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.