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

... your computer system isn't working.

It was taken down for maintenance for an hour last Friday, didn't come back until 6pm on Wednesday, and died again this morning. There's only so much shelving and photocopying you can do before you go insane...

Any suggestions of other ways of passing my time in a vaguely work-related fashion?

The new intake of students begin arriving on Monday, which is a bit of a pain.

David

Read shelves?

We're packing for our move into temporary digs. You don't want any suggestions from me right now.

Hyp

Yikes! Have, um, fun doing that... Stock relocation can be such a joy, can't it?

David

We're moving down to the bare walls. most of it will have to be stored in a warehouse and we'll have to retrieve items for the public. Sure you don't want to take a year off and come join the fun?

What a job!!!!

I hope it's up again today David. Our system went down whilst we were trying to enrole students, only ours stayed down for a week and half.

All is funtioning again now, and the students are back and rampaging round.

You could evaluate your fiction stock. I've spent a large part of the summer doing that here. I suppose being a Uni library you won't have a suitable section unless you've got students training as teachers.

It's back! We do have a good fiction selection, though, which is indeed due to being a teacher training place (amongst everything else).

Last year, we were hacked into (why???) and had no system for a month at exam revision time. That was more than a little stressful. It is now known as "The Month of Doom".

Hope Hypatia's move goes well, and enjoy the start of term, Odo!

David

Do you have any sports students? Or indeed a group you spend the entire time evicting about five mins after they've trouped in through the door? (possibly not as your a uni not an FE college). I could see why some of our lot would love to hack into our system and cause chaos.

For a whole month!! You poor things.

I wish her loads of luck with the move, it must be a complete nightmare.

Hi guys. I have board meeting tomorrow, so today will be spent getting ready for that. Computers are both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes I think we were better off in the pre computer days. There was certainly less stress. Hope they keep working.

I've been weeding lately. This time I put more emphasis on circulation figures than in the past. I'm really tired of giving shelf space to items that he public has no interest in reading - regardless of their merits. I worked out a compromise and moved some of the older authors who aren't circulating out of fiction and into the 800's. That let me spruce up my fiction section and still keep some of my old favorites.

We do have sports students, but I can't imagine any of them being clever enough to hack our system to pieces.

Weeding is quite good fun once you overcome that initial librarian-type reluctance to throw anything away. Things that no-one was borrowing from our stock often ended up going home with a member of library staff... We have such eccentric interests that we actually wanted stuff which no-one had borrowed in over twenty years.

The things we've weeded from our teacher-training resources section can be quite scary. Thirty-year-old books on teaching genetics and the like.

David

Perhaps your right about sports students getting into our system, but I know they're out to make our lives as difficult as they can here atm.

I need something to do. The library is tidy, I'm on my own in here, nobody needs anything doing and I spent yesturday afternoon curled up with a book so I'm not in the mood for that atm. It's only 9:40 I can't retreat to the office yet!!!!

You could hide certain popular sports books so the evil students can't find them...

Heh heh heh.

The new undergraduates have started here this week and we're being inunudated with queries like "Can you tell me where the library is?" and "What should I be doing now?"

David

Are you all HE Librarians?

I'm a solo in the NHS - and when I *cough* have a quiet spell I try to "catch up on my reading" to "support my professional CPD".

No, I'm in an FE college.

We've already hidden the sports books, we had to re-shuffle the shelves at the end of last term to fit all the books in when they eventually all returned.

If I have one more studnet asking "Can we take books out?" I'm not going to be able to hold my tongue any longer. 'No, of course you can't take books out, after all this is a library'

They really ought to have designed a sarcastic smiley!

Are you able to afford the security strips for your books to cut down thefts? I've had another entire set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy just vanish off of the shelves. It's so frustrating.

Well, the city council has changed the closing date on me again. This is the third time I'm having to call vendors and the phone company, etc. to cancel installation orders. I am not a happy librarian. the excuse this time is the hurricane. the price of plywood has more than doubled. Well, the building is going to be buildt out of steel and stone. The only wood is going to be in the roof. And we're going to refinish the wood in the old building, so we don't have to buy trim. So what the heck does the price of plywood have to do with anything?

I'm also told that building costs have dramatically increased because we're shipping lumber to Iraq to build houses. It's amamzing how things thousands of miles away play a part in local issues. Anyway, now they're supposed to put the job out for bids in 3 or 4 weeks. I'm going to be a raving lunatic before this project is finished. The only bright spot is that John Q Public is mad at the city, not me.

Hurrah! Mr Public has at least got the sense to blame the city.

Poor you, all this must be driving you crackers.

We've got security strips in all our books here, and some in some of the more popular journals. The only problem is that the alarm system on the main door is faulty. there are times when it juse doesn't go off, and occasionally it'll sound when some poor shy countryside studies students walks in through the door in his socks carrying his steal toe capped boots. Talk about red faces, you can't help chuckling a bit.