My delight on a Friday night at one and nine a throw

It's back to business as usual.

"I know you're busy, but when will we be getting those figures?"

Oh yes. And while we're at it,

• Let's ask the Acq. Team to provide a list of the periodicals held in the Reference Library because the Reference Librarian has decided not to know
• Let's ask Sybil for copies of government reports that are freely available on t'interweb.
• And let's give Maudie and Maise a heap of expenses forms that should have been submitted last month.
• And a water bill that should have been paid last November.

The end of the financial year is a piece of piss for them who have been conspicuous by their absence.

Ah... ignore me. I'm tired and a tad depressed about this place. There's a golden rule that states that you should run off the stock status report for the statutory returns, collate them and hand them over but on no account actually look at the results. And every year I do.

The people who should be looking at the results aren't much fussed because they think that performance statistics are numbers invented at random by God. So it is that while less than a tenth of most collections are on loan, the response to the popularity of the Richard & Judy Collection has been to box up and send duplicate copies back here because they don't want more than one copy of a title at Catty; or to put half the collection on a trolley in the librarian's office at Umpty because the Library Assistants aren't allowed to rejig the shelving to display this collection.

The reaction to having 42% of the Children's Picture Storybook Collection on loan is to complain that Frog buys too many picture storybooks.

And, of course, there is far too much demand for the 78% of the non-fiction stock languishing on the shelves to allow bulk loans to teachers for school projects...