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

I started my first job today. I'm working at the library shelving books.

Ooh, that's pretty cool! Do you get paid?

Yup. For the past three years or so I have volunteered at the library, but now that I'm of age I am an actual employee.

Very cool.

Excellent!

Great, Wyatt.

Well done,
I always wanted to be a librarian, I old books.

Nice!

break out the soft drinks

I used to work at a library cataloguing books. Remind me to tell you about it some time. 'Twas great fun.

TRiG.

Hey TRiG, remember when you said you'd tell me sometime about how you catalogued books at a library?

Right, right, right.

The library in our school was a haphazard and little-used collection of books on shelves. It was never, to my knowledge, opened, nor was it in any way organised.

Toward the end of one school year I was aproached by the headmaster and asked if I wanted summer work computerising it. They'd bought a new computer with the school library software Alice for Windows. They also had several sheets of barcodes, each beginning with R1700 (I have an excellent memory for meaningless numbers). So I sat in an office for the summer sticking barcodes into books, and then scanning in the barcodes and the ISBN barcodes on the backs of the books. We had a CD which gave bibliographic details for all books with barcodes. It was quite good fun, actually.

When school started the library opened. A couple of months later the computer crashed and we had to start all over again.

A teacher of geography was appointed to serve as the librarian. She knew little about computers, so I did much of that work. Many first-year students did other jobs, such as putting the books on the shelves and covering the books.

I was paid for my summer work, but not for my lunchtime work, which was great fun. (Though it had the strange effect that, going into sixth year, I had more friends in first and second year than in my own.)

I finished school. On the first day of the Leaving Certificate, I sat my English exams in the school buildings. The rest of my exams were held in the Youth Centre across the road, because the school burnt down that night.

I went to college for four years, and came out looking for a job. I couldn't find one. Then I got a phonecall out of the blue from my old librarian. A school in the next town had bought the same computer system, but the English and History teacher who was trying to set it up had very little time and wasn't good at computers. Was I interested in a short-term job? Yes! (The few books that had already been catalogued had to be deleted and redone.)

I was working alone most of the time. I was supervising kids who were in occasionally putting books on shelves and selotaping up the older and more delapadated books. I was teaching the teachers how to run the computer. I was having a wonderful time.

It came to an end, of course, when the job was finished.

Now I'm back to cleaning windows, and am still looking for a proper job.

TRiG.

Burnt down, indeed!

It was burnt. It burned down. The books, I discovered later, were not burnt, just smoke damaged. Their edges were trimmed and the library reopened.

That was in 2001. The school is still operating mainly in prefabs.

TRiG.