Thursday, July 08, 2004
Hmmm, busy busy busy. We're way behind with our restocking of The Closed Library. The reopening date for that has been put back to the start of October due to various delays and cock-ups in terms of furnishing the place. And it seems that it's definite that we're having a caef put in, when my manager is already worrying about whether we've got the shelf space for the stock we're buying. We always used to have trolleys of books around waiting to be reshelved but that used to be because we were short of staff to do the shelving. Now in the new library we could be in the position of always having trolleys of books around because we lack the space to hold them.
We had a big old meeting today about the buying of books. We've mostly been using two suppliers Holt-Jackson, who everyone loves, and Cyphergroup which everyone loathes. Now the people doing the books buying are very IT literate and have the library nouse. Holt-Jackson's website is designed so that pretty much any fule can work it, while Cypher is a serious thing designed for librarians to use. Yet everyone prefers Holt-Jackson. Funny that. Sure, they both take a while to get used to, but Cypher is far less flexible and far more reliant on you accurately guessing how to find stock on their site. If I'm lucky I'll never have to use Cypher again once we've finished restocking The Closed Library.
And I've been given another £1000 to buy graphic novels, so I'll be off to Gosh again. So I'm a pretty happy bunny. I can't wait to get out of The Posh Library and back to The Closed. More people, more staff, more varied stuff to do (at the start of the year I'd been intending that I'd be finishing of rewriting my Chartership report by now, instead every free minute is spent wrestling with Cypher over British history books). The small libraries are just driving me NUTS!
As it is I've suddenly remembered I've got next week off, so am now hoping that the weather clears up so I'm not spending it all indoors. I'll be going to see Shrek 2 at some point and will be checking the whats on pages to see if there's anything interesting happening in the museums and libraries of London too. Spent the pre-Fahrenheit Sunday evening wandering around Soho with a friend and I haven't been for a proper walk in town for a few weeks now. I still have the second half of that LINKED walk to do.
Meanwhile, depending on what mood you are in, read this story of cigarette manufacturers Philip Morris claiming that you can be an ethical manufacturer even when your product kills people. Perhaps the arms industry should make biodegradable bullets, or make more conspicuous donations to Children in Need.
Al Qaeda targetting US in time for Presidential elections, but no-one knows where, when or how they'll strike. The BBC cutely refers to this as undermining the presidential election, quite how heightened fear and/or a terrorist attack could be anything but good news for Shrubya I don't understand.
We had a big old meeting today about the buying of books. We've mostly been using two suppliers Holt-Jackson, who everyone loves, and Cyphergroup which everyone loathes. Now the people doing the books buying are very IT literate and have the library nouse. Holt-Jackson's website is designed so that pretty much any fule can work it, while Cypher is a serious thing designed for librarians to use. Yet everyone prefers Holt-Jackson. Funny that. Sure, they both take a while to get used to, but Cypher is far less flexible and far more reliant on you accurately guessing how to find stock on their site. If I'm lucky I'll never have to use Cypher again once we've finished restocking The Closed Library.
And I've been given another £1000 to buy graphic novels, so I'll be off to Gosh again. So I'm a pretty happy bunny. I can't wait to get out of The Posh Library and back to The Closed. More people, more staff, more varied stuff to do (at the start of the year I'd been intending that I'd be finishing of rewriting my Chartership report by now, instead every free minute is spent wrestling with Cypher over British history books). The small libraries are just driving me NUTS!
As it is I've suddenly remembered I've got next week off, so am now hoping that the weather clears up so I'm not spending it all indoors. I'll be going to see Shrek 2 at some point and will be checking the whats on pages to see if there's anything interesting happening in the museums and libraries of London too. Spent the pre-Fahrenheit Sunday evening wandering around Soho with a friend and I haven't been for a proper walk in town for a few weeks now. I still have the second half of that LINKED walk to do.
Meanwhile, depending on what mood you are in, read this story of cigarette manufacturers Philip Morris claiming that you can be an ethical manufacturer even when your product kills people. Perhaps the arms industry should make biodegradable bullets, or make more conspicuous donations to Children in Need.
Al Qaeda targetting US in time for Presidential elections, but no-one knows where, when or how they'll strike. The BBC cutely refers to this as undermining the presidential election, quite how heightened fear and/or a terrorist attack could be anything but good news for Shrubya I don't understand.
