Saturday Librarian: Snow, glorious snow!

I’m sure everyone in New England is familiar with the snow in the title. For those outside the region, the forecast shifted before and during the storm.

The view of Manchester St from the passenger seat. These were some of the better road conditions.

We went from dusting to an inch to 3 inches to 7 inches in the space of 12 hours. Needless to say, the first order of business for everyone was to dig out.

 

By the time we arrived on campus, there was a clear path to the library door, for which I am grateful. I’ve had more than a few spills on that campus in the winter months. I tell myself I am more graceful than in my youth, but I think the truth of the matter is there’s more ice melt than there was back then. Whatever the reason, I’m sure all who have ever fallen on the road from dorm to library can share in my pain and the happiness that is not falling.

The semester is well underway, of course, but we’ve managed to stay on pace with the shelving, a victory in its own right. Beyond the handful of books returned (one of which we’ll highlight this week. Interesting stuff!), I found that the number of books wandering the rooms was beginning to get out of control.

This week’s room in focus was the Helm Room, in no small part due to the fact that my office opens onto it. Too, there were a number of books scattered along the window sills throughout the room. These have all found their homes on the shelves, their presence noted in the shelf read spreadsheet. The spreadsheets have been cleaned up and stripped down to essentials: since I will not be creating full MARC records for each of our books, there is little reason to check all those fields. Once we move to a full OPAC, the system will pull down the records for us, a development for which I am eternally grateful. I enjoy cataloging to a certain extent. I do not enjoy the amount of coding that goes into creating original records.

Another minor impact of the shelf read is the ability to double check the call numbers. There have been some acquisitions processed in the last decade or so with call numbers that make you go “huh?”

Fresh spine labels for everyone!

Granted that reasonable minds can disagree on the correct call
number for a work, some of these were far from home. The advantage I am finding in doing the shelf read is the ability to really get into the collection, to get a feel for what my predecessors have done and where they have agreed and disagreed with each other.

 

The call number previously on these volumes out of the Loeb Classics collection, for example, would have put them squarely in the center of bird watching books for New England Species. Not the first place I’d check for Pliny, to be sure. When I consider trying to do this in the age before the internet, when things like World Cat can bring you call number consensus in 30 seconds or less, I find myself with even greater respect for those who braved this world of information before me. I wouldn’t necessarily go back to their world were it took far more time to find out how the Library of Congress had classified something, but I can appreciate the amount of work that went into such an endeavor.

Hint: several of these books will make an appearence

Trying a few new things on the blog in the coming weeks, including the beginning of a feature on the interesting, odd, cool, and wonderful volumes I find in the library.

If there’s anything you’d like to see or anything you’d like to hear about, drop me a line or post a comment!

Saturday Librarian: So much to do, so little time

A quick post for you today. The semester has begun and students have filtered back into the classrooms and the library. While there were certainly books that came in, I have managed to check them in and shelve them all and maintain a semblance of control on the shelving for another day!

The next few days will be spent preparing the spreadsheets for our renewed efforts in the shelf read/inventory process. Lest anyone fear, the spreadsheets are synced to four different back up sources as well as the working laptop, so that nothing will be lost should one (or more) systems go down. Having nearly lost my NaNoWriMo to a hard drive crash, I believe in more than one back up at all times!

The days continue to stay lighter longer here in New Hampshire, and with that comes a new energy to attack the pile of work. I only paused for a few moments to contemplate all the incoming books that wait patiently for our inventory to be complete. It is much like having a giant assortment of presents under the Christmas tree, but finding it is only September and there is a long way to go before you get to open your gifts. We shall soldier on nevertheless.

Look for a post next week on resources both local and digital to help with a fruitful Lent. At some point in the next few weeks, there will also be a weekly or biweekly feature starting up on the blog for the interesting and weird finds hidden on the shelves.

Saturday Librarian: Into the Breach

First, my apologies for the long time between updates. For about a week, we were afraid that the hard drive in my laptop had died, which puts quite the damper on any sort of digital activity, inclusive of blog entries and catalog updates. Thankfully, it appears the boot up issues I was experiencing (mainly, how it wasn’t booting up) were due more to the horrendous amount of garbage on the machine, so a clean install has so far *knock on wood* done the trick.

It was, however, certainly an issue last Saturday, so I had to find something productive to do with my campus time. You may recall some weeks ago when I glibly remarked that someday I would see my office and even be able to sit in the chair located there. Well, guess what? That day is now.

Boy was that office a mess. Again, I can’t hope to describe it. Observe:

Before…

Not stitched together for a true panorama, but surely gets the point across, no? It is worth mentioning that at this point I had already moved three book carts into the adjacent room, to be able to get behind the desk and survey my domain.

The day was about more than cleaning, though certainly there was enough of that. It was also about a cursory overview of the last section of donations that I had not been through. One of the collections was a bequest, so there is little doubt we’ll have all of them on the shelves soon enough. As for the rest, there were certainly some interesting finds. The Chesterton was one, various older books abound as well. Something I have found in the handful of weeks I have spent so far is that we are blessed with a number of books with interesting covers or title pages. The books are older but often in good repair, which certainly makes them both a delight and feasible to keep in the collection.

Once the room was cleared and vacuumed, I had to test the computer. I had used it several years ago, and knew it worked at that point. What remained to be seen was whether it would still work and whether I would remember the password. Amazingly, I did.

Notice the presence of the 3 1/2 inch floppy. BRB, getting all my old disks.

Does anyone even remember XP?

Needless to say, there was an update or two to be made, but the machine itself works, and its fairly zippy for all that. The marvelous thing for me is that I can stack my books and bring them into the office to log and sort before shelving. Much easier than what I have been doing, which is standing in the foyer for several hours every week.

In a few days I’ll have more formal thoughts on where we stand as we approach the end of the semester, and how things look for the road ahead. I have a few ideas, and the library itself is always a source of inspiration. One cannot help being inspired when surrounded by that many thoughts.

Saturday Librarian: Breakless breaks

The College had a short autumnal break this week, Thursday through Monday. Not a lot of time but I’d seen postings in the caf about various places to go nearby and retreats happening and so forth. I assumed I’d have the library to myself and I could dive into the Ballroom– the beginning of the “P” section, easily the largest part of the documented catalog. As a student I appreciated being surrounded by literature and Latin grammars and Greek lexicons and so forth. It was comforting– if so many major and minor and utterly forgotten authors had been able to get their works published and purchased, surely I could muddle through my exams and essays.

As a librarian, such a set up is difficult. So much of the day takes place in the library, even on weekends. Every weekend so far, in fact, the rooms have been occupied with play practices. Finally, I thought, a morning to work as hard as humanly possible! I had left the day off my Year 1 roadmap initially, and added it back in relatively late, hoping to work ahead.

I forgot I was at TMC. Most of the students had, in fact stayed on campus for the break and were simply relaxing with their books and taking time to think leisurely. Whoops! So back to shelving I went.

Its the oddest set up; my assistant is methodically working his way through the catalog, starting with the “A” section, which is now complete. Once returning from break, he’ll be able to start on the “B” section. (For those needing a run down of what fits into what category, check it out here.) I, meanwhile, work through the returns. Its an odd ball bunch, to be sure. There’s been a trend toward all things Reformation in the last two weeks, with a large number of art books coming back in as well. Perhaps the best part of the shelf read for me, as a former student, is having dedicated time in my week to become reacquainted with the books of my youth. I certainly never got a chance to review the art and music part of the collection, so each book that comes back in is a treat that leads back to that little corner of the library.

Because of the need to review all pertinent book data for the shelf read as well as schlep and shelve, I find myself chaffing at the glacial pace we are stuck in. On average, I get 40-50 books a week done in my 4 hours Saturday shift, taking the data home to plug into the master spreadsheet and compare what was already on file. Anyone who has undertaken this type of project before and has a potentially better way, please share!

In the meantime, I leave you with some fun finds from Saturday:

The eclectic circulation of the library

Some Edward Gorey for Halloween morning!

The History of Mathematics, a surprise for the collection. Also published in the 1950s, so I image there are some newer discoveries missing.

Just a pretty book– the cover is embossed. Nice job on the cover design! (Catalog records in the background, not nearly as pretty)

Semester Project: The Music Room, Phase 1

This week’s edition of Saturday librarian was slightly delayed, but worth it. Promise!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our semester project. I did not get the head start that I wanted, so I wandered into the library Saturday morning woefully under-caffeinated but determined. My original plans were grand– too grand, as it turned out, for the small amount of space. First, you need to know what the room looked like:

I know. I KNOW. Clearly a basement, and that’s fine, but that was awful. It was wonderful they had carved out a corner, but you have to be a very dedicated musician to practice in such quarters, and most do not when the weather is nice.

The first thing to do was get the music instruments to a safe location for the duration. No pictures here, but suffice to say they hung out in a nice, sheltered corner of the library for a few hours. You can really only see a fraction of the music instruments, and you can barely make out the two pianos. Yes, there are TWO! Glorious– if you can rearrange things enough to pull out the bench.

First order of business? Those shelves in the middle had to go. They were chock a block full of periodicals.

a view into the room, boxes visible and work begun.

A better view of the room before beginning. Notice the periodicals hugging the ceiling, and the piano now visible behind the table.

If you’re going to unload four shelves’ worth of periodicals, there have to be boxes in which to store them. Believe it or not, we had stored two weeks worth of boxes from the various orders coming into the cafe. Surely that would be enough?

We had enough boxes for the softcover periodicals. The hardback periodicals traveled in packs for safety.

The short answer was no. There not nearly enough boxes for our work Saturday. My (naive) hope had been that we could start to pull books from the side shelves and get the music and art collection into the room. It became clear quickly that Saturday’s work would largely comprise making the room functional for a group of musicians to practice together.

The library is a wonderful building, but many libraries before ours have run into the question of how to store so many physical serial volumes. There are no compressed stacks in the building, no way to roll shelves up against each other to save space. As such, the periodicals are now in the basement of the library, boxed or resting on the table, waiting for faculty review.

Progress

I had mentally prepared myself to be working on this all day. Fortunately, quite simply, our students ROCK. We had more helpers than we could use when all was said and done. Phase 1 was complete by noon, a scant two and a half hours after we began. For the next half hour after, I had people coming into the room ready and willing to help, only to find nothing to do.

I wouldn’t say nothing, though. I asked all of the students who came to go in, sit down and play. To see whether we needed more chairs, whether the sound was better, whether the room felt better. The musicians I could get to try the refreshed space were ecstatic– they could breathe.

A better music space

I go back and forth on whether to add a rug in the center of the floor– it would help warm the space (which is unfinished concrete) but would it negatively impact the sound? I told all those who entered to try it out, to add as needed. I was told not to worry; it never seemed to matter, furniture finds a way.

My hope is that as we gradually weed through the periodicals (and/or open up storage space), we’ll be able to get the art and music collections in. In the very back of the room, you can sneak a peek at some of our older volumes. They’ll be getting a new home too– just as soon as I replenish my box supply.