Friday, October 20, 2006

Nothing profound

As I have scanned other blogs today, someone else made the statement that they had nothing profound to say. That's kinda the way I feel. Since my last post, I have had the flu! I guess you could say that was profound. It hit full force last Thursday night and lasted till last Sat. morning. I had nothing to eat or drink in the duration. Then Sunday morning I woke up and felt like nothing had ever been wrong. (weird)

Monday and Tuesday my husband and I attend the KNCSB convention in Salina, KS. We got to hear some good speakers, including H. B. London from Focus on the Family.

Another pastor, Andy Aldis, spoke about Judas in the story of Mary and Martha when Mary poured the perfume on Jesus' feet. Judas, the money keeper, objected to her doing this. Christ rebuked him. AA mentioned that we may be a leeeeetle bit like Judas. Judas also robbed God. AA mentioned that we may be a leeeeetle bit like Judas. Judas was two-faced: acting one way when he really felt the other way. AA mentioned that we may be a leeeeetle bit like Judas. Judas was stingy. AA mentioned that we may be a leeeeetle bit like Judas. Judas was defensive and didn't take constructive criticism. AA mentioned that we may be a leeeeetle bit like Judas. AA's falcetto voice when talking about our being a leeeetle bit like Judas will make it hard to forget this for a while!

I returned to work Thursday to attend a committee meeting on our new self study for accreditation; catch up on 478 message in my email; stepped into a conversation about how to properly destroy a bible after it is no longer useable; deleted the ongoing discussion (?) (after reading some comments) about whether or not to preserve Autocat listserv; had to "hold down the fort" alone this morning as one staff member took the day off to be home with her kids for fall break, another called in sick, and the third didn't come in until noon. Our college is also on fall break, so there was very little activity in the library. It did give my cataloger and I time to visit the seminary and photocopy more title pages of books housed there. She will catalog them, and we will return to put spine labels, and barcodes on the books, adding them to our collection. Interestingly enough we are adding back into our collection books that had been withdrawn and 'given' to the seminary. Now the thought has changed to make the seminary collection part of the library's holdings. This looks better for accreditation, too.

Since yesterday was my first day back to work since last week, I realized I was thinking it was Monday. But it took me till in the afternoon for it to hit that it was Thursday, even though I 'knew' it was. But I had planned my meals as though it was Mon/Tues, instead of Thurs/Fri.

I have done some scouting around to see what kind of set up, agreements, or consortiums are in eastern Europe to help libraries. I have contacted people from 3 organizations with some interesting feedback. We'll see where this will lead. I am debating about doing a presentation of my trip to Bulgaria at ACL next year. That may lead into what can be done for librarians in eastern Europe. But I'll have to admit, I'm a little trepidatious about doing that as I never have before. The deadline to let ACL know is next week. I think I need to get some questions answered before I decide.

Someone asked on the ACL listserv as to what help your hobbies have had in your profession. So I started putting a list together. I'll have to post it later as now I am not at the same computer. Also check out some earlier blogs about things I have learned from my hobbies that can help my profession. I may end up helping on a round table at our next ACL conference regarding this topic.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

The Kroeker Mouse

It was late at night, several hours after the library had closed. Because of summer hours the librarian had stayed late to paint flowers on the bathroom wall. Taking a break she sat at her desk checking her email. A soft sound of paper crinkling caught her ear. The staff had suspected some uninvited guests in the desk drawers because of the pile of torn paper that had been found.

Taking the chance of being heard she tiptoed as quietly as possible to the source of the sound. She pulled open the suspected desk drawer. Suddenly, one of God’s little creatures looked up with shiny black marble looking eyes – with a surprised look that seemed to say, “OH! Hello! Who are you?” Well, Miss Librarian wanted to ask him the same thing, thank you!

Before she could ask, her new found friend did an about-face and headed for the back of the drawer as fast as lightening, leaving behind a dime sized puddle. The muffled rattle indicated he was headed down. Below the drawer was not another drawer, but an open shelf like space with books of various sizes stacked inside. Because of the configuration with the books, the little brown mouse found a little space. He stuck his head out and lo-and-behold, that “strange woman” was still there. (“OH! You’re still here!”) Or, so his face seemed to say. – “Well, - humph, so are you!” she thought. Once again he headed for the back of the desk and this time he managed to escape without running into the big scary woman of a librarian, again. The next day she reported her encounter to her staff with the unwanted patron, culprit of disappearing cookies and candy, but leaving the wrappers behind.

A few days later, one of her friends was working at another desk. She heard a noise! She looked down into her trash can and let out a loud yet subdued, “WHOA!” There was our new friend. He had apparently fallen into the trash can and couldn’t get out. Stunned by the unexpected encounter with a four legged, black eyed, furry looking creature, she was stunned into a frozen response.

Another staff lady came to her rescue – and the mouse’s – gathered the top of the trash bag in her hand and headed out the door. Once outside and away from the front door of the library, she opened the bag and set the creature loose.

That mouse lived to tell the tale of getting caught in Kroeker Library and being set free. How differently his biography could have been written as his life could have ended right there. Instead, he had been set free upon the rest of the unsuspecting world!

There's a tradition in many libraries to have a library pet, usually a cat. Here are some websites for such examples:
Library pets
Library Pet-Gecko
Library Pets - Frogs

Then there's virtual pets and information on pets at libraries. And elementary virtual pets, and traditional library pets, a discussion of pets, a story of a library cat, and of course, another library as a source of information on pets.

What more could you want?

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

SOFIA 2006

In November 2000 I had the privilege of attending the Sofia 2000 conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. I was still in Library School at that time and was able to get involved in staffing this conference. It was an experience I will never forget although I don't think I contibuted that much to it. Ever since I have always wondered what can I do to make use of that experience.

Sofia 2006 is coming up again soon and I wish I could go, but not being a student, I do not qualify for the grants I got the first time. But I did do some looking around to the current website for this year's conference. One thing led to another and I found some interesting sights. I got to thinking about what is available in Bulgaria and even Eastern Europe for libraries and even more than that for academic libraries of seminaries and institutes.

I'm going to do some more research but watch my blog to see what I come up with and what I decide to do with that information. I've got some ideas "boiling." Eastern Europe is involved in "rapids of change". Our theme for our ACL conference next year is also along the same line. So we shall see what develops.