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29/04/2005
Incompetent lib'n
Ngyahhhhhhhh!
She decided to do some of the weeding herself didn't she? Usually she just chooses the stuff to go and lets me do the rest. Yesterday and today she did the rest of the work and pub about 40 books out in the box for the staff to take stuff from. I was really suspicious right from the start, but I couldn't figure out what to say without being too confronting. Today it just popped out "have you put those books on the list?" What list? You know, the list we keep for accountability? We had a conversation about it, I told you what I was doing. She says "I don't think so!" Yes I did, I says, and you indicated it was a good idea. Brushes it off she does "we've never done that before". In truth I don't know for certain if we do need to keep the list, she was suppose to check with the records manager to find out what our requirements are and of course she never did. I was keeping the list to be careful.
But wait, there's more! (no steak knives though)
After she left I grabbed a couple of books from the box because I had a sneaking suspicion ... and I was right ... she hasn't deleted them from the national database! Kinetica. Isn't that clever? Half the books have already been taken so there's no way of cleaning up after her.
Question is what do I do next? The options are: ignore it, it isn't my problem, I know the quality of my work and if it ever came out I can quite confidently say my stuff was good. I could talk to someone else, maybe the manager, and ask her to just have a conversation with madame during which she could check if the books have been deleted from Kinetica and (if it's necessary) if she's kept a list. That feels like being a tiddle tat. Mention it similarly to someone different who might have the required conversation with madame without taking it to the manager. Ask madame myself and weather the resulting storm. Could be a good way to get out of my contract coz it would be impossible work with her afterwards.
Dunno. Thank goodness it's the weekend. Have to stop thinking about it now.
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27/04/2005
Snappy Cranky
Madame was snappy cranky today. Don't know why and don't care. I felt ok about the way I handled her, just answered the things I needed to and when she took to mumbling comments I just ignored her. If I couldn't hear her I couldn't hear her. Brat.
The job I've applied for has been held up because someone called in the union to look at the way the job has been classified. They hope to get it resolved without having to readvertise. Painful.
I've been thinking about what other courses I could do that could help me get a permanent job of some variety. And probably out of libraries since I have no confidence that I can keep getting library jobs until retirement. I'm actually thinking of doing a TAFE accounting course. That might give me a better chance of getting office work.
Tomorrow night I am assessed for two more modules in my assessment and workplace training course. I have to teach a small group which isn't something I find difficult. That will give me 6 out of 8 modules.
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24/04/2005
Non Library
So what doesn the library technician do when she's not thinking about libraries? Like on a long weekend? Like this weekend? Thinking about this blog is about as close as I'm going to libraries this weekend.
So, I blog, briefly, and I knit and crochet quite a lot, and I hang around watching tv and visit with my daughter helping her with her backyard which is the most physical thing I'm doing all weekend and that wasn't a lot. I cooked lunch today, rice and beans flavoured with onion and tomato chutney and steamed veges. Helped cook dinner, vege rice and bean soup. We used our own chokos that are ripening on the back fence. Also known as chayotes. Love free organic food and if I wasn't working full time I'd never buy veges coz I'd grow the lot. Dyed my hair with a fancy dye - it's a brown with ... ummm .... it shines purple in the sun outside and red inside the house. I love the way it changes colour! Played Warcraft II. Browsed the net just coz I like to. I've only been to the local shops. Haven't even left my suburb so far.
Listen to my gal play guitar and sing. Love living with a muso. Love my home.
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22/04/2005
Long Weekend
It's a long weekend! Three days off! I won't get paid for the day off, joys of contracting, but I do have a day off. Don't know what I will do yet, but it probably won't be library oriented.
I've decided to take a week off in July. In just over a week I will have worked for a year and I don't have any paid leave. Normally I would expect to be taking four weeks off about now. I've thought about my finances and decided I should be able to afford to not get paid for one week in July so for the sake of my sanity that's what I'm doing. Only thought about it today and just decided very quickly. Of course that's dependent on the library still being open and me still working there....
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21/04/2005
Librarians Behaving Badly
So madame goes off the good behaviour wagon this arvo.
The manager rings saying she'd like to pick up the newspapers in the morning, she gets in about 7.30 & she'll return them to the library later. Madame says the manager is only taking 2. Of course madame has no idea, the papers are all rolled up in one bundle. Of course. She says she will talk to the manager. The manager comes down later in the arvo & I mention that I'll pick up the papers from her office in the morning. Madame all of a sudden pipes up telling the manager that all the papers are rolled together and I realise she hasn't talked to the manager. I look back at the manager and I confirm the papers are all rolled together and say again that I'll go past her office in the morning. She says no, she'll bring them down. I say but I need them by 9am when I open. She says really? And I say yes, people start coming in the check the papers as soon as I open the doors. Wow she says and wanders off. Madame starts on about how the manager does deserve some leeway and I think she's talking about her taking the newspapers, but then she says she would rather have talked to the manager about it all and I just barely managed not to say you certainly said you would, but then she says it isn't right to ask the manager to deliver the papers to us. She just didn't hear me say, twice that I would go past the managers office. I corrected her and at least I can say she backed down for a change.
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20/04/2005
Solutions For Crap Programs
Scope notes with a difference: 'Do not use this heading. Use 67845. When merging has been reinstated transfer these record to 67845 and delete this heading'. Ways to cope crappy technology. All the records from that mess up have had their multiple wrong headings removed and the correct heading put on. It's just that it's only one in a series of changes of name. At least I knew not to merge the next set. I found all the varieties of the next heading, and where a heading only had a small amount of records I manually removed the wrong headings from the records and add the correct heading. When the heading is down to no records I delete it. There were six headings, now we're down to two, but the correct heading has 700 odd records and the incorrect record has nearly 1400 ... I'm not doing that many manually!!! And I can't merge the headings. So I just add a scope note and maybe it'll get done one day. The correct heading has a proper scope note and 'use for' headings and it's all marc formatted and it even has indicators! Even if a space does display as a 0 ..............
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18/04/2005
Updates
Well the British Library order should be ok so far. they actually replied to my email the next day and said that the name isn't essential to putting payment through. Now we just wait for the article....
As for the bugs and the mess they made of the system I've fixed about 600. A few at a time each day and I've worked out a really quick way of doing the job so it's going ok and not impacting on the rest of my work. Not that that is difficult, I usually have to make up time filling projects of my own anyway. I've decided not to try to edit the remailing heading I've kept until this mess is fixed. I figure there's a strong chance that the bug and resulting mess has implacted on the way the editing of the heading works. Don't really know, but if I leave it until tthe records attached to that heading are fixed, and the correct number is showing against the heading it might actually edit faster. Maybe it's confused rather than slow. Maybe it's because it can only see half of the records that are acually attached to it. Stay tuned for updates on the worst library system and it's bugs, messes, fixes, and theorys.
I've been borrowing from my local, using the online system to renew books from home and reserve material held in other branches. All quite lovely. I noticed one of the books I returned was still on my record so dropped into my local tonight, found it on the shelf and took it up to the staff to get them to return it. They looked a fraction worried for a few seconds until I told them I'm a library technician, I'd also worked with the same system in a different library, and I was always having to explain to people how books could get missed when you're checking them in. She got really happy after that, 'wow, someone who understands!' and she even let me borrow the think I had on reserve without my card.
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14/04/2005
Too Good To Last
So here I was enjoying having worked out by myself how to get articles from the British Library. I was ignoring the slight anxiety that came with thinking it was too good to be true. Madame hadn't interfered and everything seemed to be going smoothly.
This morning I gave the credit card information back to her for safe keeping. After a few minutes there was this exclamation from behind me and she say 'I spelled the name wrong!' Oh well. I shot off an email to the British Library to ask what I should do about this. She also asked me where the copy of the fax order was. No, it was online. I had told her every step I'd taken but she has a selective memory mostly because she doesn't think I'm important enough to take notice of when I'm talking. "I thought there was a problem with the online ordering?" No there was a problem with one of the forms but there was a 2nd copy of the order form on a different page and it worked fine. Now she's grumbling because she doesn't trust online ordering. Never mind that faxing the credit card info could have the order form sitting on a fax tray for anyone to see. Never mind. Try to get past the annoyances of the whole thing.
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13/04/2005
Brits
I ordered an article from the British Library today. I haven't done that for years and the system was so different back then. I remember the requests had to be formatted exactly and could only be so many characters wide. That was a long time ago. This time I used Articles Direct and a department credit card. I really liked it this way, the prices are good enough and the options are good. One point - I wouldn't recommend ordering from the catalogue record itself even though the records have a link to request - there are fields that don't have explanation, but if you use the web order form from the Articles Direct information page you can find out what those fields mean. Also on the form attached to the catalogue record they need a 5 digit expiry date! I didn't work that one out at all.
All in all a good service especially seeing as it was from a different country. I did manage to work it all out by myself which is a sign to me that even though their system isn't perfect it's not bad.
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12/04/2005
Bugs
I decided to give myself a time filling job. Actually I've been doing it for some time. I've been working on cleaning up the authority files. Sometimes just quick jobs such as looking for capitals in the wrong MARC format and getting rid of duplicate headings. Yesterday I decided to do our own dept. We publish a lot and since the mid 1800's we've had 4 different names. Luckily I didn't have to investigate all of the names and when they changed because that's already been done by State Records and is up on their website. Very convenient.
Now with this system, after you have decided which heading to use you then use a particular procedure to merge the headings. A bit of a misnomer because the headings remain, the records attached are transferred to another heading. Then you delete the heading with no records attached. Anyway, the latest name on the system is ok. No duplicates. I put a scope note on it giving the years it's been used, the preceding name, and where I got the info from. Nice.
Go back one name and there's eight headings of various sorts. My theory is that someone was trying their hand at cataloguing and didn't understand the difference between an authority heading and a statement of responsibility. Ok, I pick the best and I start merging the rest. I discover the system can't transfer the largest number of headings, about 750, it just grinds to a halt. It also ties up the whole system so we can't use it on other computers either. Ok shut that down. I decide to set up the job as I'm leaving work (except that I forgot tonight) and leave my computer on overnight. Maybe it will be done in the morning. I also can't edit a heading with a lot of records on it. Grinds to a halt.
I ring our main contact for the system and explain what I'm doing which she seems really enthusiastic about at first. Then I mention merging the headings and she says it isn't working. Oh. Something had been said to me by my lib'n but she is so unsure about technology that she didn't explain it well enough and I thought she meant something else. She didn't tell me not to do mergings. This is an amazing bug - turns out instead of deleting the incorrect heading and adding the correct heading it actually doesn't add the correct heading at all and it multiplies the incorrect heading (they think) by the number of records that held the heading. If 40 records had that heading each of those records will have that heading listed 40 times. I haven't counted them to confirm that.
The only way to fix it is to manually open up each record, delete the wrong heading (it only takes one delete for all the multiple headings, thank goodness!) and add the correct heading.
I have a total of nearly 900 records.
But wait there's more! When you are looking at the heading in the thesaurus the records are listed under the heading. They can be opened and edited from there.
The heading can't see them. The total number of records attached to it is wrong.
Each time I edit a record and correct the heading the total number on the authority record goes up by one.
This is one of the most amazing bugs I've seen. It's going to take a couple of weeks to clean up the mess. It's not too slow, I've cleaned well over a hundred today and reached the end of the Cs.
That will teach me to go looking for work.
It's going to be some time before this bug is fixed I'm told. This job use to work because I use to do it a few months ago. I won't be doing any large scale fixing of headings for some time.
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11/04/2005
Unthinkable!
The manager came into the library and talked for at least 20 minutes with the lib'n and they both remained calm! From the bits I could hear it actually sounded like they were agreeing and being constructive! And when the manager left the lib'n didn't bitch!! I don't know what to make of this, I don't really trust it, it feels a little like the calm before the storm. I find it so hard to believe that they have worked everything out and found some common ground so easily. Time will tell, but I'll just enjoy this while it lasts.
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10/04/2005
Weekend libraries
Another lovely weekend. Yesterday I checked my local library which is now online and found that the video I've reserved from one of the other branches was available to pick up so that was the main business for yesterday. Got my video and a heap of other books. Knitting, with history of as well as patterns, recipe books, always get recipe books, always try to make at least 2 things out of each before sending them back. And this time art by women artists, mostly Australian. I just like looking at the pretty pictures!
While I was there and waiting for the computer catalogue I looked down and realised the fellow I was waiting on had managed to shut down the catalogue. I figured he was actually trying to see what else he could get into, maybe the internet because the net computers are heavily booked. I leaned down and quietly asked if he'd accidentally closed the catalogue to which he looked incredibly sheepish and said yes. I showed him how to open it up again. People always have to try, they just don't realise you'd have to be an incredibly experienced hacker or something to get to anything except the catalogue.
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07/04/2005
More Small Library Syndrome
Another small library syndrome symptom is usually a lack of technology. We have one internet enabled computer for people to use. Our catalogue is really nasty and full of bugs and fragile. It isn't a native marc system. We don't have access to the databases we really need and just have to make do. At least we have the net for our work. And when it comes to keeping track of workflows we are still using paper. I have managed to change one part of the work over to using a spreadsheet to track the work and keep stats but I'm sure this would never have happened in any of the big libraries I worked for. Well maybe... This is complicated by a lib'n who isn't really interested in technology, finds it all too confusing, doesn't want to admit she doesn't know, can't even conceptualise an IT solution instead of paper, not even using basics such as spreadsheets!
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06/04/2005
Revisiting Small Library Syndrome
In the past I mentioned some problems with small library syndrome such as information being kept in heads instead of recorded on the catalogue and different cataloguing styles often with mistakes. One of the other problems associated with SLS is: weeding decisions being made that don’t really take into account the work of the organisation. Some lib’n comes along and is disapproving of finding a fusty old library and they want to make their mark so they decide to modernise and freshen the library and collection. I’ve just discovered a whole series of reports created in the 1960’s have been discarded that covered the water resources of 30 separate river valleys. The one that has been found and put back in the collection is quite ugly with a cover that is very acidic, sticky tape marks all over the cover and a glued binding that is disintegrating. It’s just that the information doesn’t date. This department is renovating an existing dam somewhere. The information in this report is integral to that work. When it was actually needed the report couldn’t be found and we had to get a copy in from another library. Luckily it was held in another library. A huge amount of the work published by gov depts isn’t held anywhere except in the dept that created it so if that copy goes missing for whatever reason it can be impossible to get the information needed. Especially when the problem is compounded by other problems I’ve touched on before such as bad catalogue records that refer to the report but don’t have an author and depts changing names so often it’s difficult to figure out the current incarnation of a dept as named 40 years ago.
Couple this with records not being removed when items are removed and the holdings not being deleted from the national database…
I think each lib’n starting out in a small library will have one area of the work they don’t like and you can almost track the years each work in a library through the years by the messes left behind.
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05/04/2005
Restful
Today was busy but restful at work. My lib'n is away sick and I had two other people working in the library with me who are both pleasant company. I rang the manager to let her know that the lib'n was sick and she apologised to me for the to do the other day. We both agreed it was good there was no one else there. I said it was a bit wild. It was nice to get the acknowledgement that it shouldn't have happened. I got lots of work done and left feeling very satisfied.
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04/04/2005
Timing
Gee, timing! I'm on the phone today when my lib'n was at lunch telling someone who knows all of us about the almost fracas at work the other day between the manager and the lib'n when first the manager walks in returning the paper she'd borrowed and then a few minutes later the lib'n came back! I had to actually had to finish the conversation by email!! I got really good sympathy though and really got to debate the things that had gone wrong. Even though I'm usually more cranky with my lib'n I don't let the manager off the hook, she came down to the library cranky looking for a fight. And the issues aren't settled. They haven't talked or sorted anything out. They keep avoiding each other. It will blow up again. Now I'm spending each day waiting for it. I have to get another job!
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03/04/2005
Tomorrow
Another lovely day. Installing software, updating my webpages, going shopping and lunching at the local food court with my daughter, trimmed my hair, went for a little walk by a mini lake while others took photos, got my work clothes washed for the next week. We've ordered in for dinner so no one is cooking. It's been hot today and I ended up very lightly sunburned. Lovely day, and dinner has just arrived.
What will tomorrow at work be like? Lib'n and and manager at each other most likely. Another tense day. I'll be doing what I can to keep myself out of the line and just get through the day.
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02/04/2005
Peaceful Day
Did my job searching first thing this morning, and how easy is that these days with the internet, computers and mobile phones? I have found two more jobs to at least ring up about, but one at least will probably need a drivers licence so it's no good for me. I can't drive. Don't want to. Neither of them close for 2 weeks so I have plenty of time, and so today was a day off tech and job hunting. Lunch in the local caf, a drive thru the country to the nearest town, found a fair on, went for a gentle walk & bought a toy for a young relative, took photos, checked out the local airfield and saw a small plane that I've been up in before. That was fun. Drove back, dinner, watching tv, internet. What more could someone want? Well we won't go into that, there's always more, but altogether a very satisfying day.
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01/04/2005
Mad Few Days
What a mad few days. I had an assignment due on Thursday and a job application today. I really wanted both finished. I'm doing an extra course which will open up some new work possibilities for me with any luck and I just want out of this job. The job I've applied for is permanent full time public service job. I'll be able to take paid holidays! And getting out of this workplace is so very important. I'm working in the middle of a powder keg and my lib'n is the fuse and the manager is the match! They really got stuck into each other yesterday morning, not quite a row, but very wound up and a bit too loud and way too public. Luckily no one else was in the library. If anyone had walked in they would have turned and run. The manager is upset because my lib'n went ahead and did something by herself, it was the table of contents emails that were sent out at the beginning of the week. We aren't sure if someone else was involved and getting in the managers ear. Both the lib'n and the manager were at fault this time, neither of them acting in a professional manner. It's all in the approach, if the manager had come down and said calmly 'I can see what you're trying to do, but there is a problem' it would have all come out differently. They are both still mad at each other and I'm tired of witnessing it. It's a bit like watching parents fighting. You know it isn't about you but you're powerless to make it stop too.
Thank goddess it's the fucking weekend.
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