Fiscal responsibility or failure to understand?

I'm not sure if anyone's heard about Bert Chapman's recent blog. Obviously I have problems with what he has to say. But I'm not going to waste my breath on them right now. It's the same crap people say every day, and despite their rampant craziness, most people don't pay them too much attention. Instead, I'd like to comment on a response to this blog post that was printed in my college newspaper. Below is the letter I sent them after reading Kevin Casimer's poorly researched response to Chapman:

I recently read the Exponent's mention of Bert Chapman's explosive blog post about the economic sense of homosexuality, which itself requires a response, but I'm sure there are thousands of others hotly debating his points at this very moment. Instead, I'd like to point out a problem I had with one of the student responses to this post. Kevin Casimer suggests that getting rid of a staff of overpaid librarians would make good fiscal sense. Perhaps slashing those few librarian jobs left would save the state some money, but the $80 billion he has in mind? Probably not.
First of all, those people checking out your library materials and re-shelving books? Those aren't librarians. They generally make minimum wage or just above it, and, in the case of Purdue's library system, are often student workers. The actual librarians are the trained, degreed professionals that make the library function. Their jobs are myriad and difficult to outline, because they vary from position to position, and from library to library. They create complex sets of metadata that make the catalog of books (the one on the computer, not the old card catalog) find the right titles; they can manipulate a database to bring up exactly the right article for a patron who has spent hours weeding through irrelevant results; they manage large numbers of staff, often with a high turnover rate; and they go through the often painstaking process of developing a useful collection that meets user's needs under a very tight budget (those databases are expensive!). This is only a short list of some of the jobs a librarian might do. The list is, in fact, much longer. There is no "Replacing librarians with minimum wage workers to put books back on the shelf and assist people with self-checkout" because those jobs are not done by Librarians.

Another misconception is that these librarians are well paid for what they do. Though the Bureau of Labor Statistics may cite the average salary for a government librarian is over $80,000, the same cannot be said for public and school librarians, especially in a low Cost-of-Living state such as Indiana. When I began my job search after completing my Master's in Library and Information Science last year, I was lucky to find opening that paid more than $35,000 a year. It is traditionally one of the lowest paid professions requiring an advanced degree. Most public libraries, however, are so under funded that they can't manage to pay too many people this piddling sum, and as a result, smaller public libraries rarely have more than one or two degreed professionals on their staff, and sometimes none at all, which, as Casimer politely points out, means a decline in service.
On top of all this, libraries, despite a popular misconception, are actually still bustling, busy places. They're not just stacks of unread books, but information and technology centers, and those librarians have degrees, not just in the Dewey Decimal System, but in technology, knowledge they use daily as they attempt to help their patrons, who often have very little experience with computers. Far from dying out, libraries are seeing their biggest boom in years, and finding new ways to help their communities every day. Far from being a waste of government funds, they are a shining example of how to get a lot accomplished with very little means.

What I like about my job

A comment on an earlier post asked me what I like about my job. I was going to respond directly there, but then realized the response was long enough to be a post in and of itself! I know I sometimes complain about things, but I think that's because, when I'm enjoying myself, I don't think to write a post about it! Whereas when something frustrates me, I feel the need to vent. But I thought I would respond to the question question with a truly positive post:

One of my favorite things about my job is managing the collection. I love searching for new materials, and get very excited when I come across a book that's perfect. Yesterday while reading my Library Journal, I found a book that's coming out soon on John Maynard Keynes that's perfect for our colletion, and the incredible dork in me got really excited.

I also like that, for the most part, the reference work I do is intense. I never have to tell anyone where the bathroom is! Though I occasssionally want to ask people if they've ever heard of Google, I usually get questions that really require me to dig deep and utilize a bunch of resources.

Lately I've been working on putting together a strategic plan for the library. This is requiring me to really look at my services and resources critically and figure out what to improve, and, more importantly, how to improve it. This is the type of stuff that I feel confident about doing. It's the stuff that I think I'm pretty good at, too. So I'm enjoying putting that together.

I won't lie. I do wish I had more intereaction with people. I get a decent number of reference questions, but most of them are sent through email. I miss working with people face to face. I also miss the sense of the unexpected that comes with working at a public desk. You never know what you're going to be hit with on a given day!

But despite that drawback, I do enjoy my job, and I feel much more on top of things than I did when I started. Now, if I could just get people interested in user instruction sessions, I'd be set!

You can't please all of the people EVER

Due to budget cuts, I have recently lost a significant portion of my storage space, which has left me in somehting of a pickle. I had previously used that space to hold back issues of the institute's in-house publications. They took up about as much space as my living room. The communications director has worked out a system with our printers where they will store back issues for us and we can order more as we need them, which should work out. The only thing is, the section of the library that generally holds a few of these publications is looked at as an all-you-can-take sort of buffet. People regualrly come and clear out entire stacks of publications to send to their friends or give to visitors or start small fires in their office because the heat's so low.

In order to counteract this, I put a simple policy in place. I left a list of all the publications at the end of the aisle and asked eveyone to just mark how many copies of something they take. That way I can keep an eye on how many publications remain and re-fill as needed, without having to go and count everything every day, which is not only time consuming, but incredibly tedious.

But apparently my policy wasn't simple enough because I recieved an angry email telling me how stupid it was to expect well-educated adults to inform me that they've removed something from the library. Silly me, expecting people to be responsible for their own actions.

I'm actually not upset about it. in fact, I find the situation quite funny. And the truth is, I didn't expect many people to follow my policy. Which begs the question: why bother with the policy? Just because librarians love rules?

Maybe.

But really, I think it has more to do with the concept that, while 15% of patrons won't follow the rules, the remaining 85% who do make up for it. I remember in the good old days at the public library, when I had a problem patron who refused to accept their fines, or the limit of items they could request through ILL at one time, I was constantly reminding myself that, while this guy may really annoy me, I'll have ten patrons who think the library is wonderful, and thank me for doing whatever it is I do.

So sure, a few of the library users here will never let me know when they take a publication. They'll gleefully empty the shelves and expect me to magically refill them. But if 85% of the users let me know when they take things, I'll be that much more on top of keeping this section of my library useable.

5 Reasons I should not be a Cataloger

1. My labels are always crooked. Always.
2. Typos. I maek a lot. For example, I was going crazy trying to find a book that I knew I had cataloged but wasn't showing up in any search. I finally got it, and it turned out I had not only added an extra "N" to the title, I had spelt the author's last name wrong.
3. I frankly don't care how many spaces go after a full stop. I just don't.
4. I'm easily distracted. So I'll be in the middle of making a new record, and I overhear a conversation in the hallway, and while I'm wrapped up eavesdropping, the ILS figures I'm done with that entry and logs me out. So by the time I get back, I have to start all over.
5. It's incredibly boring.

I'm doing just fine managing my workload. In fact, with the exception of occassional in-depth reference questions that take me a while to answer, I'm pretty much ahead of the game with most of my stuff. But if I could get an assistant to do my cataloging, I would be ecstatic.

For people I know graduating in December...

There's a fellowship opportunity in North Carolina you might be interested in.

Publishing

My library school buddy (and ALA roommate!) recently wrote about the difficulty of coming up with ideas for articles and presentation within the library field. She pretty much said exactly what I've been thinking about for the past few weeks. I want to publish something, but the way our field works, I'm not sure what the next "hot topic" will be, and I don't want to just re-hash something that's been written about a million times.

I like my current job, and, as Jon suggested, could possibly even change the name of my blog to the "Treading-Water Librarin," since I am managing to stay afloat. But I'm always thinking about the future, and I'm still getting list-serve emails about new positions opening up, so I'm starting to think about my next step, career-wise. Obviously, I have no plans to move on jsut yet, and this is all several years down the road, but eventually I want to be some kind of library big-whig (I'm thinking president of IFLA, that sounds fun. I'm all about living in the Hague!). So professional development is key for me.

I've been looking into some publications, and found some great resources, such as A Library Writer's Blog, but whenever I sit down to start outlining a paper, even if I've already done some research, I hit a brick wall. Since I don't have the background knowledge to keep up with Michael Stephens, I don't even want to try writing on new technology (at least not right now!). Most of my ideas tend to be in the library advocacy field, but, short of putting together an opinion piece about why libraries are super cool (not exactly the type of scholarly work I'm trying to do here), I'm not sure what to write about.

On the other hand, my paper for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer conference in June is coming along quite nicely!

Yeah. I'm a nerd.

Pretty much off-topic: Grooveshark

Grooveshark is my favorite new online toy. Not tool. Toy. It's completely fun.

I usually put on some kind of music streaming while I'm working, especially in the afternoon. My office gets awfully lonely, and I'm still not used to working in such an isolated, non-public space. If I don't play music, I get kind of crazy.

But my general streaming sites don't usually allow a lot of manipulation of the music, and adds happen way too often. Grooveshark lets you create playlists, search for songs, play and pause all you want, and, while you do have to create an account, you don't have to download anything, which is awesome. There are premium memberships available, but the basic free account is working just fine for me right now! I spent about fifteen miutes after my (very loooonnnng) meeting this morning putting together my playlist for the day, and it's making my work fly by.

Banned Books Week is Coming up!

Not being in a public library right now is sad for me, because it means no banned book week displays or programs. I'm trying to think of some way to incorporate it into my current job, but pretty much drawing a blank. Any ideas?

In preparation for the week, here's a link to an author's response to her book's being banned.

Better than coffee (almost)

I like to get in to work a little early. I'm supposed to be here at 8:30, but I prefer to beat the rest of the staff, so that I can distribute newspapers and send out any library updates first thing. This morning, however, I was not the first one in. This was not a surprise, as I was out late (by Western Mass standards, which means not really late at all) and had a little trouble getting going.

Anyway, one of the researchers beat me this morning, and I came in to work to find a note taped to my office door. It ws a reference question.

So I quickly did my early morning work, and then headed off to her office to find out what she needed. It turned out that she was looking for a government publication. She couldn't remember the name of it, or how often it was published (at least she had a pretty good idea about which agency published it), and she thought we had subscribed to it in the past, but wasn't sure how long ago. So I got to spend my first twenty minutes or so of work this morning hunting it down.

I did find it, not only our most recent print version (which was almost ten years old), but alsoPDF versions for her to download, and I ordered the newest edition. I was very impressed with myself, considering I was going on about five hours of sleep and hadn't yet caffinated myself.

The thing is, I love starting my day off with reference work. Since that's by far my favorite aspect ofthe job, and one that I don't get to do as much as I'd like, it's always exciting when a good question comes along. This one caused me to search in the catalog, online, through the government printing office bookstore, and in our documents room. I found multiple ways to get the information to my patron, and in the end, I felt more awake than I would have if I had started the day with coffee and cataloging.

I'm still really tired though, and looking forward to the weekend!

I have an intern now...sort of.

There's a new intern at the institute. He's here to learn about economics, and help with research projects. He's also, apparently, at my disposal.

This is kind of cool, because I can have him do things, like re-shelve books that have been piling up, or do shelf checks. All the little things that, while I don't mind doing them, tend to fall through the cracks when I'm enmeshed in a big project, as I am right now.

But at the same time, he's an economics major in college, and probably not likely to get his MLIS any time soon, so I feel bad giving him a bunch of boring tasks that have nothing to do with what he wants to be when he grows up.

On the other hand, maybe he'll get so excited about he library that he'll decide his greatest dream is to be a librarian!

He also looks and talks like Michael Cera, which makes me so happy. I love Michael Cera.

I seem to have stirred up trouble

I was just trying to help, I swear.

Twice a week we have these meetings that are meant to help the research staff communicate their ideas for new web posts and articles. Unfortunately, they tend to get a little out of control, and very often people come up with ideas or have discussions that are great at the time, but nothing ever comes to fruition, I think in part because people leave and go work on their own stuff, and forget what was discussed. So I thought it would be helpful if I took notes and distributed them to everyone. That way we would all have a reference to what was discussed at the previous meeting and good ideas would be remembered.

But now the people that run the meetings have gotten mad at me for questioning the way they do things (I didn't realize that was what I was doing!), and half the staff wants to completely re-vamp the way the meetings are run, and the other half is pissed that they're now being told what to do, and I'm in the middle of it all.

I seriously thought this would be a simple matter of taking notes. It was supposed to be a quick reference tool, so that we could all be on the same page when we meet. And now I have to order all these books about how to run meetings, and the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

What am supposed to do now?

I'm in love with Hoover's!

I've been working on a reference question for several days now. I know that makes me sound like some kind of slacker who can't answer a simple question, but the question is complicated.

Basically, I'm helping the marketing department put together lists of contacts to talk to about a new publication the company has put out (you may have seen the article in USAToday, how cool is that!). This means, in a sense, creating a database for the marketing director to use. So I've been digging up all the contact info--a generally long and tedious proccess, that often puts my searching skills to the test!

Can I just say how much Hoover's has saved me on this. They have about 1/3 of everything I need. It's all right there, and easy to look up, and neatly presented. I can narrow business by location, and I've memorized all my industry SIC codes. They even have the names of most of the people I want to contact directly, which is incredibly helpful.

Now if only they had a similar service for high school guidance offices by state. Then I could do the remaining 2/3 of this project just as easily!

In completely unrelated news, I'm going to look at apartments after work today. After living in campus housing for the past two months, I want my own place again so badly!

Crash...and Burn

I had my first instructional session this morning.

Last week, after some very odd finagling with vendor reps and different executive staff members here, I bought my first database. For a really great deal, I got a Premium subscription to Hoover's Online, which I'm really excited about. I spent most of the day yesterday working on a reference project for the marketing director, and would have been lost without Hoover's, so I think it will be a really good resource.

This morning, I was supposed to teach the research staff how to use it. And I forgot my username. I was sitting at the computer, and the webpage was loading ridiculously slowly to begin with, and I tried to log in...and it didn't work.

I tried at least five different combinations of usernames and passwords, but nothing worked. Finally, face burning, I apologized and said I needed to run to my office to look it up.

By the time I got back to the meeting room, everyone had left.

I have to say, I'm really glad it's a three day weekend, because I need a break so badly.

List-servs

Today I got an email through my government documents librarian list-serv from one of my old professors. It's been over a year since I've seen him, and then there he was, telling everyone that the Depository Library Council is working with the GPO to fix the problems with PURL (did anyone else undestand that, because I know I didn't!)

I emailed him back (privately, not so the whole list could read!) and told him about my job and what I was doing here, and we've been having an e-mail chat about government docs and reference services for researchers, and all the crazy things I'm doing.

It's kind of cool. I've been feeling awfully lonely and isolated, being the only librarian here. It's been a hard leap from working in two public libraries, where I'm surrounded by library advocates, and interested patrons, not to mention from being a student at Dominican, where I lived and breathed library advocacy (and occasssionally LISSA bar nights). So it's nice to know that the avenues I'm taking to stay connected with the library world aren't peopled with strangers.

Of course, I've got this blog, and other people's blogs, and Facebook, etc., to keep me connected, but the list-servs are so immediate, and so directly related to helping me do my job. On my old list-servs, which were all related to children's and young adult library services, there was a feeling of community to the list members. There's not so much of that with the uber-professional lists, like Gov Docs. Of course, there also arent's 50-email-long arguments about whether John Green's latest book is good, or if Accelerated Reader programs help or hinder. So I guess things even out.

This post has been all over the place. I have a cold, and I think it's making my head fuzzy.

I love free stuff

I recently decided to sign the library up for a Bookmooch account, mostly as a resource for getting rid of all the random books lying around my office that were either a) weeded from the collection for being seriously out of date, or b) donated to the library, often in hopes of recieving a positive review in one of our publications, but completely off topic.

So far, people have been snatching these books up left and right. I only started listing things last Thursday, and I've already sent out 12 books, and I have another 4 waiting for processing.

With all the points my donations have been racking up, I decided I'd look into spending them on books for the library. (Basically, Bookmooch works like this: a moocher lists books he/she has and is willing to give away. People request titles. The moocher gets a point for every title sent out, and 1/10 of a point for every title listed, whether it's mooched or not. Those points can then be used to "mooch" books from other members, usually at one point per book.)

I've gotten so excited doing this, that I not only filled in a couple of holes in our collection, but accidentally got carried away, and now find myself with two copies of the 2008 Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics, a volume we were missing from our governmnet documents collection.

Oh well, I guess I can now list the second copy (when I recieve it; so far, only one has arrived) and hopefully get myself another 1.1 points!

Book covers

I'm going through the books in the the stacks right now and checking the physical volumes against the catalog record. This project is tedious and dull, and not terribly efficient, but, I've come to realize, is also quite neccessary for a number of reasons.

The most obvious being that I've discovered a number of missing books this way. I have yet to find any of the missing books, but the fact that I know they're missing, and am able to put together a proper report, is very useful.

I've also come across a number of books that are on the shelf, and seem to be processed, but don't show up in the catalog. I can now go through and add them to the catalog, or in some cases, find the record and fix the mistake that's keeping it from showing up when someone searches for the book.

This search has also turned up innumerable records that need tweaking: an author is listed as an editor in the catalog, or vice versa ; a word in the title is spelled wrong ; a date is listed incorrectly. In general, I'm finding a lot of little nit-picky details that need to be updated. Which is good, if annoying.

But the big reason that this project, boring and ridiculously huge as it is, may turn out to be useful, is the subsequent discovery of all the upside-down book covers. Seriouly, it seems like nearly a third of all the books I look at have their covers on upside down. On some, this isn't obvious until I open the book. On others, it's immediately obvious that the call number label was placed on the wrong end of the spine. I guess it's not a huge deal that the covers are upside-down, but it's one of those little things that drives me crazy, and keeps the library from looking professional and well run. Not to mention, there's a certain creep-factor in rows of books with upside-down covers.

For the most part this problem is easily fixed. I roll my eyes, gently lift the tape that holds the cover down, flip things around, and we're all set. But on some, I have to pull out the exacto knife.

Should I worry about the amount of fun I have wielding this tool?

Momentary freak-out

I just got my budget.

I have $24,000 annually for materials.

I can only afford one database. And it won't be a very good one.

How the **** is this going to work?

It's the little things

The simplest things get the biggest responses in my new job.

A couple of weeks ago, after straightening out the catalog problems, I finally had the opportunity to catalog all the new books that had been piling up in my office. Since the bookshelves are on the other side of the library from the researchers' offices, they really only get used when someone is looking for a specific title. Which means there's not a lot of browsing going on. So, in an effort to increase ther browsability of the collection, I decided to shelve the new books that I had just cataloged seperately, on some empy, out-facing shelves near the researchers' offices and cubicles. It was a hit.

Since then, I've had people come up and tell me how much they like that feature. One guy told me it gave the books a kind of "buzz." And today, weeks after the initial shelving, the publications editor came to my office to tell me that she had just found the "New Book" section and that she was blown away by how inviting it was.

I'm blown away by how impressed everyone is. I thought nothing of making this new section, and didn't expect much response, just hopefully a slight increase in book circulation. Just goes to show how much of a difference it makes to put something right in people's way!

This whole "solo" thing is exhausting

It's not necessarily that my workload is unmanageable. In fact, with hardly any patron interaction (a very sad thing for me) and none of the drama of working in a large department, I have ample time to get my work done. The thing that's wearing me out is the lack of micro-managing. Before I started library school, I was in a job with a boss who spent all her time making lists of things she wanted me to do. Then in public libraries, projects are often just ways to fill your time between reference questions and programs. Not that projects aren't important, but they're always second priority after immediate patron needs, which means the patrons pretty much run your schedule.

In my current job, there's nobody telling me what to do and very few people asking for my help. Which means, if I do something stupid, like decide to check the catalog records of every single book on the shelf, there's no one to distract me with something new and quick and diverting. It's just me and the books. Which is appealing in a purely olefactory sense, but so very tedious.

Don't get me wrong, a very large part of me is enjoying being, in a sense, my own boss, and I like the fact that I get to decide how to arrange the magazines (you would have thought they would be alphabetical already) and which books to buy. But another part of me, probably the part that spent 7 years in post-secondary education, really wants someone to tell me what to do!

Is it 1956?

Monday morning always brings a really big stack of mail for the library. Today's stack included the new issue of Library Journal, which means I'll take 20 minutes or so this afternoon to browse it in search of ideas and good books to buy. Always a nice little break, especially from my current project which involves searching for missing books and updating catalog records. Super fun. In addition to my LJ, the mail also included the usual stack of magazines to be checked in and renewal reminders for subscriptions.

One of these reminders contained, like so many others lately, a long letter explaing why renewing my subscription will enhance the quality of life for all Americans. As usual, it was a bit hyperbolic. This is nothing strange. I generally skim these, roll my eyes once or twice, and send the invoice to the comptroller to be paid. However, this reminder, for a newletter called America's Future (a lofty title) caused me a second glance. What stood out from this renewal notice was a bullet point that read (in part): "I want America's Future to continue its newsletter and radio broadcasts on national security...threats from the United Nations treaties and Communist China.

Apparently, the dirty reds are still out to get us.

I've been on hold for two days!

On Tuesday afternoon, I stupidly forgot to log off the administration page for the catalog. We only allow one person to be logged in at a time. For some reason, the system doesn't automatically log a user off after, say, twelve hours of inactivity. So I've been unable to log in to the catalog (a task I've only recently been able to accomplish at all!) since Wednesday morning.

I've emailed the company, I've looked for help from teh website, and I've waited on hold with tech support for two days now. Two days of calling and sitting on hold for fifteen minutes until they tell me to leave a message or hang up.

So they'll automatically log me out of their hold system at tech support after fifteen minutes, but they don't think to automatically log me out of the catalogafter 36 hours?!

Yay, I have a saint!

Apparently document librarians (of which I guess I pretty much am now) have their own saint! St. Wapniacl was aparently a very early version of a document librarian, in the same vein as Malachi from The Name of the Rose, only not as creepy or evil. The story found in the link is ridiculous and silly in a way that only an online saint's life can be.

I wonder if I can get a St. Wapniacl (any thoughts on how to pronounce that?) icon for my office...

Monitoring what we read

So this whole Amazon 1984 scandal is really pissing me off, but it's also giving a little bit of joy to that secret place inside me that wants to say "I told you so!"

A recent article in The New Yorker compared the Kindle to reading a real book and reading a book on an IPhone. Despite decding that the IPhone offered a better experience than the clunky, retro, gray-toned Kindle, and the real thing, the paper and ink book, was the best of all possible worlds, the author still gave grudging props to Kindle, saying that once he got caught up in the reading experience, he stopped noticing the issues with the device.

This article kind of annoyed me, because I dind't want him to like the Kindle. I like real books. I like the way they feel and smell, and how, when you're done reading, you leave little bits of yourself there. Literally. I mean, I like the idea that flakes of skin from my fingers and hairs, and crumbs from the lunch I was eating while reading end up ground into the paper. The Kindle offers none of this. (I was also annoyed because he quoted lots of Kindle lovers who based their admiration of the device in the fact that they found library's gross.)

But far more disturbing than the lack of DNA that goes into the reading proccess on the Kindle is the feeling that Amazon knows what you're reading. They already seem to know an awful lot about me, and their recommendations are sometimes just a little too close to the mark. I'm not a conspiracy nut, so I usually don't freak out that this corporation has such insider knowledge of me. After all, what could the knowledge that I like books about France, Arthurian Literature, and post-punk, non-emo music really get them? I doubt they even really care.

But if I got a Kindle, I think I would feel like they were actually watching me read, in a sense, and then I could never fully delight in the experience. Talk about 1984, right? I know I'm not the first one to say this, but it does feel like these devices, under the blanket of DRM, are slowly pulling away one of the foundations of a free society: the right to read what we want without judgment.

So this issue with George Orwell only solidifies the fact that I will not be getting a Kindle any time soon. I'd electrocute myself with it the first time I tried to read in the pool or the bath, anyway.

Arrrgh!

The OPAC is down. Do I even need to explain how much that sucks?

I haven't been able to log into the ILS since I started this job. That means no cataloging, no statistical reports, nothing. I finally tracked down the passwords (which the former librarian did not think to leave anywhere for me to find) and logged in. Life was beautiful.
The next day, I go to use my shiny new password, and get an error message: Query error: Cannot create temporary storage file for query sets. Contact the webmaster for this site.

The "webmaster" is the IT director. So I tell him. He has no idea what to do about it. So I call the vendor. They're all very nice, but can't help me. They send me to tech support. I end up talking to a man who seems to think that the lower the volume of his voice, the happier everyone will be. I'm pressing the phone to my hear, concentrating like mad to catch what he says, hoping the lawn mower doesn't drive by. But all this effort comes to naught. Guess why? Because he can't do squat for me!

This started last Wednesday. It's been almost a week of dealing with it. I just got off the phone with the ILS-whisperer and am no closer to solving the problem, but a heck of a lot closer to a coronary.

In today's call, not only was he as quiet as it is possible to be, he also did his darndest to make me feel like an idiot. He asked me what version of the ILS we were running. I checked. He asked me where I got that information. I told him. He said that wasn't the correct place to look. He made me check somewhere else. It was the same freaking version number!

He made me repeat the problem four times, despite the fact that I told him all about it last week, over the phone and in an email; the IT director told him all about it last week; I left him a message Friday, in which I included details; and I emailed him yesterday, explaining the problem.

He listened to me explain the issue four times today, then asked me "but the OPAC's running fine, right?"

NO!

The OPAC is NOT running fine. THAT"S THE PROBLEM!

So the situation stands thusly:

• I can't catalog the ever growing stack of books on my desk
• I can't run a report of the books we are SUPPOSED to have on the shelf, which means I can't do the in-depth shelf read I've been planning to ensure that everything is there and track down those titles that I can't find
• My user's can't search for books
• and I can't seem to get anyone who actually HAS the power to help me to care!

Mick Jones, Punk Rock Librarian

Okay, so the title of this post, much like the title of this Guardian article, is misleading. Mick Jones (of the The Clash) hasn't really gone and picked up an MLS degree and become an honest-to-goodness librarian, but it's still kind of neat that he refers to this project as a "library."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/5894780/Clash-guitarist-Mick-Jones-has-become-a-guerrilla-librarian.html

Tending my garden

I've spent my morning weeding the reference collection here. Actually, weeding and consolidating the reference collection. Because the collection had been split into two seperate sections. And nothing was in order, despite the call numbers plainly marked on the spines. So it wasn't like LC numbers A-K on one side of the library, J-Z on the other. No, it was more like "this pile of outdated material on this side of the library, that pile of outdated material on the other."

So I spent about two hours pulling old materials and then re-shelving the few I kept, in order, all together. This is what I pulled:

• The Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance 1949 ed., 1962 ed., and 1973 ed. (for some reason the call number had been covered up with white out on the 1973 edition.)
• 2 copies of Roberts Rules of Order. I left two on the shelf, which is more than generous, considering I've seen a copy on the shelf in almost everyone's office.
• 3 different Dictionaries of Philosophy.
• 4 copies of the 2nd edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage. The second edition was published in 1965. Yeah, modern.
• One copy of The New Fowler's Modern English Usage." This was published in 1996, so it's not exactly out of date, but I left a copy on the shelf, so we should be good.
• The Columbia Encyclopedia (In One Volume). Let me tell you, it's a big effing volume.
• A 1977 Cassell's Italian Dictionary, whch is to be replaced by the Italian volume in a set of language dictionaries found by one of the researchers here published in 1962. Why am I exchanging a 1977 edition for a 1962 edition? I honestly couldn't say.
• The Glossary of Typesetting Terms. Yeah, typesetting.
• 3 copies of Strunk and White's Manual of Style. One copy stays in reference, one copy goes to the circulating collection.
• 4 Turabian Style guides. I felt bad culling seven copies of something, so I left four on the shelf.
• The 1984 Government Printing Office Style Manual.
• 3 copies of a 1957 Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage. This lists "Negro" as the proper term for African Americans.
• A 1996 Swiss Stock Guide. I would have kept it had there been a run of Swiss Stock Guides, but there was not.
• Two State of the World Atlases and an Atlas of the World Economy that still include the USSR.
• the 1993 CIA World Fact Book. Now entirely available online, and (slightly) more up to date.
• A Standard French and English Dictionary that only translates French to English, and does not include voume two, which would (hopefully) translate English to French. Similar situations with an Italian, German and Spanish Dictionary.
• A 1957 Black's Law Dictionary. I imagine some terms have been added or updated since then.
• A copy of the Qur'an. Had there been also a Bible or any other religious book, I would have let it stay in reference. However, the lack of any other remotely religious based text had led me to decide to re-shelve it with the circulating collection.
• And last, but certainly not least, eight copies of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. I left three on the shelf. That's a lot of dictionaries.

On a not unrelated note, I'm thinking of writing an at-work exercise guide for librarians.

So I kind of forgot I had a blog...

I don't think I posted anything last week. At least not since very early in the week. My energy is starting to wane.

I've been working on putting together of collection development policy for the library. It's not necessarily a difficult project. I'm using the IFLA guidelines for a CDP, so I pretty much just follow those and add stuff in when necessarry. So it's not hard, but it's tedious. Which sort of makes it hard.

Last week I wrote a policy for the serials collection. That one wasn't quite so in depth, but it had the nice little bonus of putting sole responsibility for selecting periodicals in my hands. I'm not saying that I'm going to all out cancel the subscriptions that annoy me, but I am saying that the Conservative Chronicle may not be long for this world.

If I can find out usage statistics, and it turns out that the CC is read with some regularity, I'll keep it. After all, it's all about making the patrons happy. But in my professional opinion, it's not exactly a "scholarly" publication. It's pretty much just Ann Coulter-esque liberal bashing. With nativity scenes on the front page of the Christmas issue. If it gets read less than once an issue, I'm not wasting the library money on it. And I like knowing that the decision is mine to make.

That being said, I have no idea how to go about collecting usage statistics here!

Also, local update: I found a lovely wine bar in GB this weekend. I plan to patronize them frequently. Jim is not so thrilled with this idea.

Really cool open access resource

Maplight.org, a groundbreaking public database, illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws.This common practice is contrary to the public interest, yet legal. MAPLight.org makes money/vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators accountable.

Very cool to look through. Also a bit disheartening. But cool.

Government websites and why they suck

I got my first real reference question today. Yay! Unfortunately, it was over email, as vague as possible, and related to soemthing completely foreign to me. Yay!

After some work with my dear friend Wikipedia, I figured out what the heck they were asking me, and actually managed to track down the transcript of the congressional testimonial they needed. The problem? It's on a government website, which means there's a 70% chance that the link to the full text of the testimonial will be broken.

Sure enough, I can't access it.

Is it 4:30 yet?

The perils of early mornings

I am not a morning person. I am good at one thing before 9 am--sleep. So it sucks that I'm expected to be in the office before the students arrive at 8:30.

Yesterday a student said to me, "Being a librarian must be such a peaceful job." I refrained from rolling my eyes, and told him that, while it's a great job, it's anything but peaceful. I have, in fact, never read a book while at work (with the possible exception of sneaking off to "shelf read" and instead perusing the Bombshell Manual of Style at TCPL). I'm not sure he believed me though, so now every time I see him, I act super business-like.

Which brings me back to the early morning thing. When I'm trying to be business-like but I'm not fully awake, I end up looking somewhat lobotomized, rather than merely sleepy. I think I avoided actually drooling this morning when he asked me whether we subscribed to a certain journal, but I don't think he'll be coming to me with any complicated questions in the future.

I've been trying to write a haiku about turkeys (turkies?) but can't get the last line. I'll post it if I ever complete it.

It's 9 am and I have sorted the mail, shelved the first round of newspapers, nearly drooled on a student, checked out books for a course reservation, and started back in with my good friend Ulrich's. Together we're trying to make some sense of the serials collection here. It may not sound like much, but for me, it's a whole lot to do before 9. I need more coffee.

Reshelving is apparently very Zen

Who would have thought that the happiest, most soothing moments of my day would come when re-shelving books? It's seriously the only time where I really feel like I'm in a library. The rest of the time, I'm in my office, trying to figure out which serials we still get, which we need to pay for, which have ceased publication, which are now only available online...I suppose it was a good idea not to sell back my serial management textbook. I plan to re-read it this week.



In addition to the periodical nightmare, I anticipate some very heated arguments between me and some of the scholars here over how I spend the library's money. There seems to be a pretty scary leaning towards print material here. Never mind the fact that databases are easier to use (usually) and less heavy than giant books. These people like their books and journals. Perhaps that explains the lack of decent online resources. I foresee some intense user instruction sessions in the future. As soon as I can sort out the current mess and start subscribing to some new databases!



But I have at least found a perk to my job: free tickets to the upcoming Antiquarian Book and Ephemera sale in Stockbridge, MA later this summer! Sure it only saves me six dollars, but librarians don't tend to get a lot of SWAG, so I'm going to get excited about the things that come my way. It's not exactly four boxes of free books from ALA, but it's something.

Day One

My first day on the new job and I literally feel like I might cry. Not because of the stacks of paper, which seem to have no organization to them; not because the previous librarian (who left in January) left no decipherable notes about what the heck she was doing; but because I'm trying to analyse the library's databases and the best thing they have is JSTOR. Which they don't even access directly! They have remote access to the Boston Public Library, which happens to have JSTOR. This system is going to have to change.

Beyond BPL's remote databases, most of which are innapropraite for deep scholarly research, the actual direct access subscriptions are sort of underwhelming. I fail to see the purpose of a subscription to EBSCO's Literary Reference Center for an Economics Library. Generally, if Shakespeare appears in the logo, it's probably not relevant to the social sciences.

I've still got five to look through, and the titles alone give me some hope, but at the same time, the pit in my stomach is growing larger. While the titles may sound impressive, I've only actually heard of one of them. And frankly, if it didn't come up in Marilyn Lester's overview of databases, or at least in my Government docs class, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

On a more positive note, Massachusetts is beautiful and if I manage to stay afloat amidst my endless sea of paper, I think I might enjoy living here. The fact that my closest neighbors are turkeys freaks me out a little bit, but when I venture down the mountain into town, it's pretty cute. Sort of Wicker Park meets Little House on the Prairie. There's an actual Cheesemonger.