Library Technician

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 ..............

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.

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.