Rain, rain, go away

Click here for a video clip of the drains overflowing - the water is at the front of the building, outside the Council Office, but just the same as the one Patou and I were watching landing on the Courier van at the back of the building.

It's raining again and I hear thunder - Ian, Rob, Ishbel and Zanny are having a day at the beach and have gone to Manly.

Rita (the Library Courier) has just let Gillian know that there are now two raincoats upstairs . . . just in case.

Normal transmission will be resumed shortly . . .

We had a bit of excitement at work yesterday afternoon when we had a severe rainstorm and the library was flooded.

Patou and I were sat at my office window, happily watching a large spout of water coming off the roof and landing on the Library courier's van when the "Help!" call came from the branch staff upstairs.

We dashed up, armed with buckets, to help out - drips from the roof in the Reference area. The photocopiers drenched, water streaming in at the front doors. I ran to get a broom and bucket and mop and began to try brushing the water away from the front door.

Gillian appeared, absolutely drenched. What had she been doing out in the rain? She hadn't been outside at all - she had been in the Children's area, hurling books off the shelves and over her shoulder as she tried to save them from a torrent of rain coming through the roof on to the shelves and floor.

With water coming through the light fittings in several parts of the building, the library was unsafe and we closed it. It took a while for the library to empty though - we couldn't chuck the borrowers out into THAT!

We spent the last part of the day drying off books, furniture, mopping water out of the carpte tiles and moving furniture so the wet carpet underneath could dry.

Today the library is closed and there are big fans blowing to try and dry the carpet before it gets too smelly.

At some stage all the books in Reference and Children's will need to go back on the shelves.

I have suggested we put the books back in colour order as I have recently done my bookshelves at home

- they will look much prettier and, though I can't find what I'm looking for, I do find other stuff I'd forgotten about! And customers come in asking if we have that book with the red cover . . .

Melbourne Cup

It's the Melbourne Cup day today. It's about 7 minutes to 3 so the race will be starting soon. People flapping about here trying to get the TV to work - it's usually used to display what the security camera in the Council office is recording. We might have to race down to Retravision if it doesn't work!!

I've got $6 riding on 3 horses but I don't know who they are at the moment.

Laughing at work

Gillian had me in hysterics yesterday (I hope this reads as funny as it was at the time).

Gillian took a book off the cataloguing shelf called Dear Editor . . . The collected letters of Oscar Brittle. And she read from the flyleaf : "To some newspaper and magazine editors, who don't have time for his 'exploits', he is 'opinionated' and 'divisive', while others 'don't know what to make of him'. to some readers he is 'living in the past'; an 'arrogant toff' who needs 'a drink poured over his head'. To his growing legion of fans - those who understand him - he is 'commendable' and 'heroic'; a man of ideas, of pedigree, of unimpeachable integrity, and, quite simply, the most significant and powerful contibutor to public debate in contemporary Australia."

Then Gillian read a few excerpts :

"There are so many things that make me cranky, I don't even know where to start."

Oscar Brittle, Killara, NSW in The Australian Monday February 27, 2006

"Dear Editor,

After six years of painstaking research, I am able to conclude that all of the world's conspiracy theories are the work of one man. That man is Derek Ronald Jenkins of 12 Millwood Lane, Cambridge, United Kingdom. (Block out the address if you need to.)

Facts simply do not lie.

Jenkins has been placed at the scene of some of the most newsworthy events of the last fifty years - the My Lai Massacre, the murder of Lord Mountbatten and the Oklahoma bombings. He has well-established links to the CIA, the KGB, the BBC and the Black Hand. He spends up to 80 hours per week on the internet and last year received England's fourth highest annual private telephone bill. His blinds are usually drawn. He has got to be up to something."

Rejected by the Hobart Mercury

and

"Dear Editor,

I have recently been self-diagnosed with prostrate cancer - thanks to the electric internet and some gentle prodding. However, I still have a few questions. How can I skip the middleman and convince a surgeon to go ahead and operate? Or is it possible to 'self-medicate' in these situations and remove the wretched gland myself? I'm very tempted by the latter, I must admit."

Rejected by the New Idea magazine

This all had me nearly hysterical and certainly in tears with laughter. My hysteria only increased when the next book Gillian pulled off the shelf was called An exact replica of a figment of my imagination.

Away at a conference this week

Gillian and I have spent the last few days in Sydney at the SirsiDynix Asia Pacific User Conference 2009 in Sydney. (SirsiDynix provide the library management system which the Blue Mountains Library uses to issue and return books, catalogue them, etc.)

We have had an interesting and exhausting mix of business and pleasure.

We went to the theatre and saw an all-girl production of The Taming of the Shrew by the Bell Shakespeare Company (Gillian is still a bit traumatised!) and we tested iced coffee and hot chocolate at the Guylian cafe on Circular Quay (both highly recommended).

We had been to some of the libraries on the Library Tours so decided to catch everyone else up at the Customs House Library which is a really interesting building.

We also attended the conference dinner at the Overseas Passenger Terminal which has beautiful views of the Opera House.

As with any conference or other event there are some boring bits

and you have to take the good with the bad, but there were some compensations

and we have come away with some gems of information which make it all worth while.

In bad taste

My colleague, Patou, is very upset by Michael Jackson's death this morning.

Not because she was a big fan - No. Patou is a member of a group who have an annual tipping competition of sorts - this one earns points for predicting which celebrities will die during the year. And she's upset because she'd not picked MJ! The younger the deceased celeb, the more points earned.

She's been telling us she's been a member of this group for some years and has won on a number of occasions. Before submitting her 10 likely candidates she says, she does a lot of research. She keeps a document of likely contenders for the next year so an innocent remark about the newly diagnosed somebody will lead to hours of research into that person and their medical condition so she can work out whether the prognosis is dire enough to list them. The group members have parties where they dress in black and chat about their wins and losses that year. They argue about whether someone is eligible to be on the list or not.

All a bit odd? John reckons it's because she's French - his hypothesis being that all those hours spent knitting below the guillotine has left its mark on the French psyche!!!

Meanwhile, my friend Steve is sending bad taste Farrah and MJ jokes. Too bad to post here.

One for Dad

My colleague Gillian has been restless this afternoon, tossing tennis balls around and tutting or exclaiming over every book she's picked up to catalogue. To put myself out of my misery she has been sharing podcasting with me. From the Web 2.0 course we did late last year, I ran off with blogging and Gillian with podcasting.

As I've blogged before, the British Library have a Henry VIII thing going and I've had the podcasts coming into my RSS feeder for some time but hadn't done anything with them because my little cheapie MP3 player is stuck on scrambling everything and I hadn't the time or the wits to sort it all out. Last night I decided to give the Henry VIII podcasts a go and spent a blissful hour or so listening to (the rather snide at times) David Starkey declaiming Henry's early life - with lots of digressions. It was a bit uncomfortable at first. Our computer box sits on the ground and the cord for the ear plugs Rob had lent me wasn't very long and I quickly got a sore back. Ian came to the rescue, remembering we'd bought a new set of headphones when we bought the new 'puter and I was soon sitting upright and enjoying myself.

However, being a rip-roaring insomniac these days, I thought it'd be nice to be able to plug in the old MP3 and listen to it in the dark as Gillian does without disturbing anyone else. And so I came to put her to work. In the end it took no time at all to sort out my MP3 mixing woes and it's easy as to download files onto the MP3 player.

Gillian put me on to the BBC podcasts site where there are literally hundreds of podcasts to choose from. Look what I found for Dad: Scottish Football podcasts - and you could listen to the
English Football in Mandarin if you wanted to!

Weeding

One of my bugbears at work is tatty, out-of-date books not being weeded from the library shelves. Many of my colleagues hate to do away with anything but who wants to read a brown paged, dog-eared something from 1974? When I was in the branches I was quite ruthless and weeded constantly. Now I've found a blog that vindicates my stance.

The Awfullibrarybooks blog is a collection of the worst library holdings. "The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information. This blog contains actual library holdings. No specific libraries or librarians are named to protect the guilty. Check your shelves, it could be you".

As an EXCELLENT example of their craft, read this entry (the picture is a taster) - it contains a dire warning about what happens when you don't follow a regular weeding program . . .

Something up beat

This might take my mind off the fact that all that time I took updating the Staff Procedure Manual has been wasted because people don't use it when they need it and staff at one branch that will remain nameless but which Karen works very near got it horribly wrong on the weekend and the fact that some bogan just let her kids run riot round the library while she was on the 'pooter and one of them opened the fire escape door and set of the VERY LOUD alarm and then she said her little darling (the only one in the vicinity) didn't do it . . .

More validation

Love Letter to Libraries Part 2

Loving what I do

A couple of things I came across today that validate my work as a Librarian:


and a blog post, Love Letter to Libraries from one of my favourite blogs, Citizen Reader

Kabooooom!

Bit of excitement at work yesterday.

I was upstairs doing my weekly desk shift when Sarah, the branch manager, came through with hard hat and high-visibility vest on, shouting that the library needed to be evacuated. Thinking it was just a drill, I began to do the same to help her. It took us quite a while to get people out, they just carried on with what they were doing and Sarah had to get quite stroppy in the end. Still thinking it was a drill, I thought, "gee, she's assertive!"

Out in the bottom carpark we learned that Larry who works in the Council offices which are down on the lower floor along with the Library Admin offices, had taken a call saying there was a bomb in the building. Larry was so surprised (as would anyone be) that he had to get the caller to repeat himself. When Larry asked which building the caller just said, "you'll find out."

Vicki, our boss, and Larry had us out quite quickly although I was annoyed that although library staff were stopping people from entering the library, they didn't stop people from going down the lane beside the library, including children, and some staff were very close to a building that might have a bomb in it. They did eventually get the idea and the Police when they finally arrived, said they were pleased with how the library had handled the matter.

It took the Police and Fire folk a good 20 mins to get to us. They checked the building but meantime staff had been told it would be a while before we could get into the building and that we could go home if we wanted. Unfortunately, because I'd been up on the desk I didn't have time to grab my bag and keys so I couldn't go anywhere. We did finally get in about 4:30pm and I was able to complete the last 1/2 hour of my shift.

Now, the caller probably doesn't realise a few things:

1. Larry answered the Call Centre phone - it services both Katoomba which is the Council HQ and the Springwood Office. We reckon the caller thought they were calling Katoomba.
2. We have caller ID on our phones so Larry could see the mobile number being used to make the call - it's now with the Police.

It reminds me of the story of the two Aussie guys in America who held up a bank. They were caught because they were still wearing their name tags from where they worked! And talking to a friend this morning she said the Credit Union at Blaxland was held up years ago and the teller said the thief would have to fill out a withdrawal slip if she was to give him any money. And he did. With his correct name and membership details!!!!!!

Lost in translation?

Our new library poster

Last week my colleague (indeed the Boss) sent me this joke in an email:

Voted Best Scottish Short Joke

A bloke walks into a Glasgow library and says to the prim librarian,

'Excuse me Miss, dey ye hiv ony books on suicide?'

To which she stops doing her tasks,

looks at him over the top of her glasses and says,

'F**k off, ye'll no bring it back!'

I'd seen it several times before so read it, smirked (again) and deleted it.

Said colleague has just been in to my office to ask me what the joke was about. She said she'd been trying to work it out for days.

Was it the Scots she was having trouble with? No. It was the rudeness of the librarian's answer!

Not like a Blue Mountains City Library staff member at all!!!!!

Here's a fun game, inspired by comedian Ross Noble who I heard on the radio the other day asking: If you were a shape, what colour would you be?

That launched Ishbel and I on several minutes of silliness.

• If you were a hot water bottle, where would you go on your holidays?
• If you were a tomato, would you wear a bikini or a one-piece?
• If you were a chocolate biscuit, what public transport would you use?

Can anyone think of any more? Or answers to these ones?

All good news

Good News Item #1 : Jamie came home with this certificate yesterday. He entered a Science competition with the University of NSW and got a Distinction. Fabulous work!

Good News Item #2 : We seem to have a buyer for our house. They just need to come in to the estate agents and sign the paper work.

In the end there were two bidders. The first ones offered A$30,000 less than our asking price and were told there was no way we'd accept. The others offered spot on but the first ones upped all the way to A$10,000 more than our asking price and the others couldn't go any higher. Apparently they have already sold their house and needed to find something quickly.

So, we also need to come to a quick decision. Once they have signed their offer and we have signed that we have accepted it there is a 10 day cooling off period before it is definitely a done deal.

Jonathan from our real estate agency took me yesterday to see a former Defence Forces house at Winmalee. It was very nice and probably a sensible choice but the house we like in Blaxland (see picture below) is still available and has really captured my heart.

We have an appointment to see the Winmalee house all together on Sunday and are also waiting to see if we can make an appointment to see the Blaxland one on Sunday also. Karen said she'd come along for some independent thoughts.

Good News Item #3 : There was an all staff meeting today. I didn't actually go because it started at 8:30am at Katoomba, a thirty minute drive away and I don't start work until 9am. For me to go would mean either getting a friend to take Ishbel to school and I don't like to ask too many favours, or be out of pocket for before school care. So I offered to man the desk at Springwood Library instead. Gets me out of a boring time. Only it wasn't so boring this time. The library got TWO of the GM's Innovation awards. We won the category (can't remember which category at the moment, probably community something) with The Living Library event we held earlier in the year. And we got a highly commended for the Readers in the Mist library blog.