Miss Cataloged

One of my self-imposed tasks that I do when I'm putting in some volunteer hours at the Hatfield Public Library is to create book displays in the non-fiction room. I do this because I enjoy it, it keeps the room looking fresh as opposed to stagnant, and most importantly because it gets people to check out books! The theme of one of my recent book displays is Travel Memoirs (Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one). This week when I arrived at HPL and went downstairs to the non-fiction room I discovered that among the half-dozen travel memoirs was a book that clearly did not belong. Apparently when a patron took one of the books from the display (actually, it was Eat, Pray, Love), someone replaced it with just any old book that was nearby. I took the book out of the display and looked at it a bit closer only to discover that it was cataloged wrong. The book in question was about writer Robert Bloch, who is best known for Psycho. It was cataloged as 813 Robert, not 813 Bloch. I checked the circulation card and saw that it hadn't circulated since 1996. Hmm...I wonder why?

I asked Eliza, the library director, what I should do with the book since it was cataloged wrong. Maybe she would want to re-catalog it? So that people could actually find it? She looked it, asked me how long it had been since it last circulated. I told her 15 years ago, and even then only twice. "Let's just get rid of it." was her response. If HPL had more space it might make sense to re-catalog the book but since HPL is SO TINY it's sometimes simply not worth the bother of correcting the cataloging to keep a book on the shelves.

Farewell, Ann

Our friend Ann died. She wasn't a close friend, but a friend, nonetheless. A kind, sweet, and hilarious person. We first got to know her when she started doing stand-up comedy with our friend, Jennifer, about 4 years ago.  Ann's partner of 16 years, Linda, passed away last September after a battle with ovarian cancer. When Linda passed away I thought to myself that Ann would certainly have a few decades on her own. She was relatively young at 50. But I'm sure it was as much a surprise to her as it was to many of us when she became ill with multiple myeloma in February and was suddenly on a downward spiral. Trevor faithfully read her blog and occasionally filled me in. Being ultra-busy pursuing a MLS from Simmons College, I have little time for reading blogs that aren't written by librarians or about libraries. So sadly, I wasn't following along. On June 1st Trevor told me that Ann announced on her blog that her doctors told that she had 1 to 3 days left. My head was spinning. I really felt out of the loop. So I called Jennifer. Jennifer very nicely replied and said, yes it was true, Ann was dying. Every day, several times a day, I checked in on her blog until Saturday June 5th when it was announced that Ann had passed away.  I felt relief for her that her struggle was over and that she died peacefully at home surrounded by her friends and family.  We attended the memorial service on Sunday and it was lovely. Trevor is not one to jump at the opportunity to attend funerals but we both wanted to go to her service simply because we liked her and she was a really nice person. I knew I would see Jennifer there but it turns out there were a few other people there that we knew, including Rev. Andrea Avayzian, whom Ann affectionately called P.A. "Pastor Andrea". There were several heartfelt, touching, and funny remembrances by friends. Once the service was over Jennifer gave her remembrance and then showed a video of Ann's stand-up comedy routine. Everyone applauded like she was there in the room with us. I laughed at her jokes like I always did. It was a perfect and fitting ending to a very personal memorial service.

Down to One

This may be a bit personal but I will proceed with it anyway... I was driving home from a lovely Memorial Day extra long weekend spent in Fryeburg, Maine in a cabin on the Saco River being constantly irritated by my brassiere which was about 2 years old and falling apart. I refrained from taking it off at the White River Junction rest area on 91 South and driving the rest of the way home bra-less but I didn't. However, as soon as I got home I went right to the bedroom and took the darn thing off and tossed it in the trash. And then, to be absolutely certain I wouldn't try to fish it out of the trash, I dumped the little trash basket into the big trash can in the kitchen (who knows what's in there). Luckily, our housemate, Ilai (pronounced Ely), emptied the big trash can within a day or two. Now it's in the dumpster and I'm definitely not going to dumpster diving to retrieve this bra. Why in the world would I even consider this? Because it was one of two comfortable, well-fitting bras that I own. Now I have one. And it's brown. Which really limits my choice of top colors to dark colors. So, if you see me and the top I'm wearing is any of the following colors: dark red, orange, brown, black, dark green, or navy blue you'll know that I still only have one bra. How long will I tolerate this? Who knows...

It Was Meant to Be

I'm working on my final project for LIS 488, AKA Technology for Information Professionals (that's me). The assignment is to write a tutorial for the technology of your choice on our class wiki. We're given a lot of freedom with assignment. It can be:

• hardware
• software
• programming language
• social networking tool
• or any technology that is sufficiently complicated enough to require a tutorial

So, I chose LibraryThing.  Why? You ask? Well, because I felt the need to make amends with LibraryThing. Not that I'd really done anything wrong to LibraryThing but maybe I'd spoken ill about LibraryThing and just didn't get LibraryThing. Why did I need LibraryThing? All of my pleasure reading comes from the public library. Who cares? I'm not building a personal library. I've got Good Reads to help me keep track of what I've read (from the library) and what I want to read. But what about those hundreds of picture books we have? Don't they deserve cataloging? Even if it is in LibraryThing? So I embarked on this project to add all of our picture books to my LibraryThing account. I even upgraded my membership to Lifetime member ($25).

Today I started adding all of our picture books to LibraryThing. Wow! What a trip this has been so far. It's tempting to read every single book but so far I've resisted. Between the two of us, we really do have hundreds of children's picture books. Some dating back to the early 1900s. Several first editions, as well as several Caldecott award winners. We both have personal favorites and oooh and ahhh over them. By the way, if you think I want to be a children's librarian, you're wrong.

So, while I was adding books to LibraryThing today I came across this funny little note [THERE IS A TAPE THAT GOES TO THIS BOOK] from many years ago:

I admit that I'm not sure if the handwriting belongs my sister or me but I can tell you that this is from when we operated a community library in our attic sometime in the late 70s that we appropriately called, The Attic Library. We organized all of our books alphabetically and even put cards in the back.  We even had a Reference section that was mostly decades-old encyclopedias. We had a periodicals department that consisted of old National Geographics and Life magazines. We even published a newsletter. It was a cozy space to hang out in with cushions on the floor (it was an attic, after all). Hours of operation were limited to when we felt like hanging out in the attic (not on wicked hot summer days). It was fun while it lasted (a couple of summers).

When I found this note today, I laughed out loud and realized that library school really is where I am meant to be. Who would do that? And where is that tape?

Library Humor

I love Rhymes with Orange!

The not-really-a-break Spring Break

I've been on Spring Break this week! Woo hoo! Or is it boo hoo? It's true, I don't have classes on Saturday of this week. However, I still have plenty to do. This is how I've spent my spring break:

• Instead of getting right back to work on Monday morning I took the day off from schoolwork and got busy with writing the registration form for camp. It needed to be done by March 1st. OOPS.
• I went to the gym on Monday morning because I could. The sauna was so toasty warm I almost fell asleep in there.
•  On Tuesday I started researching for an upcoming paper due on 3/20. 
• Volunteered at Hatfield Public Library Tuesday afternoon.
• Wednesday morning found me back at the research. Finally settled on a topic and emailed my prof. She's so excited (?!) about my topic (RFID in libraries) that she wants me to present to the class. I'm pretty excited about my topic too but now I'm wishing I'd picked something dull and ordinary.
• Paid bills, filled out paper work for health insurance from the Commonwealth, mailed my passport for renewal. ($75!) Cleaned off my desk in the process. Have you ever noticed how your virtual desktop is far easier to keep tidy than your physical desktop?
• We went to the annual spring flower show at Smith College on Wednesday afternoon (see tulips). It was such a lovely afternoon we took a walk along the Mill River in Northampton after sniffing flowers. And because I wasn't in a huge hurry to get home we went to the Forbes Library while we were in the neighborhood. I picked up a cute-looking graphic novel I was hoping to read this weekend but Mom's visiting so I don't think that'll happen.
• Trevor had a meeting on Wednesday night so I plopped myself on the couch and watched Jon Hamm (of Mad Men) host SNL on Hulu.com on my new MacBook. It was really funny! 
• Thursday morning I was back at the research. Saved all the articles I want to print to my flash drive and drove to South Hadley to take advantage of the free printing at the GSLIS office. Ate my lunch while printing articles for the paper due 3/20. Chatted with a fellow student who was also experiencing a not-really-a-break break. 
• I got my hair cut! Found a stylist at Ochoa in South Hadley who is trained in the curly girl method of cutting hair. 
• Went to the gym Thursday on my way back from the haircut. Went to the co-op after the gym on my way home. 

That's it so far. This is my plan for next week:

• Read about a dozen articles ranging in length from 1-21 pages for the paper due 3/20. 
• Write the 5 page single-spaced paper due 3/20.
• I'm still researching my topic for a short assignment due 3/20. 
• Study for exam on 4/3.
• Read the usual chapters and articles for classes on 3/20.

Looking forward to my "real" break when the semester is over on May 8th!

Miss Me? Part 2

Well, it's been a whirlwind of technology impediments for the past 2 weeks. That wire? That's the phone line that brings DSL into our house.

First, my trusty circa 2004 Mac iBook started acting flaky on me totally out of the blue. It was experiencing "kernel panic" which made me feel all panic-y about my laptop that's been my trusted friend and gateway to the "Interwebs" since November of 2007.

So, I brought my circa 2004 Mac iBook to a local Apple authorized dealer and repair shop and they kept it for 5 days! (2 of which were a weekend) I was in the midst of writing a paper for one of my classes. I got up in the morning, ate breakfast, showered, packed a lunch and drove 25 minutes to S. Hadley to use the computer lab at the Simmons GSLIS West office every day for 3 days. I even started getting a bit territorial about "my iMac". I even went so far as to add a few things to the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar that would make creating citations from a website so much easier. I am a tiny bit embarrassed to admit that I even kicked someone off "my iMac". I was becoming such a regular there that the Assistant Dean laughed at me on the second day in a row when I was there to continue working on the paper. 

On Monday I went back to the local Apple dealer to check in and they said they would call me that afternoon. They also had a refurbished laptop for sale. It was installed with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). My circa 2004 Mac iBook was a refurb which I bought in 2007 from a reputable outfit in Florida. My iPhone is "refurbished" (cost me $49). I'm in favor of "recycling" so I normally don't have a problem with refurbished equipment. However, this time, I was severely disappointed. I started writing a paper for a new assignment and got about 4 pages done. The next morning it started acting really flaky and the screen would just go black. I could barely keep it stable long enough to save my paper to my flash drive. I packed it up, brought it back and said, "I made a mistake. What I really want is a new MacBook with an Intel processor."

I bought a brand new 13" MacBook with the newest operating system, Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, installed. I also bought iWork (word processing, spreadsheets and slide presentations) for $79 (there's a $30 rebate). In the end, I paid twice what I paid for the refurbished laptop. With the Intel processor I'll be able to upgrade to new operating systems.

So I brought it home and did a two-hour software update. I went to volunteer at Hatfield Public Library that afternoon and had a great time shifting and weeding the non-fiction collection. It snowed on Tuesday evening. It was that wet, heavy snow that we get this time of year. I woke up on Wednesday morning to no power and no DSL. A branch knocked down the phone line that brings DSL into our house. Here I was with a brand new laptop and now power and no DSL! That afternoon I went to my gym and used their power and DSL to work for about an hour. We went to our public library the following day to get caught up on email and, for me, on-line research for another paper.

It took no less than 5 communications with my Internet Service Provider (starts with a "V",  sounds like "horizon") to get them to understand that someone needed come to my house to fix the downed phone line. A technician showed up on Saturday morning at 8am (one hour before my on-line class), and said, "Is that your phone line down out there? Do you think that's why your DSL isn't working?". "Yes," I replied. "They didn't tell me a phone line was down...." And then he grumbled, "Verizon is idiots." (oops! Told you who my ISP is!)

It was fixed within an hour and I was able to participate in my on-line class on Saturday morning without borrowing my neighbor's wifi. As soon as I was done with my class we packed up and drove to Cambridge for the rest of the weekend. But, that's for another post. You'll have to wait.