h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ill check it out, tommorow. ok, thats it. ill be happy if i an afford a small car and a 2 bedroom flat. and a nice retirement house. one bedroom of course.

In the States, the pay depends on the size of the library. The large ones pay pretty well. Library laws are different depending on which state you live in. In my state most public libraries are funded with property taxes. So in small towns - unless it's an extremely rich area - the taxbase is small making the income small making the wages low.

With my benefits package, I do fairly well compared to those at some small to medium libraries. One way I do this is to use less staff, which means we all stay extremely busy. But everyone here would rather that than to have more staff and lower wages. It makes it rough when we have vacations, illness, etc. Then I wind up working 6 day weeks. And since I'm on salary, I don't get paid for the extra hours I put in.

i dont know how the pay works here in scotland, but i hope its ok. not that it really matters. as long as i have a good enough pay to live on. im very domesticated.

Hi, Johanna, I work in a university library in England, and pay can start for library assistants at 9K per annum, but is generally higher than that, with qualified librarians getting paid more. I'm not sure about public libraries, though.

If you want to do a librarianship qualification, you generally need to have experience of library work of some kind first - if you plan on doing a 'normal' degree first, some libraries offer graduate placement schemes, where you work there for a year after your undergraduate degree and they then fund some or all of the cost of librarianship courses. Aberdeen is quite good for library courses in Scotland, but the top place in the UK is Aberystwyth.

David

ive been told by numerous sources about aberistwith (which i cant spell) but i dont thuink i could handle being so far away from home. my predic is that every time i look for a library course, no matter what i look for, i always get info abou the college/uni library. i was thinking of going to strathclyde U. maybe. if they have the right courses here

There's a web page by the library association (called CILIP these days) which lists all the places which do library courses in the UK. I'll try to dig that up at work on Monday.

thats graet, ill google for it and have a look!.

sorry, cant talk much now, but ill say more tomorrow

Here you go:

http://www.cilip.org.uk/qualifications/where.html

thtas great.

Ok, here's my po'd librarian rant of the day.

We're going to move out of our building this summer so it can be remodeled and an addition built onto the back. So, one of the things I'm doing now is a general weed. Why move and store then move back items that aren't circulating?

Here's what I don't understand. I've discarded a lot of books and put them on a sale table for a quarter each. They are selling like hotcakes! Please explain why. No one wanted to read them or we wouldn't have taken them off the shelves. So, the same person who didn't care enough about the book to check it out will pay a quarter for it and then take it home and read it. I know a quarter is cheap, but the amount doesn't matter. It's the principle of the thing. Not only are they paying to read something they could have read for nothing, now they have to find room for it in their bookcase at home.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit ? These books are not collector's items.

But plausible.

I know that in the past I've seen books for sale in my (then) local library that I've brought and enjoyed. I just hadn't seen them on the shelves. But I can see what you mean about it being frustrating.

Just finished a stint on the issue desk...

A member of the academic staff came and borrowed a 7-day loan. These books are the key texts for each course, hence the shortened loan period and some quite evil fines on them. She informed me that she wouldn't be in until Tuesday week (11 days time) and asked if it could be extended until then. The standard response is 'no'. "Oh, I suppose I'll get a fine then." "Not as long as you renew it before it's due back." "But I won't be in." "You can renew by telephone, e-mail or over the internet, and as long as you renew it some time after this coming Tuesday, you'll have it for long enough." "Well, in that case, can you write a note in your diary for next Wednesday to renew it for me?"



How rude! Imagine what my diary would look like if I started doing that...

i dont know h0ow much a quarter is in this country, but it think its like, 20p and i would buy all the books, regardless of ow good they were, at that price. my god.

I used to buy lots of books. Then I ran out of shelf space. And they needed dusted. And we moved about every 3 or 4 years because of my husbands job and it was a pain moving all of them. And most of them I would never want to read a second time, so why keep them? Anyway, we took inventory and we had around 3,000 books. (My husband bought a lot of them, but acted like it was all my fault. )So we donated most of them to a University booksale. Now, I only have my favorite books that I know I will want to reread. And he only kept his favorites. So we're down to around 200. If I see something I wantot read that we don't have at teh library, I buy it, read it then donate it to the library. No dusting!

i re-read books constantly. i think i have about 500, maybe 750, i dont know. i have 2 bookshelves worth.

i re-read books constantly. i think i have about 500, maybe 750, i dont know. i have 2 bookshelves full
.

You have to check out this site. It's a hoot!

http://www.warriorlibrarian.com/

Wish I'd thought of some of this stuff. Check out the error messages for library opacs.

Endless hours of chortling there. Thanks for the link!

wow. nice page


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