Here again! on Library

Librarian DiAnna Diaz

April 24, 2012 10:55 AM

Library monitors and assistants sign-up by Librarian DiAnna Diaz

While her job was, essentially, predictable from one day to the next, DiAnna could never be sure whether she would have any extra requirements. For example, she had taken on teaching Divinations one year, and then last year when Professor Mathers had been unavailable she had taken on a couple of his classes to cover his absence. This year, although Increase was nowhere to be seen, Headmistress Kijewski had not approached her to cover the class, so DiAnna could safely assume that, for the foreseeable future at least (no pun intended) she would only be required to fulfill her duties as librarian. Theoretically, then, she didn't precisely need the monitors ans assistants she had acquired in the past, but she felt compelled to obtain them anyway. An extra pair, or several, of helping hands around the library couldn't be bad, and, particularly with the younger students, having a titled role could instill a sense of responsibility. Besides, DiAnna had come to enjoy the company of some of the more seasoned volunteers, and she was sure they would be disappointed to be denied the opportunity to sign up once more.

So it was, within a month of term starting, once she had given the guided tour of the library to all the new students (which included a tranfer this year, as well as the usual collection of first years), that DiAnna created the sign-up sheet for students to show their interest in becoming either a library monitor or a library assistant. She used purple ink, and carefully underlined the important parts in black. Her neat, curly handwriting, read:

Would you like to volunteer in the library a few hours a week? There are two roles for you to consider: Library Monitors will help to check books in and out, organize the stacks, answer student queries, and complete occasional errands for the librarian. With fewer responsibilities, Library Assistants will place returned books back to their correct position in the stacks, and help the Library Monitors where necessary. If you would like to be considered for either of these roles, please register your interest by signing your name, year, and role preference below. If you have any questions, please see Miss Diaz.

She pinned this notice to the display board by the doors to the library, so any student walking in or out the main entrance would be likely to see it. Below this notice was a sheet of parchment with space for students to add their names and other details to the list. DiAnna hadn't yet turned anyone down entirely once they'd violunteered for a position, but younger students were less likely to be considered for Monitors than their older, more experienced counterparts.

Subthreads:

Round 2 by Waverly Canterbury

Reclaiming my Throne by Renée Errant

Here again! by Thad Pierce

Signing up again. by Alicia Bauer

Signing up one last time. by Rachel Bauer

I'm here. by Russell Layne

Back again by Samantha Hamilton

0 Librarian DiAnna Diaz Library monitors and assistants sign-up 0 Librarian DiAnna Diaz 1 5

Waverly Canterbury

April 26, 2012 12:49 PM

Round 2 by Waverly Canterbury

Waverly hadn't been able to spend as much time in the library this year as she wanted so far. She had more work, it being her second-year now, and harder things to work on. She also had the baking club stuff to work on too, so she'd been in her room a lot making plans. Plans, plans, plans! It had resulted in a lot of paper. Soon, it would result in lots of cookies and a sweet-smelling Potions classroom. If no one burned anything, of course...

If she signed up to be a library assistant again, she would definitely have to spend time in the library. That was the goal, anyway. She didn't think she had enough time this year to be a monitor yet. Besides, she was only a second-year. Maybe next year she could be a monitor! She looked forward to that even if it meant more homework and classwork to do. Waverly went to the sign-up sheet when she found time between classes and rushed to write her info before running off to her next class.

Waverly Canterbury; first-year; library assistant

19 Waverly Canterbury Round 2 218 Waverly Canterbury 0 5

Renée Errant

April 28, 2012 11:55 PM

Reclaiming my Throne by Renée Errant

The library called, as it always did. Renée pressed a curl behind her ear and waited for the underclassman in front of her to finish signing up. She stepped forward, some of the ink from her raised quill dripping onto her thumb and forefinger. She pressed the quill against the parchment, a soft cursive forming her name.

Renée Errant
Fifth Year
Library Monitor

She made a silent wish for the lines beneath her name to not fill up too much. With less people there was more work, a tremendous mountain of books to sift through, distract herself, buried in secrets, old fables, unique spells, the words jumping out at her, the information all hers in the corner of a library, the darkness kept at bay by the candle charmed to hover above her.

She stepped away from the sign up sheet, smiling in greeting at Miss Diaz before wandering away, seeking some other distraction before she’d be called upon to assist.

0 Renée Errant Reclaiming my Throne 0 Renée Errant 0 5

Thad Pierce

April 30, 2012 10:49 PM

Here again! by Thad Pierce

His first year had been a very good experience for Thaddeus. Quidditch practices had been fun and physically challenging as he learned the different positions. Classes had been mentally stimulating as he pitted his wits against students who had a year advantage on him. The Fair had provided him an opportunity to try being creative and be social with Evan.

Despite the obvious value in all of those activities, to be entirely truthful, Thad enjoyed his time in the library the most. He felt especially important replacing books onto the shelves, helping other students find what they were looking for, and sitting at the desk to give the librarian or the monitors a break from checking books in and out. Plus, it was quiet and comfortable and even if he and Waverly had done a bit of defensive larceny at the end of last year here, he felt it was the nearest place to home he could find in the school.

There was no chance he wasn't going to sign up to be an assistant again. He put his name up on the sheet as soon as he saw it went up.

Thaddeus Pierce II, Year II, Assistant

1 Thad Pierce Here again! 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Alicia Bauer

May 10, 2012 1:09 PM

Signing up again. by Alicia Bauer

The actual work had not been much fun, but Alicia had enjoyed her time in first year as a Library Assistant anyway. Feeling like she was part of something had been very pleasant, and it had been even better when she considered it as a possible step on the path to wearing the same badges as her eldest sister. To have everything Rachel did and do a better job with it, that was…well, a big thing Alicia wanted, anyway. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to say that one thing was all she wanted.

When the list went up, a few people beat her to it, which made her frown a little, but it was a little better than one of them was Thad. She saw him as competition, in a way, definitely, but if she was going to lose in anything to anyone in the whole school, she would rather it was him than any of the others. She didn’t know exactly what that meant, unless it was that they were really friends, which was hard to say without knowing exactly how he felt about it.

That, she had discovered, was the single most difficult thing about dealing with people outside of her family, and even starting to like some of them – she didn’t know, not really, what they thought, and of course she couldn’t ask. It would be too embarrassing to find out she was his friend but he wasn’t really hers, or anything like that. That would be humiliating; she might, if no one else saw the conversation, be able to show her face again in public, but it would be hard even so. So she just kept on and hoped she was right about things and operated under the assumption that she was until something went wrong and proved that she really was not.

She went to the common room, got a self-inking quill, and went straight back to the sign before she could get distracted in any way. Reaching the board, she stood slightly on her toes – one of the many things related to her sisters that she thought was unfair was how they were both so tall, and she was…not – and wrote in her name and information in her neatest hand, carefully inscribing each word just so. She wanted to do it right.

Alicia Bauer, Year II, Assistant

16 Alicia Bauer Signing up again. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5

Rachel Bauer

May 10, 2012 1:11 PM

Signing up one last time. by Rachel Bauer

That she did not have time to add anything else to her plate was obvious, because Rachel was already feeling like it was running over, and school had barely been back in any time at all. She had kept things balanced last year, but her classes plus being a prefect plus being Rachel Bauer plus now being Head Girl had tipped the scales just enough that she was starting to feel a little harried, as though she were constantly running late for something and couldn’t remember what it was. It was not a fun feeling.

When she saw the library helpers’ sign-up sheet, though, she only looked at it for a moment before she began fumbling in her cavernous bag for something to write with, resigned to the inevitable. She had been juggling this responsibility for years, now; she couldn’t just drop it now. People would think she was losing her edge, and Miss Diaz might be disappointed, too. Rachel thought she was the most experienced there at the moment, and plus, there had to be some prestige that went with having the Head Girl involved in something, right? It was more likely to get them more recruits, making less work for everyone. And a few hours a week at any one thing wasn’t going to make that much difference, either.

Also, Rachel was having difficulty accepting that it was really almost over and that she didn’t have to try so hard anymore, at least not here, but she didn’t think of that. She just found her quill and went over to the board, annoyed with herself for letting four people get in ahead of her, one of them her own sister. She was not doing very well at seeming on top of things, especially considering that three of the four were second years. Alicia should have given her a shot at it, reminded her about it or something, but she’d probably been too busy being joined at the hip to Thaddeus Pierce to notice. To listen to Alicia talk, the two of them might as well have been picking out a house in the suburbs, though surely Alicia had to realize that was never really going to happen.

She signed up as quickly as she could without risking her handwriting. Rachel Bauer, 7th Year, Library Monitor

She’d make it work, anyway. Somehow. Putting it out of her mind for now, she put the quill back in her big purse and hurried off to the next thing she had to do. There wasn’t really time to linger over any of them, at least not until she got back into the rhythm of school, which she definitely had not done yet. Maybe in a week or two.

16 Rachel Bauer Signing up one last time. 154 Rachel Bauer 0 5

Russell Layne

May 10, 2012 1:35 PM

I'm here. by Russell Layne

After his fifth straight try at writing a letter, Russell ran his hands over his face, scrubbing at his eyes for a few seconds, and then decided that he needed a break. This was going nowhere, and it was usually good, when he got stuck on something, to get some exercise and then see if it was any easier when he looked at it over again, after putting some distance between him and it. That was usually the rule for writing tricky papers in Potions and Transfiguration, not for writing letters, but most of the people he wrote to weren’t Caroline, who he still didn’t claim to completely understand.

He walked around the library, then, for a few minutes, just enjoying his legs moving and the presence of all the books, and blinked in surprise when he realized he had walked out into the front of the space and could see the circulation desk, and the doors. Russell had though he was a little deeper in the library than that, though apparently not, or else he’d just zoned out on the matter of where he was for a second and gone further than he realized. Oh, well.

Seeing a sign on the door, he went over and found the library helper sign-up sheet there, and then he read it. It was not long, and had two of his apparent cousins on it already; he had been surprised when Alicia came up with that fact last year, but he couldn’t say he really objected to being related to either of the Bauer girls, though it was only distantly. They seemed pretty all right, though he found it weird that they looked so different from each other and didn’t know if it was weirder or not that Kate could actually physically pass for his cousin, she had the same coloring as most of the family, despite the distance of that relationship.

Blood. Such a weird thing. He was just glad his folks weren’t the sorts to use it to make a problem with anybody. His people were merchants, and pureblood and Muggleborn money came from the same goblins, as Great-Uncle Phillip would say. He went back to his chair for his pen and came back and signed himself up.

Russell Layne, 4th, Either.

He thought he was old enough now for the promotion, but he wasn’t going to insist on it. Not this year, anyway. Maybe in fifth, if he didn’t get it this go-round.

16 Russell Layne I'm here. 183 Russell Layne 0 5

Samantha Hamilton

May 18, 2012 6:15 AM

Back again by Samantha Hamilton

Even though she had elected to sign up for Quidditch already, and she was a prefect still, and this year she was moving into the advanced classes, Samantha hadn't actually considered the possibility of dropping any of her existing duties, even ones as comparatively unimportant as library monitor. The sixth year had signed up to assist Miss Diaz every year that the librarian had presented the opportunity to do so, and the role was now as much one of familiarity as compelled by some sense of duty born out of being an Aladren.

hence, when the sign up sheet arrived in the library, Samantha did no more than offer it a brief glance to check that no details had changed before adding her own particulars to the list:

Samantha Hamilton, sixth year, monitor.

She fully expected to be granted the position as she had so many years' experience under her belt already, but then again, perhaps Miss Diaz would want to grant someone else the opportunity to try his or her hand at the slightly more advanced role this year. Either way Samantha didn't think she would mind too much, though out of curiosity she did take a quick look to see who else had already added their names to the list. She wasn't in the least surprised by the names she read: the usual suspects.

Her quill safely back in her bag, Samantha then exited the library on her way to class, the relative non-event more or less forgotten by the time she'd greeted her professor and opened her textbook. Aladrens were supposed to be in the library, after all. What could be more natural?

0 Samantha Hamilton Back again 159 Samantha Hamilton 0 5