Resolved today at this morning’s committee meeting:

• We need minions and should hire some immediately ’cause doing the work ourselves is a definite drawback to most of our projects.
• We each definitely need a personal toady who can stroke our ego and lip off to people we don’t like.  Think Iago, the mouthy parrot from Disney’s “Aladdin”.
• Steampunk is cool.
• Oh, yeah, and some stuff about use statistics as well.

In our own defense, it had been a long holiday weekend, the library was stuffy and we were deprived of caffeine, sleep, sugar, and anti-histamines …

*Insert Imperial March theme music here*

The University of Arnor, thanks to its penny-wise, pound-foolish fiscal policy, contracts out its custodial services to the lowest possible bidder.  The end result, apart from spotty cleaning, is that we are occasionally treated to bizarre episodes like the following ….

*Insert Star Wars Opening fanfare here*

Last week, in a library far, far away, staffers on the upper floors became incensed when they discovered that the custodial personnel were deliberately removing their office door steps. The reason for this wholesale theft of small, rubber wedgies?   Fire safety. Apparently, the custodians were told that propped open office doors constituted a fire hazard and that only their constant vigilance could save the library staff from their reckless pursuit of air circulation.

The library staff pointed out with some heat (no pun intended) that overflowing trash cans and propped open emergency doors, both of which can be laid at the feet of the cleaning crew, were far more likely to cause fires than a bunch of door stops. Balance was finally restored to the Force when it was clarified that ONLY the emergency doors (metal doors with magnetic strips on top that automatically close off the levels in case of fire) should not be propped open.

Now that it was safe to let our wedgies roam free,  library staffers happily returned to their merry, door-stoppering ways.

Six Million Dollar Man photo by seeingDeniz (Flickr)

… you are incapable of defacing a book even if it’s for a good cause.
I took a bookmaking class (yes, I’m a “bookie” now ) and while I can make blank books and pamphlets from scratch, I am congenitally unable to “alter” books, even extremely boring, out-of-date ones. “Altered books” are regular books (usually discarded ones) that have been changed in some way by the artist. Sometimes this means that they have been cut into different shapes, sometimes this means that the pages have been cut up and painted in order to tell an entirely different story.

Knowing this, I decided that I would probably be okay just reusing old book parts so when I saw a battered copy of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” on the library book sale pile, I didn’t hesitate to shell out 50 cents for it. My plan was to save the cover which had an interesting design, cut out the old text block (a text block is the pages that have all the printing on them), insert a new text block (blank journal pages), and add new endpapers (endpapers go on the inside cover of the book).

I was doing fine until I made my fatal error: I started to actually read the book. And enjoy it. And then my whole plan fell apart. Gosh, I said to myself, with some new endpapers and a little glue on the spine this book could be as good as new.

[insert "Six Million Dollar Man" theme music here]

Gentlefolk, I can rebuild it. I have the technology. I can make this book better than it was before. Better, faster, stronger …. YES, I CAN NURSE THIS BOOK BACK TO HEALTH!!!!

*Sigh* Well, so much for nabbing art materials from the book sale table ….

Spurred on by a rush of spring cleaning, I did something that no librarian should ever do: I took a look in the boxes that surround the perimeter of my office. You librarians know the ones I mean. The ones that have been kicking around ever since you came to work there. The ones no one knows enough about to process, but are afraid to throw out in case they contain something valuable. Yeah, those boxes.

Of course, I knew better. I’ve worked as an A/V archivist long enough to know that if something has been hanging about without anyone doing anything to it, there’s something wrong with the item. Usually it means that some part of the all-important documentation process has been skipped–there’s no release, no information about the contents of the recording, no deed of gift, no idea of what it came from, etc. You get the picture.

Periodically, various members of the staff, past and present, have gone mano-a-mano with the items in question, but they have failed to bring the recordings to heel. A/V archivists only have so many hours in the day and if there is something gumming up the works of processing apparatus, then the process doesn’t apparate and the items are set aside.

So by opening up these boxes I knew that I was just making more work for myself. But knowing that didn’t really prepare me for the more work I got/am getting/will have to do.

Cases in point:

• I found a release form that had no tape attached to it. After contacting the interviewer (a staff member since retired), I was able to get a copy of the tape, transfer it to CD, summarize the interview, catalog it, and then link its associated items to its MARC record.
• I found a packet of releases that were related to, but didn’t match up with a collection that we already have. I contacted the interviewer and the end result was a pile of new audiocassettes for me to accession.
• I discovered that the Gondor Archives had transcripts associated with a collection that we have so I arranged to get copies of same. The end result is a new batch of transcripts and associated papers that I have to go through and match up with the interviews.
• I questioned my boss, Bill, about a box of VHS videotapes of a conference in Barrow and the end result is a letter of transmittal to the donating organization and potentially a lot of new processing and release form seeking.

All of these new tasks are on top of the on-going ones I already do. Take it from me, friends: don’t feed your gremlins after midnight, don’t push the big red button, and, whatever you do, don’t open the boxes!

Part of my job as oral history collection manager is evaluating potential donations for inclusion in our collection. Which frequently means listening to unmarked or marginally labeled tapes of all kinds. So I’m sitting at my desk, going through a box of audiocassettes from the local wildlife refuge and I pop an unlabeled one into the cassette player. I don’t have any headphones on because what the heck, it’s four days before Christmas, we don’t have any patrons, the interviews are generally pretty quiet, and I’m only listening to the first minute anyway.

I pushed the Play button and a VERY LOUD “OOOOOO-OOOOOOO” burst out and went echoing through the department. The cassette was a tape of identifying bird calls for bird watchers and apparently, the boreal owl is both very loud and very vocal.

Friends, I can’t vouch for the birds, but if you need to attract the library staff to your office on the double, I highly recommend imitating the call of the boreal owl.