then people would take them…they’d walk out the door!”you say? My response:” Oh, no! That means we’d have pens with our logo and message floating all over the Charlotte region!” Not such a bad thing to happen, I say. This alternative has much more of a point than a $14 box of golf pencils. Get my point?
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What’s so special about this little VHS? And why are we waving bye-bye to it? Well, this little trooper of a tape has circulated 588 times at South County Regional Library. That’s at least 588 VCR’s–many with multiple viewings…it’s Spot the Dog, after all. Big deal, you say, perhaps? Yes, really big deal. This afternoon when Joy, a staff member, brought this to my attention before it was withdrawn–long past its normal circulation cycle–I was wowwed back into thinking about how special libraries are. How much joy they bring to kids, adults, and all of us in between. This little Spot video that has served so many houses with entertainment, TV babysitting, and all that is wrapped up in the adventures of any yellow dog and his special brand of showmanship…deserves its moment of applause….and with it I applaud all the hands that have shelved it, checked it out, searched for it on shelves, zapped it into “play” or “renew.” 588…it’s a golden number…now wave, bye-bye, Spot.