LOST TIME

Where DOES the time go???

I returned the end of July as noted in my earlier post, only to leave again 3 weeks later for a trip to Grand Rapids for books that we were to pick out and someone else to pay for them. Wasn't that wonderful?? It's always fun to spend someone else's money on one hand, but an awesome responsibility, too, so as to not be wasteful, on the other hand. Upon our return (a staff member went with me), we had 3 days to get ready for registration and the arrival of new and returning students. So we are now in full swing of a new school year.

In between trips I had my cataloger leaving and in the process trying to train temporary help. However we have not been able to make that help materialize since then because of retraints on hours for that staff member. :-(

In the mean time, my "new" room has been finished, items that were off site returned and shelves put together to be used for our back issues. Our current status is: we have half the shelves we need. So hopefully we will be able to use some of the insurance money to buy shelves to replace some of those that had to be thrown out.

We have a new problem, however. Where the new roof over this room (an addition) is attached to the original building, there are some new leaks. So we are back to putting out buckets and having roofers come and try patches. Some have been tried and failed. So I don't know at the moment what is going to be done about it. We will have to get this resolved before we put our back periodicals in there. The college is also in the process of getting bids for an A/C system as we will have to have air movement in there to prevent mold from returning.

Our Friends of the Library also bought some books for us - about 12 bags worth, and we are in the process of buying books to replace those lost in the storm damage to the back room. Add to that the addition of the books from Grand Rapids and you can see that we are quickly being covered up with books needing to be cataloged, not to mention those that are already in the pipeline. And no cataloger!! The "trainee" is not able to take on the additional tasks and hours to do so. But we do have a lady interested who lives in Colorado. She is interested in coming here to college and needing a job. So hopefully that will work out. It may be a few weeks before she will get here, though.

I work my 40 hours in 4 days a week with Wednesday off. (Consequently, last week I worked an average of 12.5 hours for each of the 4 days I worked! I'm glad I didn't have that 5th day in there last week!) This is because of my living 85 miles away from my job. It has its advantages and its disadvantages! But I have been so swamped the last couple of weeks that I am staying over tomorrow and putting in some extra hours to try to catch up. Too bad I'm salaried! :-) but that's okay, I love where I work and rather have an enjoyable environment then a stressful one and higher pay. Money isn't everything. I'll just get my rewards later...

Oh the interesting, ongoing saga of library life!