Pleasantly organized

For the first time ever today since starting my new job, I picked up a project and found that it was actually more organized than I thought it was going to be. (Well, my work study student did.) What a pleasant way to end the week. Conversely, and totally not surprising, a finding aid was found to be completely inaccurate.

Slow reading

I just went to a friend's blog, as we've messaged back and forth a couple times in recent days. I told him, "Oh, it looks like you're doing xyz, I'll catch up with my reading." It turns out the last time I read him was almost exactly a year ago, when he posted 'A friend just wrote to say I haven't blogged in a long time.'! And that was me! He looks to have become a much more frequent blogger. I wonder if it's avoidance behavior, as he's supposed to be writing a book.

Anyway, I've been catching up with reading like crazy. Inspired perhaps by a book review coming due and an upcoming deadline to vote for a 'book of the year' award. My mother always did say I'm a procrastinator.

BTW: When one is jurying a book award, receives a box of 8 books in the mail, and has only a month to vote, does one actually read all 8 books?

Paper paper everywhere

I have been totally enmeshed in the paper side of my library during the past couple weeks. The deeper I dig, the more piles I find.

I'm supposed to be the GIS librarian too. If this keeps up, I'm going to need a GPS just to find my way out of the piles of work that I've been creating. I'm getting some good backup, but it's still frustrating to know that I'm cleaning up problems created by a move that happened five years and at least three librarians ago. Today's discoveries: plain old monographs stuck in the atlas collection.

Anyway, I don't mean to whine. We got a ton of work done today and the atlas collection is looking great. I was able to make note of a few holes that I'd like to fill.

Speaking of filling holes: At ALA the AGS Librarian at UWM made this suggestion for collection development: collect intensely for a given geographic area on an annual cycle. She suggested by continent, so that once every 6 or 7 years you are taking a good close look (and spending money on) a given regions resources. I think that might be how I wind up filling my holes: taking them one year at a time.

Hellhole and back

We took a little trip to the Willamette Hellhole last weekend. Along with a couple co-workers, we bushwacked our way about a half mile into the forest until we found... a trail. Apparently not putting this feature on the map doesn't keep people away. There was even litter and a rope to lower yourself into the hole. (We didn't go down--one of our fellow trafvellers was a little wiped.)

Still, it was pretty impressive. The sandy nature of the sides of the hole make it look like it just opened up last week. About 50 feet wide and several hundred yards long, it's seems like a total freak of nature.

This past weekend we spent on the coast chasing babies and lounging. L indulged me with a little fishing on the Siuslaw on the way home and I landed a massive trout--at least as long as my hand is wide. I'm totally due.

Random library surfing

One of the nice things about coming back from a conference is that I'm typically pretty motivated to read. So I did a little catching up with what other folks' ALA experiences were like and came across a couple interesting articles, both via librarian.net.

The first is a nice Utne article about trends in libraries. It's a great summary of contemporary issues, written without too many scare tactics. Best of all, the author (a librarian) never sits on the pity pot. I got way too much of that from librarians at ALA. This article covers a LOT of ground: outsourcing of selection, lowest common denominator cataloging, obscure subject headings, . Hand on for a good ride.

Shifted librarian has a report from this conference. Her points are well taken, although her wishes for her own child's to be assessed by a application of knowledge acquired seems a bit pollyanish: isn't it what we all wish for and something that we acknowledge we'll never receive? What I learned in school that I actually use day-to-day is negligable. What I got tested on even moreso. But maybe that's just preparation for the real world: at work I'd love to be assessed for what I accomplish, but really it's how well I can fill out an evaluation and avoid conflict with those who I need stuff from.

That last sentence probably sounds really crass doesn't it? That is probably a reflection that today I found a lot more problems than I solved. (By a ratio of at least 5:1. The only real accomplishment was in reference: a reader asked how he could make a donation after I helped him find some maps.)

Trip overview

White Castles. Kiszka. Prime rib. Contemporary American tapas. Homemade ginger ale. Seared tuna over wasabi potatoes. Mussels and fries. Kielbasa. A reuben. Corned beef sandwich. Fried shrimps. Oberon. Stein Beer. Spotted Cow. East Side Dark. Black Bavarian.

I'll tell you what actually happened when I wasn't eating sometime soon.