We're taking a bit of a breather while the world rearranges its underpants. Meanwhile, the other blog is here.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Do not drive into smoke

Catty Library's been closed all year while they put new walls, ceiling and floors onto the building. Rumour has it that it'll soon be re-opening (possibly the same rumour that had it re-opening in May, June, July and August). So now Julia's starting to think about getting something different stock-wise for the library's opening. Like the unlicensed DVDs that were bought for Roadkill or the e-books that are still in Doreen's office. Noreen was delighted to find that she's got to order a pile of children's MP4 audiobooks "urgently." Bronwyn spent an hour turning the marked-up supplier's catalogue into a list that could actually be used to create an order (including finding the ISBNs of the items that had been obliterated by the 'buy this' ticks). Even so, Noreen's still a bit brittle about it all (too much experience), so it came as no surprise to find her going through the worry list.

"What collection are we buying them for? I'll need that for the order."

Luckily enough, Bronwyn had the sense to ask me what we needed to do so that we could decide on the collection and loan rules for these items. Luckily she's not afraid of making decisions so it only took us five minutes to sort. In any other walk of life this would be an asset to her career development but hereabouts she's labouring with a disability.

"I just wanted to check this with you; you don't have to do it now."

"No, no, now's the time to do it. Noreen and Betty will be relieved at only having to do the cataloguing once this time. Instead of the usual rigmarole with Mary."

All was plain sailing until Noreen asked:

"Which budget are we paying for these from?"

Bronwyn's got authority over the stock but not the budgets, so she had to ask Mary. Who threw her toys out of the pram because she didn't know anything about it. She's put the blocks on the order until she's had a chat about it with T.Aldous.

The one sure bet is that this urgent order's going to be phenomenally more urgent by the time it comes to being sent!

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