I'm less than a month into my first library job (second-career after retiring from the Postal Service), full librarian at a California state prison. Within the next two weeks, I and a degree-holding inmate with great organizational skills will create and guide a new book club. The problem that woke me this early in the morning on my day off is how to get a half dozen copies of each week's reading selection. Though my senior librarian suggested having members each read a different book by the same author, everything I recall from my school days suggests that, especially in the early going, discussions will be more fruitful if we've all read the same thing. The other way reeks of school daze book reports, and carries as well, especially with participants new to book discussion, the issue of plot "spoilers." In addition I very much want the discussion group to choose its own reading and discussion matter. Neither I nor my inmate colleague should choose for them, and I don't want them to be limited by what is on hand.

Multiple copies are rare, usually topping out at just two or three, in the library's poorly weeded and equally poorly seeded collection of about 37,000. Though we receive regularly hand-me-downs from local public libraries, new acquisition takes place just once a year on a severe budget. This year's was already well underway when I began. For security reasons, we operate with no access at all to the Internet. So far my most consistent duties, largely self-assigned, have been weeding and cataloging.

Two solutions to the "copies" problem come immediately to mind. 1) If I ask the as yet unformed group to select just short or long short stories or articles, then I can photocopy enough. We have ample paper and the machine. 2) Though we're badly underpaid compared to educational employees in the same facility or librarians between here and the coast, I'm relatively flush due to my retirement. I can buy on my own half a dozen paperbacks each week. But I'm not all that flush that it wouldn't become a drag after a several weeks.

Clearly, down the road, especially if the project gets a good start and keeps on, there's the possibility of grants (about which at this point I'm ignorant), next Spring's budget, even, I guess, appeals to authors (hey, these guys love your work, can you spare a few ... ) But right now--Any suggestions how to obtain multiple copies right away based on unpredictable weekly group decisions? And, copyright-wise, do I have the same photocopy rights that educators seem to have? Would whole book copying, even in our closed environment, be beyond the pale?

I'm more than open, too, to you guys' title suggestions. Patron reading ability here ranges from high-school dropout to probably exceeding my own. Though I have no intention to imposing readings, I can suggest.
fg

I have an exam coming up, three hours long, apparently all written, for Librarian Assistant I with the Sunnyvale Public Library south of San Francisco. To date I've done only interviews, all for Librarian I, though I've applied widely for aide and assistant, anything that might pay the mortgage. I'm a Spring 2005 MLIS from SJSU with only volunteer experience.

Any idea, anyone, what a written exam for Assistant might entail. My first instinct was to book up using my MLIS texts, but that seems overkill for an entry level Assistant. Could this test be strictly clerical: wpm, Windows basics, Excel, maybe Dewey, that kind of thing?

And a related question. I've been watching the San Francisco Public Library jobs page religiously, save during short vacations, for two years now and never seen Librarian Assistant posted, just Librarian I, full-time and on-call (I'm on both lists but never have interviewed or been called), and Page. Could it be they hire Assistants through some other venue?