Paperchases

The things you learn... I bumped into one of the caretakers apparently struggling to get Santa's sack into the Outreach Van. It turns out that T. Aldous has issued orders that the old newspapers from the Reference Library should be taken to Tesco's and dumped in the recycling bins there. This saves us the cost of the Recycling Unit's taking the newspapers away and recharging us. But costs us the caretaker's time and the petrol for the return journey and makes us look silly.

Three seasons

It's that time of year again. Only this lunchtime Frog Dropmore and I were handing out sticks of rock to the poor huddled masses of the backroom staff (they were both in). This afternoon I find that some damn fool has installed a flashing Santa in the gents.

With one arm and one arm gone west, she ran like the devil and grabbed the rest

Preparations are in full swing for Trafalgar Day at Milkbeck Library. The Friends of the Library are in full sail with all strops flailing as they put into action the most comprehensive campaign of patriotic fervour and cultural awakening since the Festival of Britain. Reality checks are made difficult by the chairlady (sic) of the Friends being both utterly selfish and venal and also the sister-in-law of the Mayor, Councillor Donkeyhanger. She has told the Helminthdale Examiner that the library will be bedecked with bunting and that once inside the hundreds of milling throngs from the local community will be enthralled by a life-size diorama of the death of Nelson; a local history talk on the Napoleonic Wars; face-painting; a puppet show; and storytelling sessions concentrating on stirring tales from our great naval past. As the available floor space in the library is roughly twice the size of the average living room, we'll have to let the walls out or something. The good news is that nobody's found a way to make any of this my problem. Yet.

Stock editing

We're looking at our stock performance against the national performance indicators. We're struggling because although we're buying lots of new stuff no one wants to throw anything out, so the shelves are literally so full that you can't prise a book out without having twenty or thirty of its fellows fall on the floor about your feet.

I asked why we still had two copies of the 1991 Guinness Book of Records on the adult catalogue at Umpty Library.

"People like to borrow the Guinness Book of Records."

"Yes, but the 1991 edition of the Guinness Book of Records?"

"It's the only one they've got at Umpty."

T. Aldous' solution was devastatingly simple: let's get rid of everything in reserve stock. Yes, that'll solve the problem of groaning shelves at Catty and Umpty. Expect strong words from the Stock Librarian next week!

English as she is spoke

Here's camp old Dolly recounting her dust-up with the gents in uniform on the way in to work. Apparently, they objected to her parking. Fair enough, but not for Dolly...

"'Who the hell do you think you are?' I said to him. 'If you want to give me a parking ticket you get someone higher up than the likes of you to do it. I want to see the supernintendo.' That told him."

One of the wind-up merchants had Dolly convinced that flat-pack wardrobes are called suppository furniture. Because you put it up yourself.

Triple negatives

Staff meeting. T. Aldous at his best...

"As you know, Education & Libraries had some consultants in last week to have a look at management styles within the department. We've had some initial feedback and it's quite disappointing really. We should have had someone who had some experience of libraries..."

"They said that I'm negative. I'm not negative at all. You know that I'm very approachable and open to ideas. They made a lot of suggestions about ways we should change the service but I can't see it happening in this council..."

And there should be prizes for things like this:

"They say that staff have problems getting themselves heard. I told them: 'I've not heard anything like that'."

Running colours

T. Aldous appears bearing a swatch and samples. Damn. I was rather hoping to get home before Christmas. Apparently it's Dutch Bend's turn for a lick of paint over the crumbling plaster and he's doing the usual exercise in canvassing staff views on colour schemes. The walls will be magnolia and the carpets will be green, because they always bloody are. I suggest sage blue and a carpet that looks like somebody's already vomited on it. The blue would be calming and the carpet wouldn't show the stains. It won't be the most outlandish suggestion. T. Aldous will consult everybody until somebody says "magnolia and a green carpet," which he will take as a mandate for the colour scheme. The game is seeing how long, and how many libraries, it takes to get there.

Pumpkins to the lot of you

It must be autumn... We've just had the first councillor telling staff at Umpty Library that they're not to do any Hallowe'en story promotions because they're unchristian.

It's almost worth getting the devil worshippers in to test the council's equal opportunities policy.

Thick wet blanket in case of fire

Fire inspection. In comes a guy with a clipboard who we all know is the one who sends rude emails whenever we report a broken window. He goes into reserve stock, looks around and tells the caretaker:

"I wouldn't have all these books in here, it's a fire hazard."

Oh dear

Until today a thirty-foot-long "Save the Catty Line" banner has adorned the Town Hall to protest about Whitehall plans to close this branch line. Today it has been taken down.

Somebody found out that the council didn't have planning permission for it.

Observation and deduction

The thirteen damp boxes of books that didn't sell at Windscape have been littering the main corridor for just over a week now. Today they have disappeared.

Panic all round: another inspection!

Watching the pennies while the pounds go down the plughole

Belt-tightening time again (yawn... when is it ever not?). For this month all new expenditure must be approved by departmental management team. Which is why six people on principal officer grades spent half an hour discussing the pros and cons of buying a £10 thermos flask for the children's activity unit at Helminthdale.

After reading the business case that Frog Dropmore had to spend twenty minutes writing to justify the proposed spending.

Shucks!

We've been trying to move the library out of Pottersbury Road Primary School for a couple of years without success. There are a few reasons for wanting to leave:

• The issue figures in the school holidays are crap and certainly not worth the cost of staffing the place;
• Monthly adult issue is in double figures; and
• As a landlord the school's on a par with Peter Rackman.

The relationship between the school and the library has always been difficult. Although the library is a paying tenant, the school treats it very much as part of its domain. We had official complaints about the colour of the kinder boxes; severe objections to paperback spinners ("these are very inconvenient when we want to use the room for classroom activities"); and they were very anti our having computers for public use on the people's network ("We are very concerned that people will come in to use these computers." T. Aldous, to his credit, replied: "we would be very concerned if they didn't.")

The decider for T. Aldous was his turning up to visit the library one day for a meeting and finding the builders in knocking down the walls of the staff room to expand the SureStart office. When he asked what the hell was going on Trudi Barleymow, the head teacher, told him that he had to move the network hub for the people's network some time that week so that the rest of the staff room could be converted for SureStart. Considerable force was added to the argument when the school doubled the rent to cover a budget shortfall caused by the building work.

So we went through the inevitable consultation exercise. Ms. Barleymow got herself in the local rag "battling for our school library" (nobody pointed out that it was supposed to be a public library). In the end, and true to form, the councillors decided not to make a decision and so the status quo prevailed, except for another small rise in the rent to allow for inflation.

The branch librarian's on leave this week so we've been covering Pottersbury Road with assistants from Helminthdale. They turned up this morning and found themselves locked out. The school had changed the locks and neither told us nor supplied keys. Mass panic as, of course, nobody's around on a Saturday who may have keys. Eventually, the caretaker was discovered in the local supermarket and the library opened an hour late.

I was all for not bothering and, instead, ringing the local rag to get a photographer in to get a picture of staff and customers subjected to a Victorian lock-out by a cruel landlord. "School shuts out the library it fought for" "We can't understand it; we always pay the rent in advance, even when it's been doubled without prior notice." Ah well, it was a nice dream.

Lie back in the long grass and watch the bucks passing by

The works department has checked out Spadespit Library and has decided that the dry rot has spread into the library from the old police station next door. The police haven't occupied this building since Dixon was a lad, but the works department has decided that the police should foot the bill for the repairs to the library. What makes this remarkable is that the council owns the old police station. This one will run and run.

We've advised the Branch Supervisor that she should get plenty of mattresses piled up in the cellar ready for when the floor caves in.

101 things you don't need a builder for

It's teeming with rain and it isn't flooding Grimly Library. This is a first in living memory. A few of the staff investigated the loft to try and discover why not. It turns out that a squirrel's drey has blocked the major hole in the roof. An email is circulated suggesting that the council's works department is replaced by squirrels.

I have died and gone to Hell

An apparently standard 'phone call of the "my mouse isn't working" variety turns into:

"Does the cursor move at all when you move the mouse?"

"A little bit."

"Hold the mouse up above the desk and put your hand underneath. When you move the mouse can you feel the ball rolling along your hand?"

"There isn't a ball..."

"Ah. I think I know what the answer is..."

"...we lost that the other day so I put a Malteser in the hole."

I want to go home

We're desperate for some new borrower cards. We ordered some only to find that corporate procurement had fallen out with the usual supplier and had decided to go out to tender. After the usual interval, a new supplier was selected; we put in the order, including some blank cards to use as templates and a note of the barcode number we'd need to begin the sequence. After two weeks I got this call:

"These library cards you sent us, they've got different numbers."

"Yes...?"

"You don't want all the cards to have the same number then?"

Son of chocolate teapot

T. Aldous has been trying to arrange a meeting with our corporate IT account manager for three weeks. 'Phone calls, emails, faxes, all to no avail. Eventually, this morning he struck lucky:

"I've been trying to contact you for a fortnight. You don't answer your calls, nor your emails, and nobody will take a message. We urgently need a meeting with you to try and get something moving."

"Can you ring us back in ten minutes, we're in the middle of a quiz."

Chocolate teapot 2

Obviously a day for it...

One of our application servers is housed with all the corporate servers, for 'convenience sake.' We couldn't access it. When I reported the problem I was told:

"This is supposed to be a turnkey solution; we don't support it. We suggest you contact the supplier."

It turned out that somebody over there had turned it off.

Chocolate teapot 1

Our corporate PC network managers have been fiddling with the firewall and closed down all the ports. We complained that we couldn't see our supplier's Java-based catalogue and explained what they'd done and how to fix it.

They replied that we should contact the supplier as they "obviously have a problem with their server."

Communications

We're piloting our corporate communications policy. We found out when T. Aldous spotted it in some committee papers.

Turns out that the policy is a CD-ROM that's been circulated around different sections of the council. That is one CD-ROM. Around different sections of the council.

Characters of our time

You'll think I'm making this guy up. It might help if you bear in mind that he was employed at a time when our lead officer thought it appropriate to ask interviewees whether they were likely to "fall pregnant" in the first two years of the job...

Harry Vaseline, one of our branch librarians, is a lovely guy, just a bit idiosyncratic. On my first day in the job I was introduced to him and told slightly later: "he has his own way of doing things, but that's just him. He was gassed as a child." It took me a long time to realise that he was the wrong age for this to have happened in any international conflict.

The most disruptive, but least alarming, of his habits is to go and disappear in the toilet for hours, literally, on end. Possibly because of his medical condition, but nobody's sure. He's built himself an outside lavatory at home. Every so often we get a 'phone call from his house mate first thing to say that "Harry's gone to the bottom of the garden so you may as well start without him."

His really alarming habit is to stand on his head behind the counter and explain at length about his lack of sex life. That goes down well with the punters.

A kick up the arts

Just when you thought... and this has to be one of the best of all time.

One of our branches closed for a week to be redecorated. Prior to this, in a let's-see-what-the-colours-will-look-like effort, they used a recently replastered bit of wall as a sort of palate. On re-opening one of the borrowers complained:

"Why did you spend all that money on the mural if you were only going to paint over it?"

Smoke and Spadespit

Things don't improve do they? I don't know how any of this becomes my problem, but it does...

The saga of Spadespit Library continues apace. Barring a couple of days when the Group Librarian — who has left since — decided the place could be open as she wasn't there, the earliest expected re-opening is next Monday. Until then a sort-of off-line service is continuing from a room in the Town Hall, while ridiculously a hundred yards up the road a small collection of books reside in the Council Customer Centre where they have full access to the library system.

Meanwhile back at the branch, they have discovered the floor and supports under it are riddled with dry rot and a further closure of at least six weeks will be necessary before the end of the year.

Health and Safety want to close the WHOLE building as there isn't adequate provision for fire exits from the staff room (there isn't any provision for fire exit from the staff room) and there aren't arrows on the dry rotted floor indicating the way out should there be a fire! The Branch Supervisor was told to close her eyes, spin round and then try and find her way out of the library without reopening her eyes, as that would be what it would be like if the place was full of smoke. As she pointed out, if it was that full of smoke she would be on the floor suffocating and, rather accurately, pointed out she wouldn't be able to see the arrows for the smoke anyway!

Actually I'm quite in favour of this business of closing branches where there isn't adequate fire exit provision as a rough estimate means we will have about three left open, a much more managable number.

Does anyone wonder why this madness is driving me insane?

¡Non passerans!

We found out why we weren't getting any deliveries today. The security guard on the gate to the parking area wouldn't let the vans in because the drivers didn't have ID matching the names on his list.

Open sesame!

First 'phone call of the day, from Catty Library:

"Hiya. We're locked out of the library. Can you arrange for us to get in?"

Just a minute... why ring me? Don't tell me they're blaming the computers for being locked in? Mind you, I could well understand the poor little buggers wanting to barricade the doors.

Plumbing new depths

Tom Thunderstruck rings from Spadespit Library. The library's had to be closed because of the new toilet. Not quite as lavish as Lakeside (but what could be this side of Las Vegas?), it turns out to be quite spectacular in its effect. The outflow pipe runs uphill to the external drainpipe. Which means that the toilet bowl acts as a sump. Not only does nothing flush away properly but having got as far as the drainpipe the effluent retreats downhill, pulling along with it any odd bits of untoward matter that was lingering in the drainpipe. After six days of this the whole library smells like nothing on earth. Even T. Aldous admits that this is intolerable and, eventually, agrees to the library being closed while a solution is found. Please can I send a message out to everyone to let them know (Tom daren't switch on anything electric in case the spark ignites the methane in the air).

I send out the message. Catty Library replies: "Does this mean that Spadespit won't be dealing with reservations our customers have placed on books there?"

Knock, knock, knocking at the library door

Seenbene Library sits in a park just off the main road. We're having continuing problems with prostitutes using the doorway and car park as a trading venue. We don't see them during library hours but there's plenty of evidence of their presence each morning. I was there this lunchtime and overheard this conversation between Derek the caretaker and Hettie, the assistant librarian:

"I'm sick of sweeping up condoms every morning. You'd think somebody would do something about it."

"They'll probably end up putting a condom machine on the wall of the library."

"I wouldn't put it past them. In fact, I'll bet Huxtable's put in a requisition for one as one of his money-making schemes."

"God, I hope not. They'll stick some gigantic income target onto it. We'd either have to encourage more prostitution or else the shortfall will be taken from the book fund."

We're working on some "Shag for literacy" posters, just in case.

Dumbcards

T. Aldous awakes from his e-government slumbers and shambles into my office. I growl, but to no avail. We do the dance.

"What are we doing about smartcards?" he demanded.

"You tell me," I suggested. "I've been asking you for a year what you want the smartcards to do."

"What do they need to do?"

"Whatever it is that you think we need smartcards for."

"Can we do it in time for the March deadline?"

"It depends on what you want to do."

"I'll put smartcards down as one of our strategic goals for this financial year then."

And off he trots. This conversation is wrong on so many levels I can only shrug it off and mentally walk away. I would suggest that smartcards could be used for booksales, monitoring use of old encyclopedias and withdrawn book statistics but it would be just my luck for this to become official policy to be delivered by Christmas.

The curse of doing things well

The curse strikes again. The last lot of inspectors were very impressed by Carbootsale Library so it immediately became a candidate for relocation around the back of St. Thomas à Didymus Primary School. Their draft report has arrived and it turns out that they also have nice things to say about Roadkill Library and its place within the community so it's now suggested that it should be co-located in the new SureStart complex on Dogtwitcher Road. There's less floor area than at the current library, so there'll be no space for the line dancers or for the full range of community activities that currently go on there.

Ardley Corduroy, our esteemed director, tells us again that co-location is needed so that the library can be made to appeal to the community.

Starting the week as we mean to go on

I think I've mentioned that T. Aldous' telephone is perpetually put through to an empty office so that he doesn't have to answer it himself. The rest of us spend our time having to drop whatever it is that we're doing to pick up the call, hunt the damned fool down to tell him that he's got a 'phone call and then kick our heels awhile waiting for him to finish his inevitibly prolonged and tortuous conversation (because he never says: "I'm on someone else's 'phone at the moment; I'll go back to my office and call you back"). Today we have a new twist. Sally took a call, bearded T. Aldous in his lair and came back to her desk. Along comes T. Aldous...

"Why did you pick up this call?"

"Because the 'phone was ringing and somebody needed to pick it up."

"Where's Edie? She should be picking the calls up if nobody's around."

"She's on her lunch."

"Tsk. This really isn't good enough, these things need to be co-ordinated."

"Look, we made sure that somebody was around to pick up your calls. The 'phone went. I picked it up for you. What's the problem?"

"I just don't think it's good enough."

"Councillor Winalot's still on the line. He wanted to speak to you, remember?"

It's amazing how many people have checked with Personnel that their job description doesn't include the phrase: "Personal Assistant to the Chief Librarian."

Outdoors if wet

It's autumn and the weather's on the turn so T. Aldous is talking about taking the gazebo out to Windscape Library to have a book sale in the car park.

You may wonder why we've got a gazebo. It stems from the time we were doing a Children's Book Festival promotion in the car park of a well-known supermarket. In a thunderstorm. Charity prevailed and the supermarket lent us a gazebo to shelter under. They later sold it to us at a knock-down price because it was shop-soiled. Actually, Edie Bedspread persuaded them to sell it for a tenner and after ten weeks' wrangling it was agreed that it could come out of petty cash.

Where are the songs of yesteryear?

In the old days, library systems administrators sang work songs to try and help get themselves through the day. Those days seem to have gone, but luckily enough there are folk musicians out there collecting them for posterity:

Calculus for beginners

On the subject of action plans a colleague points out another gem from management support services:

"We suggest that all libraries with below average issue figures should be reviewed with a view to closure and that this should be a continuing programme until such time as all the libraries in the area achieve at least average issue."

You'd be embarassed to make these things up.

Lights! Camera! Inaction!

For reasons we won't dwell on here a few of us realised just how many action plans the library service is running at the moment. We've got ones arising from each of the inspections so far this year. We've got ones for Best Value, corporate goals, CPA, e-government, Annual Position Statement, and of course F4F. We're running a sweepstakes on how many more there'll be by Christmas.

We've got all these action plans but none of us can think of any action that's been taken on any of them.

Value, trust and responsibility

Another day, another focus group. "I've been asked to provide a couple of library assistants for the focus group on operational management," T. Aldous tells Penny Dreadful. "They want to get an honest view of the library service's delivery of services and the way that we operate within corporate policy. It's important that they see that we're very open and that non-professional staff appreciate the value of their role in doing this. I'll be sending Nadia and Florence and I want you to go go along with them to make sure they're giving the right answers."

Penny's been on six focus groups so far this year, solely on the basis that she won't rock the boat and T. Aldous can bully her into going along and being on message.

Statistics for dummies

Corporate management support services excel themselves. A couple of people from this section have been reviewing the performance of the library service (like we're not being inspected to death as it is). Amongst the gems in their interim report is:

"We are concerned that the issue figures for nearly half the libraries are below average for the service."

Next week: consternation as the Pope's catholicism is revealed.

The end of another perfect week

Sure as eggs, on the stroke of locking-up time along trots T. Aldous to start talking to me about the problems he's having because someone or other wants Library Impact Measure statistics off of him. The impact measures were announced in March and, save emailing me a copy of the link to the press release announcing the measures three months later I'm not aware of any preparations to collect the necessary to report as required. Luckily, I had the sense to make sure that our computer system collected the stats for health-related stock (a treat and a half as the definition is based on a pick and mix of Dewey class numbers).

"I've sent you an email about impact measures," he says.

"I know, I've sent you a reply."

I put my coat on.

"When I went to the workshop they didn't say anything about requiring statistics six months later," he says.

Four times.

Never trust anything called a workshop that doesn't involve sheet metal working. Especially when it involves woolly-minded idiots like T. Aldous Huxtable who imagine that waffling around the edges of why something can't be done at the moment is the same thing as doing a job of work. I would have thought that calling something a Library Impact Measure suggests that something needs measuring.

"Can you get the figures I've asked for?"

"Yes, if I have a week to do it in and have nothing else to do."

I close down my PC.

"I tried looking at the report submission form but it doesn't work on my PC."

Given half a chance he'll tell me this two or three dozen times. His PC is five years old. He refuses to buy a new one but tells all and sundry that his email, and anything else that involves his being accountable for his inactions, doesn't work ("Someone keeps archiving my emails." "Don't click on the button that says 'Yes' when the auto-archive prompt pops up." "I thought if I say yes then it won't do it." "No, if you say yes then it will do it." "So how will I keep my emails then?" repeat ad nauseam). Having spent most of the week fighting a violent urge to slap the man I have no patience for this sort of nonsense. I get up and leave the office. The fool follows me.

"I'll ask you for the figures on Monday, then."

I clock out and take my leave. I'm reminded of the old song:

One evening in October when I was far from sober,
To keep my feet from wandering I tried.
My poor legs were all aflutter so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
We sang, "Never mind the weather just as long as we're together,"
Till a lady passing by was heard to say,
"All his self-respect he looses when such company he chooses,"
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

A beast of burden hard at its labours

T. Aldous has come in special to lug boxes of booksale books around the library. Nobody's quite sure where they came from. The thuderous looks on the faces of lending staff suggests that a useful competition could be had for ideas where the boxes could go.

Our chief librarian has come in on a Saturday to spend four hours pratting about with booksale books. I know for a fact that he spent an hour pricing up a pile of them because he sat right in my eyeline while he did it. Why he bothers pricing them individually I do not know as they're all the same price. I think calm thoughts of daisy-strewn meadows and balmy summer nights while calculating the necessary trajectory for a falling bookshelf to catch the edge of his desk and catapult him out of the window.

Once he'd done whatever it was he thought he had to do, he mooched around the library like the Ancient Mariner, talking at people until they saw bright lights and could smell a mixture of lime flowers and caraway seeds. As the staffing rota for the day looks like the landing crew of the Mary Celeste (we're carrying fourteen vacancies in this library alone and it acts as a feeder for cover for six branches) and Polly Kerosene wasn't going to get her lunch until four o'clock, it probably wasn't the best time for him to come out with: "I don't know why I always end up doing all the work in this library."

Oi ref!

Another Balkan trade directory?!? What are they doing, eating them?

Opportunity knocks but we can't hear because our heads are up our backsides

No pictures of our celebrity looking at the screen on the reference desk. No photos taken because: "he doesn't work there, does he?"

I ring the supplier to say that the deal's off and we won't be getting our nice discount on our next purchase after all.

Words fail me.

Sale of the Century

The big row early this morning concerned the lending library. T. Aldous wanted to move everything out of the entrance and fill it with boxes of withdrawn books for sale, brought over specially from the cellars of Milkbeck Library. Disregarding the fact that these boxes of books were in the cellars because they'd been in every booksale in the past eighteen months and not sold, T. Aldous saw this as an opportunity to gain some income. "Just think of all the people who'll be coming," he said. All dying to pick up a few over-priced dog-eared paperbacks, no doubt. The lending staff were furious as they'd spent two days tidying the area and putting together a display of Richard & Judy collections. Needless to say, T. Aldous won the day and the displays were carted off to make way for six trestle tables and a score of orange boxes full of tatty old stock. Still, it gives the right impression.

Nobesse oblige (or knobbly knees)

Well, that wasn't so bad. The reference library staff kept out of my way. T. Aldous and Reggie provided a model exhibition of free-form fawning that would grace any production of The Student Prince. Councillor Winalot didn't have a heart attack. And the celebrity was OK. He kept me talking for a good five minutes so hopefully we'll have a couple of pictures we can use for PR and get some favourable terms from our supplier.

The Professionals

We're having a celebrity up to open the new reference library (well, the shelves and walls are new, and that's all that counts in the end isn't it?). We'd rather hoped it might be Monty Modlin or perhaps even Titch & Quackers but it turns out to be minor royalty. We're on the sixth rehearsal so far this week and I've forgotten what day it is.

I play the role of computer-literate reference library enquiry desk staff. This is because none of the reference library staff fancied doing it, so Reggie suggested that "the technician should do it." (No jury would convict me.) My job is to stand at the desk and look 21st Century. I have been instructed that on no account am I to make a sweeping gesture at the shelves and say: "will you look at the old crap we've got out here."

Councillor Winalot is sweating profusely, the tension of it all is getting to him. He pretends to be regal and approaches the desk. Then he spoils it: "Now think on, lad, no offence but don't speak till tha's spoken to."

Reggie's on leave. He made such a fuss about the need for "professional" cover that Daisy Hill's been sent up from Bencup to staff the desk. She is so very professional that at five to five there was no member of staff up there; Daisy having left the desk unattended so as to hover backstage around the clock machine so that she can time out at the stroke of five.

One good thing from all this crap: if someone can provide me with at least one good photo of me showing the screen to the celebrity our software supplier has offered us a substantial discount in exchange of the publicity pics. I have emphasised the need for the photos to anyone who passes me by. It's a pain, but it'll be worth it.

Your tax pound at work

Reggie Clockwatcher enhances the reference libraries of Helminthdale yet again. This time it's a standing order for "The Cabmen of Northamptonshire." We have no obvious need for this reference work. Reggie's business case for spending £800 is:

"I got 10% discount by agreeing to buy it by 15th September."

Say goodnight to the folks, Gracie

Someone made the mistake of asking T. Aldous why he had his 'phone put through to his secretary when his secretary was on leave. "All your calls are going to an empty office."

"It makes it easier for people to pick the call up if I'm already on the 'phone. That way I'm not missing any calls."

Us is all information professionals, us is

Up to my neck in e-government work; 'phone red-hot with network problems; emails shouting at me to submit reports on projects. In trots T. Aldous.

"I need to provide a copy of the council's constitution for the inspectors," he says. "I rang the Excellence and Expediency Team [the proud authors of "Scoring Points by Ticking Boxes"] to get a copy. They say it's on the web. Can you get it for me?"

I sighed deeply. I'd asked somebody to make sure to keep the idiot well away from me so that I didn't kill him (I may tell you about this some day).

"I need it this afternoon," he says.

So I start the arduous (not) business of getting onto the council web site, going into the Council & Councillors folder, clicking onto the link labelled "Council Constitution" and copying the URL into an email to T. Aldous.

"When can you do it?" he asked.

"I've done it," I said.

"Thinking about it, would it be possible for me to go onto the web site and look for it myself?"

To my dying day, I'll never know how I didn't say: "no."

Need to know

"T. Aldous wants a map to see where Manchester Museum is," says his secretary.

"That'll be for the People's Network Services presentation," says I.

"You know about that?" asks his secretary.

"Yes, a friend sent me an email telling about it the other day," I reply.

"Send me a copy of that email please," says she.

"No," says I.

Encyclopedias of despair

Best Value critical friend: "Why do you have a copy of the 1997 World Book Encyclopedia when you've also got a copy of the 2004 edition?"

Reference Librarian: "We're very busy, so we have kept a copy of the old edition so that if somebody's already using volume one customers still have something to refer to."

The internet access was down today. The very busy reference library had six customers. None wanted an encyclopedia.

Them's the vagaries

Noddy Community Centre, not content with not wanting to provide access to the community just in case the community is made up of perverts, provides us with new headaches. The best of which is the fire escape, access to which is impeded by a vintage gas meter.

The secret of bad comedy: timing

Librarian: "You've put me down on Saturday's rota as having no lunch break."

Chippy Minton: "That's the best deployment of existing resources on the day."

The secret of good comedy: timing

Jimmy Huddersfield, lately our Stock Procurement Manager, has been retired a week now, with no visible likelihood of his being replaced. So it's been decided that now would be a good moment at which to start spending the book fund, which has been kept on ice for the past five months while management team decided how it was going to get spent. I walked into the end of what was obviously a long and very acrimonious conversation between T. Aldous and the accession team:

"You knew when Jimmy was retiring, so why didn't you get all this lot ordered when he was still around to get it done?"

"Management Team were discussing the best way to spend the money so we couldn't do it while Jimmy was here."

"Well, how are you going to spend the money?"

"We're not sure yet. I've got some ideas that I want to talk through with Mary when she gets back from holiday."

"You could buy some Balkan trade directories. That would soon solve the problem."

Gone but forgotten weekly

Mary Dunroamin's on holiday this week so everyone else is copping for T. Aldous' little foibles. Once a week T. Aldous asks Mary for the stock withdrawal figures for the last financial year for "the report we've got to submit." Once a week she gives him the figures. None of us have a clue what the report is, nor when it is submitted. The one sure bet is that if it's real it must be late.

In Mary's absence, the accession team have been getting the demands because they're in between his office and the coffee machine. "I asked Mary for the withdrawal figures for the report we've got to write and she didn't give them to me," says T. Aldous. A new member of staff panics and starts searching Mary's desk for the figures. "Don't worry," the others tell her when she can't find them. "Mary's given him these figures at least three times in the past month. If Mary's not in, he comes and asks us. Ask Kevin to run the report."

I duly ran the report, which isn't complete because it won't include any stock that's not catalogued (let's not go there). It's given to T. Aldous. Two hours later he's heard to tell someone: "I'll have to ask Mary for last year's withdrawal figures for the report we've got to submit."

With one bound he was free

The union rep asked T. Aldous if there was any chance of a discussion of the reorganisation with the staff side.

"There's no point in asking me about it," says T. Aldous Huxtable, "I was on leave that week."

You didn't hear it here

I'm told I'm not to mention the story about the local history prints that adorned the saloon bar of The Stag At Bay.

So I won't.

Forgotten but not gone

Popped into Umpty Library to sort out some problems in the Reference Library (no, not them, a faulty printer). As per usual on a Saturday, there was Gordon Trembly, popping in and out of the staff work room and rifling through the local studies files for his next slim volume. Gordon retired as Town Librarian fifteen years ago but still avails himself of the facilities as if nothing has changed.

"Who's that man?" he asked the Librarian.

"That's Kevin Musgrove, he's come in to sort out the printing problems," she explained.

"He's walking about like he owned the place," bristled Gordon's moustache.

"He's probably thinking the same of you," she replied.

Balance

The children's librarians are being picked on. "Tell the world about the Reference Librarians," they suggest.

We've just spent £1,000 on a couple of Balkan trade directories for the use of one of their customers, who's been coming in every day for the past eight weeks to ask if "the books I ordered have come in yet." That's one of their customers. That's the service that refuses to buy crossword-solving books for branch libraries because "they're expensive for what they are and serious readers don't use them."

In the circumstances it's probably as well if I don't tell the world about them.

White rabbits, white rabbits

One of the libraries returns a children's book to the accession team. One of the librarians spotted a problem when she tried to use it for story time. It turns out that although the cover's English, the text inside is in Portuguese. Nothing unusual in that; accidents happen.

What is unusual is that the book's been issued five times and nobody's complained.

Never let a children's librarian make a catalogue

I get on just fine with our current generation of children's librarians. I suspect I'd be doing time for the murder of some of their predecessors. I'm reminded that we had to do a full MARC remap on our library system because some fool decided that the subject headings had to be included in the class number field so that children could do a subject search by referring to the class numbers on the subject index on the wall, entering the class number on the OPAC and getting a list of books on that subject. And as the whole of pre-Norman history had the same class number, you can guess just how useful the PAC was to children looking for the Vikings or ancient Rome. Especially in libraries which didn't display the subject index.

I leave you to imagine what the authority indexes looked like on the system.

Working with this crazy set up was bad enough. Even worse was the amount of work we had to do to unpick the mess when we upgraded the system some years later. We still bump into the odd problem a decade later; when we bought a new web PAC recently we found that an invalid juvenile subtag crashed all the subject searches. Groan...

Anglo-Saxon attitudes

Argh! Children's Librarians, together with Local Studies Librarians, chafe at the restrictions of Mr. Dewey and go in for their own bespoke classification systems because they're "special".

Back in the days when we had a Cataloguer, she lost the battle with Local Studies who opted for a non-decimal classification scheme. None of the standard taxonomies suited them so they invented their own. From scratch. There was a committee made up of all the male librarians in the service (do we need any editorial comment here?) and they got to work. Sort of, as only old-school male librarians could. What makes the scheme particularly interesting and difficult to use is that two of the librarians weren't on speaking terms (they shared an office and had been sulking for the previous six months about a filing cabinet).They proceeded to have a fiercely-contested duel of erudition, each trying to out-do the other in the complexity and intricacy of their part of the schedule. In the end, the chap doing the ecclesiasticals used the natural advantages of the subject to defeat the chap doing the sports section. If you don't know your apse from your elder you'll never guess the code number.

That isn't the topic of this log. Children's library catalogues is. At a time when we're seriously looking at starting to download MARC21 catalogue records I find out that the children's non-fiction isn't an old version of DDC after all. I was trying to map some of the key homework topics, existing numbers against new, so that we could have some idea of the scale of dislocation of stock that would be involved if we didn't hire someone to re-classify the bought-in records. I suddenly realised that the numbers didn't make sense. Especially once I realised that the whole of human endeavour from the Ice Age to the Norman Conquest was one class number while Richard III merited one of his own.

I mentioned this to Jimmy Huddersfield when I bumped into him this lunchtime. He explained: "The Children's Librarians wouldn't let the Cataloguer use the same schedule as the rest of the stock. She suggested that if that was too complicated then she could use the schools Dewey schedule. Didn't suit. Oh no. The Children's Librarians insisted on inventing their own: a 'cut-down version' of the 16th edition of Dewey as they were more comfortable with that edition because one of them had spent a couple of days looking at it at library school. The rest of us were already on 18th edition, but it looked a bit complicated. Any subject they didn't like, or didn't understand they fudged, forgot, or threw into a 'miscellaneous' pot. You should have seen the disgust on her face when she was presented with the table of numbers." He grinned evilly: "Have a look at the science section."

I did when I came back.

There'll be some serious reshelving if we go MARC21.

Equal sequel

They're doing this to annoy me. Milkbeck Library is having aromatherapy sessions as part of the local 'healthy living' campaign. Ladies only.

Some are more equal than others

I've just been providing a population profile of our borrowers for the inspection. T. Aldous nodded sagely as Ardley Corduroy told the inspectors that we had plans to address the needs of minorities in the district, especially women. I endeared myself to him by pointing out that in the last census the ratio of men to women in the district was 55:45 and that of our borrowers was 63:38.

I had to explain why our female:male ratio comes to 101%. Garbage in, garbage out, unless one of our libraries really is largely patronised by hermaphrodites and transexuals. "In that case, the statistics could be entirely wrong and male members could outnumber female members after all." "Have you been in any of our libraries lately?" I asked. I didn't ask if he'd surveyed many members lately. One doesn't like to intrude.

Perhaps he'd be happier if I just shouted numbers out at random.

Oho yes... The move into Noddy Community Centre has hit a snag: the community centre managers have said that they don't like the idea of men going through the centre to go to the library as they might all be perverts.

Indoors if wet

Windfarms are a touchy subject round these parts, with the protagonists for and against rabidly passionate and beyond persuasion. I only mention this to give you an idea as to the origins of the name of Windscape Village and the prevailing weather conditions. I have just heard T. Aldous tell an inspector that we are going to have an al fresco booksale in the library car park as part of the village's autumn festival next month. We'll be borrowing the marquee from the children's team. Should be fun. The library's single-staffed so it'll be interesting to see if he's outside with the booksale or inside with the borrowers. If he's any sense he'll be in the snug at the Monkey's.

Dancing with librarians

Installing new kit on the network at Roadkill Library, working around the line dancers and children's storytime. I'm very, very popular as this means that the Roadkill Rancheros can't carry on using the PCs as coat hangers. To express their displeasure they made sure that all the line dancing steps involved their kicking the furniture at every third beat.

Bless.

Reality check

"We'd like a focus group of thirty-five middle managers on Thursday morning," says the inspector.

"The total staffing complement on Thursday morning is forty-one people," says Mary Dunroamin. "Shall we close all the libraries or just keep one or two open as a token gesture?"

No good deed goes unpunished

First day of the inspection. They went out to Carbootsale Library to have a look round. They were very impressed, it's a nice little library with lots going on and its a lively hub for the local community, which is a popular venue for "it's grim up north" films. T. Aldous was on a high: a couple of the inspectors spent the whole of the journey back enthusing about the library and its staff. They liked the layout and the big picture windows with the paintings of Spot and Spongebob Squarepants. They liked the community space. They liked its being in a parade of shops next to a bus stop. They liked it. "Just what a community library should be like!" says one.

At five o'clock T. Aldous got a 'phone call from our esteemed director, Ardley Corduroy, to say that Carbootsale Library's going to be moved into a room in the local primary school. That's round the corner, up the hill (natch!) and the entrance will be around the back by the dustbins. The room in question is about two-thirds the size and doesn't have a community space. "It's important that we make the library joint use so that it can be made to appeal to the community," says Ardley.

Two tin cans and a bit of hairy string

Once we got the bits of dead pigeon out of the hub the network at Grimly purred back into life. I can only think it got swept in during last week's rain (Grimly's roof leaks like a sieve).

The power of positive thinking.

T. Aldous and Reginald are quite sanguine about the inspection. We couldn't understand their complacency until one of the caretakers broke the secret:

"They've just sent me out to buy a bowl of fruit and a table cloth."

That's OK then, nothing to worry about. I'll just sit back and wonder why Grimly Library's been off-line all morning.

How to impress

We've got this inspection nailed: T. Aldous sent the caretaker out to get some stainless steel bog roll holders so that "we can look more professional".

Sorted!

What it says on the tin

Unhappy customer at the service desk:

"What on earth are you doing having books like this in the children's library? I took this out so that I could tell the story to my four year old. And what do I find? The boy in the story finds out that his mummy is dying. How awful is that. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

The book is called "Death in a Nut" and there's a big warning label on the cover to say that the story may upset some children.

Ah, the public. Almost as bad as librarians.

Taking a rise

Feeling lazy and having an arm full of boxes I decided to take the lift down to our floor. I was joined by a couple of teenage girls.

"Do you work here?" one asked.

"Yes."

"The people who work here usually tell us we can't use the lift."

"I can't be bothered," I said.

The other girl explained: "I have to use the lift, I've got toothache."

Heard the lot now!

It really isn't just us!

Visiting a colleague elsewhere in the North of England, we repaired to the pub for lunch. Over in a corner was a bunch of happy-daft people chatting and laughing loudly.

"I wouldn't go near them," he warned.

"Why not?"

"They work in the library."

I thought no more about it until a chap at the next table to them got up and spoke to them loudly.

"Are you from Social Services?"

"No, from the library."

"Aah. You won't know that your head of service is retiring in November, will you? I bet you wonder how I know. I'm a councillor."

And he walked off.

I was a bit surprised by this. My colleague was shocked:

"Our head of service only found out himself yesterday and he came in from holiday especially this morning to let us know about it before the corporate email announced it."

"That's a bit off. Are you going to complain about that councillor then?" I asked.

My colleague shook his head. "If I make a fuss it'll be them lot over there as get witch-hunted. Let sleeping dogs lie. God knows there's enough of 'em."

That's all right then

T. Aldous tells the staff at Dutch Bend that he can't discuss the restructure.

"I was on holiday when all that was done," he tells them.

Measuring value

Another throwaway wonder by T. Aldous Huxtable, chief librarian, prince among men and people-manager supreme. Bustling out of the building he was heard by everybody to shout to his secretary:

"I'm off to Dutch Bend Library. I'm going to show Edie Bridstock how to shelve books."

The inspectors are impatient for a report that should have been in last Friday, staff want to talk to him about the restructure and Edie Bridstock's been running Dutch Bend Library for thirteen years.

Sometimes even the most insensitive must notice when their chafing is starting to draw blood.

JCBs in the Meadow of Consolation

Just as I'd forgotten all about the restructure and was feeling good about the fact that a new Library Assistant had come up with a couple of great ideas and we'd worked through a way of creating a staff training resource while simultaneously increasing the number of adaptive workstations for the public and removing a couple of embarassments, along comes our esteemed leader who vetoes it all because we hadn't also decided to reshelve a reference library. Aaagh!!!

The light at the end of the tunnel is the light of an oncoming train

Our capacity for mismanagement is currently surpassing itself, which is no mean feat. Every time we think we've started scraping the barrel we discover whole new depths to plumb. The runaway trains of our Best Value review (a startling bog-up which commits us to a whole heap of complicated and expensive stuff but which is notably resource-lite) and the forthcoming Audit Commission inspection seem to be concentrating minds rather in the same way that being simultaneously defenestrated and debagged brings a certain focus and clarity to the proceedings. The last inspection, two years ago, left us awarded zero stars and "no prospect of improvement." Since then, issue figures have gone down a quarter; visits have been boosted enough by the People's Network for them to have only dropped by 10% and staff morale has plummeted to the point where I've been having to act as cheerleader-in-chief for Library Management Team amongst the poor huddled masses, not a rôle I'm used to.

And now we've just heard about the announcement of a new management structure. The announcement was limited to just "the people affected by the changes," which turned out to be all the librarians and no one else. The other ranks had to wait to hear officially for another six weeks, though by then the damage was more than done. The new structure is actually sensible and long-overdue. The way it's been presented, and a few of the side shows, have been astonishing.

All senior management posts are re-graded big time “to attract the right people”. This has gone down well with the Library Assistants who have been waiting over a decade for their regrade to be implemented. One interesting quirk of the new posts: they’re all on operational library hours rather than flexi-time or work/life balance (“celibacy and adoption” as that’s known here). The reason? So that they can cover the enquiry desk on Saturdays and Thursday evenings. We have people being paid c. £12k single-staffing libraries and the Library Service accounts for about half of the council’s lowest paid staff. On the plus side, we will have the best-paid enquiry desk staff in the country.

Talking to a colleague about something else (we were comparing approaches to a common problem with our web catalogues) I mentioned the restructure and had a good long moan about it.

"Bugger me!" cried my colleague, "it sounds just like what happened here last year."

"How's it working?" I asked.

"No idea, they still haven't appointed any of them yet."

It's not just us.

Life imitates art

A colleague from another damp part of northern England accuses me of stealing one of his after-dinner anecdotes and sends me a picture to prove it.

All it proves to me is that there are more lunatics running the asylums than there are in them.

The peasants are revolting

Overheard: T. Aldous Huxtable hurling a passing comment at a very harassed colleague:

"I hear that some library authorities are providing internet services on mobile libraries."

"I hear that some library authorities are filling vacancies."

Care in the community postscript

I'm reminded of the time one of our library assistants died in harness. A very nice, very popular and hard-working member of staff, everyone who knew her wanted to go to the funeral so her family arranged it so that the funeral was at lunch time so that as many people could get there as possible (our branch libraries close for lunch). The only problem was that the library she worked at didn't close for lunch but we, and our customers, thought that this would be closed just this once as a sign of respect. How wrong can you be? Her closest colleagues only got to the funeral because staff from further afield gave up their lunch hours to cover the building. No customers came in that lunchtime as they all assumed the place was closed.

It's a poor do when you're not even allowed to bury your dead.

Let's have a ride on your bicycle...

Global email from the Sustainable Growth Unit of Helminthdale Council:

It's Bike Week in Helminthdale!
Have you any ideas for this year's Bike Week? If so, send them in to the Sustainable Growth Unit!

Global response from someone in the Borough Engineer's Department:

Perhaps you could teach them what the red traffic light is for.

Care in the community

One of the library assistants came into work rather upset because her mother had died this weekend. She asked for time off on Friday for the funeral.

"No, you can't have leave, we've already got three people off that day and we can't provide cover."

"Well, can I have the afternoon off? The funeral's at 2pm."

"This is very inconvenient. We can't spare you."

"Well, look, this is my mother I'm burying. Can I at least take my lunch hour late so that I can go to the funeral?"

"Oh I suppose so if it can't be helped."

Graph spree

Sometimes you have to wonder how some librarians get their trousers on in the morning. Our Learning Services Librarian, Reginald Clockwatcher is a case in point.

He's got to do a PowerPoint presentation to the latest bunch of inspectors to show what a jolly good job he's doing. He'd heard that the son of one of the Library Assistants was very good at doing graphs in PowerPoint and he asked if the lad would mind doing some for him, for a consideration. When he turned up this morning, Reginald was effusive, shook his hand, thanked him kindly and then handed him some graph paper and a protractor.

Quite well-respected in the profession

Jimmy Huddersfield retires next week, which will be a bit of a blow as he's the only one who knows how e-procurement works. To give him due, he gave three months' rather than two months' notice to give them a chance of getting the vacancy filled in a timely manner. The clever money's on it only taking six months this time because three library standards depend on this post.

Innocent bystander: "Don't they get someone in before the postholder retires so that they can be shown the ropes?"

Me: "Quiet fool! I laugh in your face and scorn you. Scorn! Scorn! Now sit in the corner until you get a grip."

Jimmy's been spending months trying to get a meeting to work through his job description so's the job adverts can be prepared in a timely manner. Still no joy.

He got a letter yesterday from the head of Helminthdale Adult Learning Services thanking him for his work over the past twenty-five years and wishing him luck on his retirement. Unfortunately, Jimmy doesn't work for Helminthdale Adult Learning Services and has no idea who the head of this service is, which is probably mutual. Only in Helminthdale could you spend quarter of a century working for a department and get a farewell-and-good-luck-on-your-retirement letter from an entirely different one.

He's already framed the letter as a souvenir of this caring council.

Give us a clue II

More open plan...

Obviously taking her cue from Our Beloved Leader, Edie Bedspread demonstrates the mime for "Trying to get a supplier's name changed on the corporate accounts system." It doesn't appear seemly for a lady of her years. The language is a bit robust, too.

The "Why the hell have I copped for CIPFA+ Questionnaire statistics again?!?" mime over in the far corner of the room would freeze your waters. God knows what Cicely would be like if she knew she had an audience to play to.

I'm told that people know when I'm talking to IT about our portal by the colour of my face.

Take me home mummy!

I'm ready for putting away...

The Lithuanian Working Men's Club and Institute, which is opposite Catty Library, has just bought a big screen TV for the football, etc. and have put up a big banner outside to this effect: "BIG SCREEN HERE NOW." Catty being a windy place and the Lithuanian Working Men's Club and Institute no good at tying knots, part of the banner has ruckled and partially obscured some of the wording.

I was standing outside Catty Library, waiting to be let in, filled with wonderment: who was Big Doreen and why was she such an advertising draw?

Ugh.

The joys of open-plan...

T. Aldous has collared Mary Dunroamin to tell her that "we must get together and go through the action plan responses, it's urgent." They then tell each other that they must get together. At length.

See T. Aldous tell Mary.
See Mary tell T. Aldous.
"We must get together," says T. Aldous.
"We must get together," says Mary.
See Mary.
See T. Aldous.
See T. Aldous and Mary tell each other they must get together and go through the action plan responses.
See Spot run.

Having done that, they have now spent fifteen minutes discussing whether the paper recycling bin is in the right place.

Vale varlet!

We bid a fond farewell and bon chance matey to another of our librarians. Service Librarian, state-registered crash dummy and all-round prat "Monsignewer" Eddie Gravy's retirement brings up to fifteen vacancies in this building (not counting the posts that have been deleted).

Eddie is a funny chap. Obviously intellectually gifted, he got a double-first in Anatolian History and Woodwork and then came back to this benighted place and spent the next forty years simmering in a stew of intellectual frustration and bitterness first at Catty and then at Helminthdale General Library. Why? No idea. I do mourn his passing: he was the wake-up call for the likes of me: this is what happens if you stay here too long.

I shan't miss the crash, crash, crash of his typing. He went through twelve keyboards in six months, complaining bitterly that no matter what he typed it came out as gibberish (a lucrative career as a Booker Prize novelist sadly neglected). What I never told him was that there were only three keyboards: the one from his PC, the one from the secretary's PC and a spare one that had a broken tilde/hash key. He would first complain about his keyboard, which I would swap with the secretary's. The secretary never had any problems with either keyboard, and she did considerably more typing. At some point within the next couple of weeks he'd decide that this keyboard was hopeless too. At which point I'd give him the broken keyboard. The defect shouldn't have affected him as there was nothing that he was doing that needed either a tilde or a hash to be typed. He'd be happy with this for a week or two and then start complaining to anyone but me. A couple of the staff had been primed to wander over to the keyboard, press the tilde/hash key, tut and say: "ooh yes, I should tell him about that." "I can't be bothered now," Eddie would say in a huff. I'd get to hear about this some time in the two days between this part of the performance and his coming to complain to me. The evening before I thought he'd be coming, I'd swap his keyboard back to his original one and change his settings to US keyboard. When he came in to complain, I'd try and type a pound sign, suck my teeth, go into Windows Control Panel, change to UK keyboard, come out and type all the characters correctly.

"I don't understand it. You usually only get that when you've downloaded a cookie from an e-commerce site and that wouldn't be happening here."

Eddie would say nothing. We all knew he spent most afternoons on eBay.
Keyboard complaints would be few for the next six or eight weeks and then the cycle would begin again.

Give us a clue!

While I'm ranting about T. Aldous and staff meetings, it might be instructive to explain his preferred model of staff meeting.

Once every six, seven, eight or eleven weeks at ten to six a notice is pinned up on the door to the staff room:

STAFF MEETING TOMORROW 9.00am
ALL ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION
TO BE SUBMITTED IN ADVANCE TO MY SECRETARY
T.Aldous Huxtable

His secretary works 9 to 5.

The meetings start promptly at 9.00am, in so far as everyone except T. Aldous sits around the staff room table with cups of tea looking at their watches. T. Aldous turns up between 9.15 and 9.20 then spends the next ten minutes providing the latest implausible reason why it was impossible to do the ten minute drive from his home in Newhills in to Helminthdale and make it by 9.00am (front line staff commuting all the way from Catty or Dutch Bend have to be in by 9.00am sharp or face a disciplinary). Today it was leaves in the gutter in Melmoth Avenue.

At 9.30 the meeting breaks up because the library's open and staff must attend the customers.

Staff are divided into three groups:

• The nervous clockwatchers, ready to let loose from the slips at twenty-five past so that the library can be opened.


• The twitchers, ready and waiting to answer any 'phone call within the statutory four rings. (Resentfully since we found out that T. Aldous spends the previous evenings leaving messages on answerphones and emails asking people to ring 'first thing tomorrow morning')


• The rest of us, listening intently and wondering if he'll ever come to a point.

Today we had a bizarre new twist. He was chunnering on about the drains at Lakeside and suddenly said: "And we know why it's important that we do this, don't we?" and lurched to one side, the veins on his neck standing out like vomit on a pavement and his head lolling and twitching awkwardly. We thought he'd had a stroke. The first-aiders drew straws to see who would have to give him the kiss of life. The reference librarians shifted their chairs back in case it was catching. An assistant genuflected and gave whispered prayers to St. Jude. "Go on!" said T. Aldous as he twitched and gurned anew.
At last, the ghastly moment reached its crisis: the apparition sighed and straightened up, his face filled with exasperation at his errant six-year-olds.
"Scoring Points By Ticking Boxes!" he said.
Well! How were we to know that that performance meant the latest corporate action plan (soon to be a major motion picture)? He could at least have said if it was a film, a book, or whatever.
It was Frog Dropmore's turn to take minutes. I happened to glance at his notes at this point. He'd written: "Is it on the trolley?"

Are we there yet?

A year ago I was warned that parts of the network in Catty were going to change in July 2005 and so the antediluvean PCs in the Children's Library would have to be decommissioned. The network has been changed successfully and these PCs no longer work. There are now complaints that these don't work. T. Aldous returns from the staff meeting at Catty Library:

"The PCs in the Children's Library at Catty don't work."

"No, they don't."

"How much notice did IT give us that they wouldn't be working?"

"They told us a year ago."

"So what's been done?"

"According to my email archive, a year ago I suggested that we buy some new PCs and have them installed and set up as replacements.

"Nine months ago I suggested that we buy some new PCs to replace them.

"Six months ago I strongly advised that we buy some new PCs to replace them.

"Five months ago I asked you for the money to buy some new PCs to replace them.

"Three months ago I sent you a quotation for replacement PCs and asked for the money to buy the PCs for replacements.

"Three weeks ago I told you that these PCs will be decommissioned and we need to replace them p.d.q."

"Yes, yes, I know all that. What's actually been done?"

"Apparently you read six emails."

Balancing the budget

Like all councils, Helminthdale is in a constant state of financial crisis. A colleague asks if T. Aldous' penny-pinching is anything to do with problems with the council budget. Probably not, I suspect he learnt his trade at the feet of his predecessor, Billy Mothballs. Council minutes show that in the big financial crash of the early nineties, when blood and jobs were flowing through the council chambers, Billy went to his committee and presented his plan for savings on the library budget.

"This is very good Billy," said the Chair of Leisure Services. "Now go away and come back with some smaller cuts."

Stock-editing, Helminthdale-style

"Our stock profile looks bad," says T. Aldous. "It doesn't look like we've met the public library standard for stock replenishment," he adds. Collective shrugs of utter lack of surprise. "Is that because we only spent 20% of last year's book fund?" asks an unwary soul. Card marked.

How does our fearless leader suggest we address this? Perhaps by actually spending some of the book fund? Nay, nay, lad.

"Our junior stock is looking a bit old. If we withdraw all the titles published before 1997 we would remove over 11,000 old titles and the stock would look more modern. "

"But that would remove all the new copies of classic titles."

"How about replacing the stock that we're removing?"

"What about junior reserve stock?"

"But me no buts. We need to do it urgently."

It isn't happening. In his enthusiasm, T. Aldous forgot that he'd "retired" the stock manager before Christmas and half the posts in the cataloguing team have been vacant for eighteen months. This is part of his strategy for keeping a six-figure surplus in his staffing budget. We only wish we understood why. It drives the council accountants barmy.

All of a sudden nothing happens

We're now in a state of panic: two weeks ago T. Aldous was asked to give the director a report-back on progress on last year's Action Plan so that he has something to tell the councillors when he sees them at the end of the month. It's got to be in today (holidays and other nonsense), so for most of yesterday and today T. Aldous has had the serried ranks of library management team (both of them) held prisoner while he compiles their list of glories. "I don't need an essay, just a bullet-point list of progress," says the director. An optimistic person might think that thirty-three man hours of high-powered thought would come up with a mighty list indeed. The optimistic person has no experience of the workings of T. Aldous Huxley...

T. Aldous, like the rest of management team, did his homework on the bus in to school and once it was handed in it was forgotten. So, far from last year's Action Plan being a plan of action against which to plot this year's work, it was just sooo last year, darling. Now it's time to report on how we did, they've got a few hours in which to work out what they meant when they wrote the Plan and come up with excuses why they didn't do it reasons for the changing priorities in the face of changing circumstances.

And they made sure that we were collecting the data for the reporting back, didn't they? Five to six, T. Aldous collared Frog Dropwort, our SureStart Project Manager, and asked:

"Have you got the figures for the number of adults and children who have attended the SureStart events over the past financial year?"

"I've got the figures on file but I've not collated them. When do you want them by?"

"I need them tonight."

Nobody had told Frog that this was one of the Social Inclusion Index Figures established in the Action Plan. By pure dumb luck, he had been collecting this data so that he could provide some information on the success, or not, of the promotional activities of his team.

Progress? As somebody commented: "For God's sake! How long does it take to write: 'We have done jack all this year'?"

Time management

One of the problems with open-plan offices is the things that catch your eye. T. Aldous Huxtable, the chief librarian who's too busy to discuss anything about e-government, spent twenty-five minutes sorting the contents of the paper recycle bin. What is it with these people?

Making a right bog of it

Lakeside Library has been reconditioned for DDA purposes and is now fully accessible for wheelchair users who can come down the hill without having their brakes fail. "We've got the best toilet in the Borough!" trills the librarian, who drags unwary passers-by into the library for a tour of the conveniences. It is a truly magnificent, well-appointed toilet. And so it should be, taking up half the floor area of the library. Just one fly in the ointment: no toilet roll holder.

"Disabled people don't use toilet roll holders," says the Equal Access Worker.

"What do they use then?" asked the librarian.

"They use the sink," said the Equal Access Worker.

The ladies from the Twilight Home were quite indignant at the thought! "Mind you, it's just like them as work for the council," said one. "I bet they all crap in the sink at home."

Who helps the help desk?

Phone call:

"We've got a customer who wants to know why he's not getting anything when he goes onto (URL)."

"OK, let's have a look... Web site not found. It doesn't exist."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

Don't be mean with the beancounters, mum!

We're enjoying a week's jolly fun care of Zoltan, our improbably-named auditor. Having been forewarned to "expect a visit from Zoltan," some of the branch staff worked themselves into a lather in the expectation of some sun-bronzed, bicep-ridden hunk. Poor old Zoltan, while a perfectly nice old chap is small, a little stooped and has some of his own hair. How he copes so politely with the constant dashed hopes of ladies of a certain age I do not know.

After hearing two days' worth of whingeing about Zoltan's crawling through the minutiae of the paperwork I was a bit worried when it was my turn. "I want to see how you get your issue figures," he said. I was relieved: "is that all? Brilliant!" Pathetically grateful to have an audience, I sat him down in front of my PC and said: "what I'll do is show you the effect of issuing a book on the system so that you can see how each datum's generated, and then I'll show you how the reports are compiled. It's pretty straightforward, so I can show you the full process."

Zoltan went white. "I don't think that will be necessary. I think you've established that this is pretty sound." And then he scuttled off.

I now have an unenvible reputation amongst my colleagues for having bored an auditor.