Tuesday, June 26, 2012

you to the rescue



Henry didn't have time to dwell on Derrick. He guessed they were OK. Of course, he was wondering if he were just a fool for him. He was starting to doubt himself. Sort of. But not completely. He couldn't hide the fact that the feelings he did have for Derrick were strong. Yet, he wanted to be cautious. Hopefully, this thing with Derrick and Dorian was history.

At the moment though, as he got settled at the library to finish up some books he was covering, it donned on him. No Mildred.

"Do you know where she is?" He went to Kayla.

"No. She hasn't called." Kayla was in the middle of her own overdue reports and what not.

Henry supposed he knew enough about the computer system to do what needed to be done. But there was a small cart of RUSHES by Mildred's computer, where he usually worked. It was usually, scanning barcodes and matching titles up. Nothing big.

He finished up the three books that needed to be covered. He guessed he'd get busy with the RUSHES.

He scanned in a barcode, but it wasn't in the catalogue. Henry's eyes shot open. This wasn't what he remembered.

"OK, maybe I'm doing it wrong." He guessed his mind had been on Derrick, a lot lately. He thought he'd paid attention.

He typed in the title. A file came up, but it wasn't like the ones he'd seen before. It looked pretty empty. He sighed. This did not look good.

Henry looked around. Still no one. The supervisor was on her honeymoon in Hawaii. Someone else left to  tend to their ailing mother in Texas, which was taking a lot longer than anyone thought. Someone in acquisitions was home sick with some sort of respiratory infection.

"I dunno what to do." He came back to Kayla. He assured her he hadn't broken anything.

"Don't look at me, its not my department." Kayla squinted.

Henry thought  about Asa, but he was off at some meeting with a speaker for the young adult programs.

Henry was only a volunteer. He shouldn't care, but he did. He really did.

"Maybe, you should call Mildred." Henry hoped she was all right. She was always here. Sore hands and all, Mildred was never late. She might have moved like a slow boat to China, but she was punctuational and always helpful.

Kayla did, but there was no answer.

"We'll give a few more minutes, OK?" Kayla didn't look terribly worried.

Henry nodded, but he felt as something was  totally wrong. Suddenly, he noticed Audrey pushing a cart toward the children's area. He hated to ask for her help.

"Do you know anything about Tech stuff?" Henry was hopeless, he supposed. But what if there was no one to get these books out that patrons wanted?

"Tech?" She winced. "I dunno. I could try." She told him then that she'd worked at a University library in cataloging.

"You know cataloging?" Henry almost smiled.

"Yeah, but you know, they don't really need catalogers, anymore. Its not like I'm completely certified, but I know enough." She shrugged.

She sat down at the computer and clicked into an icon that Henry didn't know about. Soon enough, she scanned in a barcode like it was nothing new to her.

"These haven't even been downloaded yet." She told him.

"Can you do that?" Henry asked, still a little puzzled.

"Yeah, I can do that. You want me to show you how to edit it?" She asked. He pulled up a chair.

"I guess so." He grinned. She was the last person he was expecting who would know anything about this kind of library lingo.

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