See and See also:

http://warriorlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/hello-world/

Another Home Library Dilema

Another day, another Box of Bits to assess, review and amend as necessary. OK let's be honest, it's just more of a decade's accumulation of stuff I really didn't need, but got because it was free and you never know when it might come in handy (BIWFAYNKWIMCIH - which is possibly the world's longest and most meaningless acronym - but remember you saw it here first, if it becomes popular or gets used by someone else in a publication where the attribution is missing) ... geez, now what was I saying?

Ah yes, the box of bookmarks; collected from book sellers, conferences, random mailings, journal inserts, and so forth. With only four readers in the household (not counting the cat, who only thinks she can read) even I am prepared to concede that we may have slightly more than we need.

The question is, what ones - if any - should I keep? The remainder can go to the Day Job Library, where no doubt they will end up strewn around the playground minutes after distribution. Which is really sad, because they're really bright and colorful, and represent a decade's worth of targeted BIWFAYNKWIMCIH ...

Ad H.O.C. Irony?

How's the "Value Added" Home Office Clean-up going? Slowly, but thanks for asking anyway. But possibly of more significance are the treasures that are coming to light. Sort of more like an archaeological dig than a library cull.

The latest dusty tome to emerge is "Getting Organised" (ISBN 0826467709; Continuum Publishing 2004). What a find! Unfortunately it got lost again with the hour, but at least it got photographed before it slunk back into the chaos ...

A Short Treatice on the Nature of Human Uniqueness ...

Excessively wet and dismal weather certainly encourages the Muse; it is indeed tempting to create some half-witted pun revolving around "reflecting" and the size of the puddles. Just this once I might refrain. But no promises, mind.

So, when pondering the generic advice to "avoid negative people", it occurs to me - from the subatomic perspective at least - that if the whole of any society was "positive', this would create an unstable environment. Speaking ionically rather than ironically, all that positive charge would generate a force that would blow itself apart. And there are some who would say that this is already happening as we observe global unrest and daytime television programming.

My good friend Spike Milligan once said "blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light". Not that I know Mr Milligan personally or anything, but I've got quite a few of his books. At the time of writing I don't know if Mr Milligan has mine.

However, given that someone now (!) needs change for the photocopier, I will terminate this brief but mildly ponderous (couldn't resist, sorry) task and attend to the minutae of everyday library life ...

Library Blog Awards

That publishing company who write to Yours Generally to advise that Warrior Librarian was nominated for their Library Blog Awards has now announced the winners.

There were 5 categories; academic, general interest, public library, school library and "quirky".

In keeping with our fine tradition of fouling up just about everything, we didn't score a place. Although the award information states that the 'judging criteria' are available, and does indeed name the judges for four of the five categories, there is no information regarding "quirky" library blogs. And probably just as well, as we also have a fine tradition of naming names ... which is a whole other story.

Always read the small print ...

Here's a neat little trick ...

To apply for "seed money" for a schools-community partnership, Schools First puts the terms and conditions of the grant application into Latin. And then requires applicants to sign that they have read and understood the requirements.

I guess that's one way of making sure that the money goes to those schools who incorporate Classical (if somewhat dead) languages.

But we're all techno-savy and information-literate, right? So why not use an online translator? Geez, I wish you hadn't asked that. "Phasellus annoyance large not is bibendum not venenatis if not transitory ..."

And today's controversy is ....

... is buying books a core function of a one-person library Librarian? And if so, should it be done during work hours? And if a 35% discount is available for purchases made "in person", should that purchasing be done during work hours if the preferred supplier is off-site and does not provide an online purchasing facility?

Until the last few weeks I would have said yes to all the above. Yes, book buying is a core function. Yes, it should be conducted in work hours. Yes, a 35% discount is well worth the "transfer of duties" to the off-site supplier.

Anyways, seems that a particular "site manager" does not completely agree. "Adequate notice" must be given. What is "adequate"? 24 hours? 48 hours? 3 weeks? This particular - and seemingly quite reasonable - question is not able to be answered without yet another meeting.

Oh, and the library in question being a school library, let's not forget that the daily routine can change from day to day. Which leaves the question of "how much notice" is "adequate" a somewhat moot point. Factors such as weather, excursions, exams, etc mean that a suitable opportunity may unexpectedly occur at little or no notice for book reviewing, purchasing, customer/reader input, publishing advisory services, etc.

But what would a multi-certified professional librarian know? Right?

Sigh.

Just "Duties as Directed"?

Tuesday at the Day Job Library school is sports day, where all staff cheerfully tootle off to various sporting activities. Sure I've got a pommie tan, but check that jaunty angle of the cap, and the lanyard with a whistle!

Mind you, the day before I wore my batgirl t-shirt - but that doesn't mean I can fly.

But what a terrific display of "how-to" books on drawing; manga, fantasy, trees, cartoons, boats, kangaroos, more (but different) manga, a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. Displays are such fun ... not to mention how they can help highlight gaps in the collection. I did find out that we didn't have anything on drawing breath, water, or the short straw ...

Weirdness and Home-made Bookmarks

I guess no-one can work in any library without removing all sorts of 'inserts' when books are returned. I've heard of some pretty strange ones, as well as the humdrum bus or train tickets, fruit skins, and odd bits of unidentified things.

Today at the Day Job Library returned a senior math text book (2004 edition) containing - and I swear this is true - the business card of a very, very prior "ex" who I haven't seen for over 15 years.

How's that for weird!!!!

A Hallmark Holiday?

It's Mother's Day. I got breakfast, not exactly "in" bed, but at least while still in PJs. At 10.30am; as with many mothers, I'd been awake for hours, stomach growling, patiently awaiting some form of sustenance, happy to accept cold coffee and burnt toast, had it been offered. But at least with the (eventual) Mother's Day Breakfast came a particularly rare treat, a verbal exchange with the teenage children.

I wouldn't go as far to call it a "conversation" as that would imply an "equal time" situation. But neither was it grossly unpleasant, nor did it have the ultimate outcome of me handing over money (the usual outcome of any verbal exchange not involving grunts and shrugs). But most interestingly was a short insight into the current gestalt on the concept of "Mother's Day".

I hadn't heard the term "Hallmark Holiday" prior to this morning. Apparently it refers to any celebration that is intended only to benefit the retail industry through artificially creating an occasion for the spending of yet more money.

According to Wikipedia, Anna Javis trademarked the phrase in 1912 (I wonder if her estate is still collecting royalties?) and nominated the second Sunday in May. U.S. House Joint Resolution 263 was signed by President Wilson in 1914. President F.D. Roosevelt made Proclamation 2083 in 1936.

So read this and weep, all you cheapskate kids who didn't get your mom (or mum) even a small box of chocolates on the basis that it's only a "Hallmark Holiday"! It's not. It's the law.

Interestingly, this very short but pertinent piece of domestic research raises another issue. It would seem that no one in Australia is aware that Proclamation 2083 also states that the United States flag be flown on all public buildings on this particular day. Hopefully this disclosure won't effect international relations or anything. But remember that if this does occur, it was flagged here first. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.)

But here's an interesting thought ... why is Mother's Day on a Sunday? If folk were really serious about making mothers feel particularly special, and genuinely celebrating the whole concept of motherhood, would it not have made more sense to give them a weekday of 'work release'; or perhaps a whole month or something? After all, Part (c) of Proclamation 2083 refers to the "necessities" for mothers, which surely includes the obvious imperative to hang around in P.J.s all day, reading and eating chocolate ...

Just a thought.

Workplace Culture: "Fitting In"

Quotation:

"Having found myself intellectually incapable of thinking like a moron, in order to integrate with the culture of the workplace power brokers, today I attempted to at least dress like a moron - in the spirit of achieving parity and recognition, and with the hope of being more highly valued. It didn't work."

National Enquiry into School Libraries in Australia

A few days have come and gone since the expert witnesses made their appearance for the New South Wales public hearing. A reasonable range of 'interests' appear, but notable by its absence is the lack of secondary school representation.

Whilst many of the primary (K-6) principals worked with their teacher librarian in making joint submission, at a School of My Acquaintance the principal was told by the line manager that there was not even enough time to give the principals more information.

Go figure.

Hopefully the non-government sectors may have discussed the issues that are unique to the secondary environment, or the regional associations. The transcript of the public hearing in Sydney should make it into Hansard in the next few days.

Predictive Librarianship?

Mere days after announcing the decision to trash the Warrior Librarian Central collection of floppy disks full of old useless cr@p, media services are announcing that Sony now intends to cease production of floppy disks.

Not that we are suggesting there's any correlation or causative relationship here, but it sort of does seem kind of spooky, doesn't it?

LibCat Jigsaw Puzzle

Click on image below to access puzzle; use the back arrow in the browser to return here. Puzzle opens at Jigzone in this same window.
LibCat in Open Stack

Obsolete Format Archiving?

The Great Home Office Cleanup continues, with steady progress. I figure that if I put away one piece of paper a day (let's keep the goals realistic!) it will only take me about another 27 years to finish. Why don't I just trash the whole lot? Sit down - if you aren't already - I put the equivalent of about 3 filing cabinets worth through the shredder last week. We're talking a 30 year professional accumulation here, folks. Not just your average amateur OCD collection.

A pallet load of 'archival' material is being packed up for the National Library. If you know the books "Forgotten Children" (David Hill) and "Enemies of the State" (Tim Priest), you'll be able to work out pretty much what's going into secure holding.

But I have digressed, yet again. The current 'policy issue' is what to do with the old floppy disks. None of the computers here at Warrior Librarian Central even have a floppy drive. The NSW State Archives maintains a collection of obsolete hardware for accessing data from obsolete storage devices; maybe the National Archives could be getting a surprise bonus!

ANZAC Day

More than "Just Annoying"?

Today brought a new horror turn to the already bumpy ride ... being informed yet again that the the school executive have once more made an "executive decision" and come up with the 'policy' that all senior students will be able to access the library at all times during the day. Which is fine with me, but what about if I'm not there? At lunch? At a meeting elsewhere in the school? Down in the English faculty doing my "teachers' aide" scheduled periods?

The answer? "The expectation is that the students will be in the library whether there's a teacher there or not. We don't want them hanging around the playground".

No, there will not be any other teacher cover provided for supervision. No, there is no library assistant present except for a few periods a week ... and the clerical staff are not allowed to supervise students anyway. No, there is no security system at all - no tattle tape gate, no CCTV, Nada. Zip. Zilch.

The suggestion has been made many times over the last few years that an empty classroom (just desks and chairs) be made available for seniors without teachers or scheduled for a study period. This has always been rejected on the basis that the students - even senior ones - need to be supervised.

But apparently its now OK for them to be bundled into an unsupervised library ... coz the executive also decided that they would no longer call it a library; it's now a "learning centre". My query that isn't the whole school a "learning centre" was ignored. As were requests for a 'review' of the decision. At least to date.

Anyone want to throw open their library during any absences for unspecified numbers of teenagers to 'hang around' in?

Sigh.

Same old, same old ...

My FB friend Lilly Meyers wrote: "We have children going to bed without eating..... Elderly going without needed medicines..... Mentally ill without treatment..... Troops without proper equipment..... Yet we donate millions to other countries before helping our own first...... 99% of people won't have the guts to copy and repost this.!!!!!! WILL YOU?????"

Yep, I did.

Welcome to my nightmare?

So, here it is almost exactly half-way through the term break holidays. And what have I actually achieved? Well, in terms of time spent moving stuff, quite a bit. You can see that the Green Room - which we originally called the Homework Room in the hope that the name might drop a bit of a hint to the Household Teenagers - has had an enormous amount of 'rubbish' removed, the desking consolidated, and about 5 years worth of candy wrappers swept up.

The childhood experts will tell you that it's "beneficial" to give teenagers responsibility, but I don't' think they'd considered the hygiene perspective. Anyways, The Supervisor seems happy with the progress, although does point out that this part of the garden needs a little work.


Someone really wise (or possibly very good at hiding their source) once said "in order for something to become clean, something else has to become dirty". Which goes part way to explaining why the dining room now resembles something along the lines of a yard sale - but with less order and aesthetics.

There's absolutely no point in telling me that if I didn't try to keep every bit of junk under the pretense of 'archiving realia', I wouldn't be having this problem now. But the good news is that the Home Weeding Project has now build up a staggering tower of boxed culls. Conservative replacement value? Several million dollars. Yard sale value? Maybe ten bucks. Contribution to learning to read in third world school libraries? Priceless.

OK, so what about the Home Office Makeover of the Century? Otherwise known as Yeah, Right ... it's getting less chaotic. Really. A few boxes-full (box-fulls?) of paper have been filed. Unfortunately though, a whole lot more new paper-based documentation has been arriving together with substantial relocation of stuff from the Green Room.

So I guess it would make sense to stop blogging here at this point, and go put some more stuff away - or throw it out. But I've just got to log into Facebook first; I've got stuff cooking in Cafe World, some OCD has probably beaten the cr@p out of me again in Mafia Wars, I'm pretty sure my crop of tomatoes is ready for harvesting over at my Karma Farm ...

Home Library Weeding

There's few things more spontaneous at Warrior Librarian Central than the sound of the scarpering footsteps of rapidly disappearing family members whenever I say "Hey! Let's move the ....". This of course is my own fault, having devoted years of Pavlovian-type training to conditioning these folk to associate the word "move" with many days of carting books between rooms.

This holiday period, the decision has been made that at least some of them have to go. Books, that is, not family members. And of course, the placement of storage/display furniture has to be rationalised. Luckily, with the Day Job Library (DJL) budget being just AUD$1,000 for the year (that's books, stationery, freight, hardware, software, everything), many of the near-pristine tomes will be donated to the DJL. Others will head off to third world country's school libraries, with the DJL weeds. Others will get some exposure via the Library Office.

Luckily for me, there's one family member who didn't abandon me. OK, their contribution was mainly supervisory, apart from the duality of their role - as a furry bookend.