Monday, January 28, 2008

winds of change

The winds of change are a-blowin'! I'm dying to "tell you" but I do need to put it off a little while longer. But we're excited (my husband and I). We spent some time last week on this mystery. We got in a nice little bit of rest and relaxation at the same time in a beautiful setting. With it always comes worrying (oops, "be anxious for nothing") about timeline and dovetailing. Good things are happening and beginning to happen.

Stay tuned. :-)

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Depersonalize

It is so easy to let our emotions get in our way of making wise decisions and directing our reactions. But one must strive to maintain objectivity when reaching for a goal.

I have steadfastly, for some time now, contended that a cataloger, even without a degree or previous experience needs to be paid more than any other entry level staff position in this institution.

I have researched, compared, and reported my findings to my A. D. He even agreed with me that they should start out at a higher level. The business manager shot it done because it’s not the current policy.

However, policies should serve the people not dictate/rule over them. Today I was encouraged to learn that the administration is going to review how the wage rates are determined. Hopefully this will end up with “this” entry level job getting paid more then “that” entry level job. It’s not always apples to apples. In fact, hardly ever is.



…Sometimes it’s a fruit salad!  (whatever that means!)

Monday, January 07, 2008

Policies, politics and frustrations!

In “Library World” especially in the academic realm, it is well known how we continually struggle with ‘the powers that be’ in trying to get accomplished what we see as a need in the library – whether it is who has the final say in what is bought for the collection, to the need for changes in facilities, to recognizing the level of work library staff people do (whether professional or paraprofessional) compared to other office workers in other departments.

Such was the case recently here. I lost my cataloger of over 2 years to a better paying job. She was finally worth her salt but, alas she was gone! She is a divorcee and is therefore the only source of income for her household-of-one. In preparing to hire a replacement, I was attempting to convince folks the need to pay a cataloger more than just an entry level amount. On top of the convincing task I had, we are also a private, small institution therefore our pay scale is low anyway. When I discussed this with my academic dean, he asked me to do some research with other like institutions and report back to him. This was also broadened to include my need to replace my circulation supervisor that quit last August. The research was done and handed in.

In the meantime, the dean has had his own world events to deal with which ended up increasing his load this semester, not to mention the stress. Now throw Christmas vacation in the mix.

I found someone to hire last week and went back to him for a decision. We came up with a dollar amount and I then was given the task of talking to our business manager. I contacted him, gave him the information and was greeted immediately with “but that’s not our policy” – end of sentence! I told him I did not like being the ‘middle man’ and suggested that he get with the academic dean and discuss it with him. Two minutes later the phone rang and the b. m. said “it is $X.” Okay – I told him. That was such a quick response that I would be willing to “bet” there was no discussing about it between the two individuals. It was probably more of a one way conversation of this is how it’s going to be. Period.

Well, I tried. Life is too short. But I have an appointment with the a.d. later this week, and I know I will have his full attention. So, I am going to pursue this one more time. I don’t die easily. I know there are times you’ve got to buck the system. Policies are made to serve the people, not dictate. Me-thinks we have a dictator here.

cataloger

Got a new cataloger hired! She started today. Yeah!

Friday, January 04, 2008

Will e-books put old books out of business?

I just read an article (see URL) that talks about e-books and the coming and improving technology of having books online and downloadable, and what that will do to future authors – both those with narrow audience appeal and those bigger authors who like the idea of not having to share the wealth generated by their success.

The author’s point all came down to e-books eventually becoming successful and books as we have known them in the past as becoming obsolete. I think I would disagree with that point. Being a librarian and “keeper of the books” doesn’t completely have anything to do with my opinion. It’s more of realizing the nature of high technology today and what it’s going to do in the future.

Think about it for a moment. With every new invention, innovation, or change in technology it is always toted as the newest, biggest and of course the best. Information will last forever on this new “whatever.” Then within in a decade or sometimes even less another new form of digitization comes out. Look at the history of technology. We have gone from transistor radios, LP and single records, reel to reel cassette tapes, & 8 tracks (which were short lived), to audio cassettes, compact discs (“CD’s”) iPods and MP3 players, with many others and many variations in between.

Every time a new technology is introduced, a whole new industry has to be invented to support it. But not with books. A book is a book is a book. Now, I don’t deny the various qualities of books over the years, (and centuries). Books produced on pulp paper in this last century don’t hold a candle to the one’s from previous centuries. But all in all, book technology is a much more stable technology than “hi tech” is. We have books that go back for centuries and are still discernable and readable. Even cave writings are ‘readable’. How many people can still listen to their 8-track, (provided they even own one)? Every time a format changes in technology, you have to transfer your information over to the new technology or you lose it; it becomes useless in its former state.

Okay, on the aside here, I do sometimes think “they” purposely try to make something obsolete to force the creation of new jobs, or the generation of making more money. But that’s another issue.

Then we are dealing with lost information.

Hopefully, we will not get so taken up with technology that we – in our hurry to stay up with the times – don’t throw out all those books, because they take up too much room, or they cost too much money to maintain, or… whatever, only to discover that when they did and the ‘new’ technology has become unstable and is upgraded, we discover we have lost information that will never again be regained - unless we want to repeat history and go through the Dark Ages and out again.

It scares me when I think of all the union catalogs are thrown out because we have it on-line now. (Okay – that’s a librarian’s thing.) What if the OCLC WorldCat database crashes? They have now reached over a billion records. How long did it take to get to that many the first time? How long do you think it would take to do it all again? It wouldn’t be done overnight, that’s for sure. Okay, so they have backups. But it’s all the same technology. What if – for some reason, not too unreasonable – something goes wrong with that technology? What then? You can’t look a CD and ‘see’ what information is stored on it. You can a book.

Hopefully we’ve learned that lesson not to do that. Let’s not get carried away here and throw away the baby with the bath water (baby being the Information and bath water being the technology it’s sitting in.) Our new technology is a wonderful thing and it has done things for our world, cultures, economies, governments etc that even the inventors never dreamed of. But as wonderful as that is, we need to step back, take a look at all of the history of information and analyze the statistics of it all, it’s impact and it’s potential for disaster. Now, I’m not meaning to sound all “doom and gloom” about technology. I love it. But let’s not get in a big hurry here.

So will books with pages you can turn be completely replaced by the e-books technology? E-books may become very popular and more accepted by the grassroots populace, but doing away with old books completely? I don’t think so.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

You never know what you're going to find

Well, our holidays are over and so is my vacation. I really like my job, but it was nice to have a couple of weeks off.

Before we closed down for our semester break we had an unusual visitor at the library that I thought I would tell you about. EB in acquisitions was helping SS go through boxes of donated books. She opened a box and gasped. "Is that a real snake?"

Well you know that got everyone's attention real quick! We all got up to look and sure enough, stuck to the outside of the box on some of the tape was a small dead and dried baby snake!!! Believe or not, I took the little critter and put him through our small laminator so I could "preserve him forever." Thus he is laying here on my desk in front of me as I type.

Well, one of the ladies commented, "Wouldn't it be something if we found the mother snake in here!" The mind-picture and the thought of that got me laughing. But it was preceeded with an intake of air. One of my staff ladies thought that gasp of air meant I saw Mama! She sorted of shrieked and jumped back. "What!? Did you see it!?" she asked. Then I really did laugh! Finally everyone calmed down when we all realized the "gasp" was from the THOUGHT of seeing a Mama snake, not because I really did see one.

You know, not everyone that comes in the library is there to read a book. Some just like to be next to one - up close and personal. Hopefully we won't get another one like that for a while - not even a dead one.

What unusual visitor have you had?