Please ask the librarian!!

Secret Shopper in the Library with a Candlestick 

Shh. Don't tell them I don't have a card for their library. 
I was excited about being a Secret Shopper in a strange library. I drove up to Lebanon Public Library in Boone County. It's of similar size to my town library but is very differently set up. It's also a gorgeous expansion of an early 20th century Carnegie library. I'm a sucker for good architecture so I've wanted an excuse to slink around there. I liked the shelving because nothing was too high for my average height self to read. Like my town, they had a good size collection of large print fiction. I also liked that they had categorized their fiction into general fiction, inspirational, western, mystery, science fiction/fantasy and what seemed to be an adventure/thriller section. I found it humorous that Harlequin-size romances were tucked into wall shelves hidden behind the circulating nonfiction stacks. Graphic novels were much easier to find!

I browsed for a while then went to the circulation desk and asked the young gal working there if there was a librarian that could help me find a good book. I told her the last thing I read was Jan Karon's Mitford series and I'd kinda liked that. She looked slightly stymied, then said let me see if someone else can help you. She got one of the librarians out of the office behind the circ desk. 

I repeated my request to this librarian who was probably 5-8 years older than me. I probably gave her too much to go on because I added that I liked the small town cast of characters. I also mentioned I liked the literary tie in that Karon used with pulling Coleridge quotes into her stories. She thought for a moment and then asked me if I'd read Phillip Gulley. I said no. She explained that he was a Quaker or Friends minister that was an Indiana author and wrote about a small town. She said it had a humor and I asked if it was at the expense of the small town people or respectful? She said it was respectful. I said that sounded interesting. She took me back over to inspirational fiction and pulled the entire Phillip Gulley set off the shelf. She wanted to find the 1st of the series for me so she went over to one of the nearby deep window sills and checked through for the earliest copyright. She pointed out, with a bit of pride, that one of the books was signed by the author. As I thanked her for her help, she stopped and told me that Gulley had spoken to a small to mid-sized library conference "before he got big," and she'd enjoyed him. I thought that was cool.

I would say from reading one chapter and glancing through the 1st book that she hit a nail on the head with a read-alike for Karon's series. Gulley's main character describes his leaving of his 12 year pastorate as "a medical leave. I was sick of them and they were sick of me." A little more self-depreciating than the introspective Vicar, Tim, of Mitford, but I could see where the series has great potential as a read alike. Good enough that I'll check with my mom to check with her fellow Mitford fans.

Reflecting on the experience, I would say I gave her too much to start with. I had no clue that anything similar existed--or that there was a nearly local writer who'd written one! She gave me only the one idea, though it was so close to the series I liked, it was a home run. She did not use any RA tools, but I was happy to find out a new author.

Gulley, Phillip. Home to Harmony

Oh, the circulation desk had a very clever industrial "warning" style sign that suggested that the staff liked helping people. I liked the cleverness.

Librarians slaying the dragons of tweendom:

I've asked librarians for help in the past, usually because my most voracious reading child is not much for picking out her own books in the library, is reluctant to ask for help and she doesn't always like the same books I did or do. She wouldn't touch my Hardy Boys with a duster, let alone read them when she was that age. (Sigh. I still love Frank and Joe). She didn't like the O'Keefe clan from A Wrinkle in Time. (What's not to like about a family that time travels and a mom that cooks dinner on a bunsen burner?) She wasn't that impressed with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, either. I've asked librarians for books on her behalf many times in the past. 

My most recent venture in book shopping for my daughter was asking for books about dragons. The catch was they had to be dragons that were friends and allies, not dragons like St. George would have killed. She's an advanced reader so we are caught in the limbo of kids and tweens books might not be enough of a challenge, but YA might be a little accelerated in content. Between my own browsing, 3 children's librarians (only 1 read fantasy herself) and the teen librarian (it must have been shift-change on a really slow day!) we ended up with a stack for her to pick through. We also had some listings of some YA books that were Young Sherlock Holmes because the teen librarian found out my daughter liked the BBC series Sherlock. The most highly recommended dragon book was a hit. She's currently reading the second book in the series.