Lie down and be counted

The inspectors expressed concerns that only one person (myself) knows how any of our systems work. "What would happen if he fell under a bus or decided that he didn't want to co-operate with library management?" Damn. I hadn't realised that my game plan was so transparent: "half a million pounds in my numbered Swiss bank account or you don't get the statistics for your public library impact measures."

T. Aldous sprang into action. I now have an appointed deputy who needs to be trained up. It's the Stock Procurement Manager. The job's been vacant since Jimmy Huddersfield retired months ago. And the job description's being looked at because T. Aldous and Mary think that this could be combined with the stock management librarian's post and/or the reader development post, both of which have been vacant over a year.

You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead

Apparently, T. Aldous told the inspectors at some length that he really wanted to work strategically.

Mr. Strategic has just spent two hours unpacking encyclopedias, putting them onto trolleys and putting them in display in Helminthdale's big booksale.

Talk to the wall because the email's not listening

Me: "I've sent you a few emails about e-government decisions I need from you."

Mary Dunroamin: "Oh, they'll be in my 'unread emails' folder."

Is there anywhere lower than the bargain basement?

The first glimmer of actions from the Action Team: T. Aldous is going to have a grand book sale at Helminthdale Library. So the thirty-two boxes of books that were packed up unsold on Monday will be unpacked and augmented by twelve boxes of books that haven't been sold at Catty in the past six weeks and an unspecified number of books from Dutch Bend.

T. Aldous — who is busy, busy, busy — has spent all morning sifting through the boxes to make sure that they're correctly priced up. As they're all the same price I can't fathom why he's bothering.

Blind man's buffing-up

The Post-Inspection Action Team has taken over the meeting room at Helminthdale. To prevent any leaks, the room is locked and barred to all comers. As they've been eating in the room, the caretaker insisted on cleaning the room this evening. In the end he had to promise to hoover the room with his eyes closed.

A bungee jumper at the end of his tether

I get a strident email from the corporate web resources manager telling me that he sees no reason why the library catalogue should include web-based resources as "library catalogues only list the books held in the library."

I refrain from telling him to go boil his head. What is profoundly depressing is that this guy feels empowered to dictate to council services what information they do or don't provide to their customers.

Upon finding the office banjo

T. Aldous refuses to discuss anything with anyone with a view to forcing a decision to be made, which is hard luck for those of us with e-government dumped on us. "Everybody is bringing me December deadlines," he wails. What he doesn't say is that the clock started ticking at different times, in some cases four or five years ago. Gah.

The dawning light

Jim Lettuce again, about Impact Measures...

Jim: "We could meet all of these couldn't we?"

Me: "Oh yes."

Jim: "I don't understand how we're not then."

Me: "Ask me your next question."

Jim: "How often does management group meet?"

I smile. "Oh, I see," says Jim.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

I happened to notice on Saturday that a certain branch had set more than fifty percent of their PN PCs to broken and adopted the rather interesting method of getting them fixed by not telling anyone. I asked what was matter with them to be told they didn't know. I called in the branch, found nothing wrong with the PCs reset them to working, only to discover this morning they were set to broken again. I rang to ask why.

"Well they were broken on Saturday so we thought they must be broken today as well because you weren't here long enough to fix anything."

Why I don't like having annual leave any more

For every day's leave I take there are two or three days' worth of hassle and aggrevation caused by things happening while I'm off that I don't get to know about until they cause a problem.

I found out last night that the PC on the Ref. desk has been moved onto the public side of the People's Network to test an idea about the cause of problems we're having. Consequently, the log-ins we usually use aren't operable and there's no access to email or the catalogue. The chap who did it told the librarian, who promised faithfully to pass the word. Anyway, one of the other Masters of Reality were on last night, hadn't been told, rebooted the PC (don't ask), couldn't get in. I was equally puzzled. Luckily, even though it was after hours the PC guru sorted it for us.

This morning, self same Master of Reality (PO grade) couldn't log on. Locked the password. Told customers "there's a major problem on the computers", rang me (in that order). I went up, got it unlocked. They then couldn't open the booking system to let people onto the PN terminals. Told customers "there's a major problem on the computers", rang me. I went up, opened the booking system. To my dismay, none of the clients were showing up on the screen. While MoR is telling customers "there's a major problem on the computers", I go over and have a look. All switched off. Because "there's a major problem on the computers". I run around logging them all on, as MoR is too busy telling customers "there's a major problem on the computers", despite me saying "there isn't, you just need to log them on". MoR having made the transition from "there's a major problem on the computers" to "sorry, you can't use them because we've had a major problem on the computers", Systems Librarian gives up.

Here we go again

Take a day off, return and find our Reference Staff had e-mailed me with URGENT in the subject line. The text was simply the following line:

T5 problem with keyboard. Pressing R producing M etc
Thanks

Some prat in full view of the whole Reference Library had gone to the trouble of removing all but three of the alpha keys on the keyboard and repositioning them randomly. Ref staff hadn't noticed the keyboard arrangement looked somewhat unusual.

What bliss it is to be alive

My working life is complete: I've just repaired the rabbit's tail on a board book by cutting a cotton wool ball in half and supergluing it to the cover.

It must be take the piss out of the Systems Librarian Day

Have just this minute been asked by our Children's Unit if they can have a new printer.

"Why, what's wrong with the one you have got?"

"It's jammed."

Not quite there yet

One of the staff who pretends to work in the Children's Library watched kids accessing porn sites on the People's Network last Saturday, did bugger all as "they seemed to be having fun", and now demands I ban them.

One of our Reference staff on the same Saturday watched a teenager bugger up a CDROM drive. She said she didn't know how he had done to it, but thought there was a library card inside the drive. Sure enough I have just fished a library card out of offending CDROM drive which was preventing the drawer from closing.

Finally, in response to an email that "the mouse on PC 5 is not working..."

"Have they stolen the mouse-ball or is the breakage something more fundamental than that?"

"No, that's the first thing I check! The up-down movement works on the bar inside, but not with the ball in it; I tried to 'roughen up' the ball, without success."

Ten green bottles

Jowatt Javelin retires today. With his retirement I now move out of the youngest quartile of staff in the service. I'm 45.

Aah...

Happy event here, the Housebound Assistant's pet glove, which has been broody for a couple of weeks, made a nest on her desk last week and has now had a litter of two lovely little pink mittens.

Closed sesame

There was a wholly unnecessary panic at Dutch Bend on Saturday: Minnie Clutterbuck couldn't log the PCs on because the password changed last week and nobody left her a note to say what it was. I asked the librarian why there wasn't a note for Minnie.

"I was going to tell Irene to leave a note for Minnie, but she was going to the dentist and I thought she might forget."

Stock management (again!)

A phone call from a branch asking if the system could tell them which books they had taken the date labels out of in preparation for withdrawal, as they had put the date labels in a plastic bag which the cleaner had assumed was rubbish, therefore they don't know which books they intended to withdraw.

"Find the books," I helpfully suggested.

"Can't do that. We sent them to book sale".

Great God this is an awful place

Popped up to Ref. with a new mousemat to solve the major problem. Turns out that there was an unreported problem...

An out of order notice on a PC because the chair in front of it was broken.

A strain on the maintenance budget

Reggie Clockwatcher rings down with a major problem.

A customer's broken a mousemat.

Quote of the month

Jim Lettuce pops over to ask me about Impact Measures. How did you cop for this chore? I asked.

"My boss said to me: 'Go and find out what's happening in libraries. I'd ask T. Aldous myself but I've not brought my sleeping bag.'"

Big pictures

Management group have been in deep conclave.

To my knowledge there are at least a dozen reasons why this must be the month when this service finally falls off the cliff. One involves the fact that half the procurement staff who order and process incoming stock have retired and not replaced, just in time for the last-minute panic-buying caused by the fact that a huge (big, very, very, big), and very politically sensitive (ouch! ouch! ouch! ouch! ouch!), pot of money for new stock hasn't been spent and needs to be by the end of the month for the cabinet report. The report has to be impressive to avoid Son Of Big Kicking. At the same time the team loses our finance clerk, who'd be processing all the invoices and creditors and getting all the required stats for to avoid SOBK. At the same time, the library assistant career grade kicks in after a fifteen-year gestation, except for procurement staff who are pending review, delayed by our implementing automated ordering (1999), the retirement of van driver (2000), the first Best Value review (2002) and sundry other factors, as T. Aldous "has ideas about restructuring how the team works", which will come into effect before replacing the retirees.

Lending is in foment due to the number of vacancies and Julie Keemun's imminent departure, leaving us with no lending librarian at Helminthdale.

Ref. is Ref. With Reggie Clockwatcher playing his class act.

e-government; e-learning; Impact Measures; CPA; inspections; reviews; Framework for the Future; Gershon; and who knows what lurk in the wings like so many pantomime demons.

This morning the big idea was unveiled.

"We'll be able to stop having separate milk and teabags for Ref and Lending."

Managing the hairy palmed

I'm being constantly asked what happens about customers who come in and look at porn sites. I address this by starting with an elementary, and rather bowdlerised, account of the engorgement of erectile tissues with blood caused by visual stimuli enacting hormonal release centres in the brain but it turns out that they want to know whether or not we can bar people. I explain, again, that that's a management issue and they should ask their managers about how the acceptable use policy is to be enacted. As their managers can't tell the difference between an acceptable use policy and a terms and conditions agreement and told me to rewrite the former (written one Sunday afternoon) as it couldn't fit on a one-page A4 terms & conditions sheet in 24 point text I don't think they're on a winner somehow.

Knowing your place in the scheme of things

I've been trying to have a meeting with management group about e-government. Actually, I've been trying for the best part of two years, but it's getting a bit urgent now. No can do, too busy.

I have just watched the whole of management group getting themselves involved in this morning's story time at Noddy Library. The branch librarian's off sick so somebody needs to cover, except that nobody's available. But of course we can't say that storytime's cancelled because of staff sickness, oh no. So management group dropped everything and set to shuffling everybody around so that Cicely Gnasher can go out to do the story time. Which she does.

No bugger turned up for it.

You don't have a dog and shit on the carpet yourself

Up to my neck in e-government stuff; smartcard project fraying at the edges; the last of the libraries to go live with our LMS just coming up to the boil; a huge fight with our friends in the IT department; and T. Aldous mithering about the floorplans for five relocated libraries. Just at the point at which I want to sit in a corner screaming, I get a call from Reggie Clockwatcher...

Can I please come to the reference library to see whether two Asian youths are looking at porn on the People's Network as another customer has complained.

I wonder why Reggie doesn't go over, have a look at what they're doing and, if they're up to mischief, kick them off the PCs. Then I go home.

Bulldogs swallowing wasps

The head of Community Services, Harry Presto, retires tomorrow. He's been having a few lunches to say cheerio to the people he's worked with over the years. Today it was the turn of the half-dozen people he's been working with in the library service, which is very generous of him.

Frog made the mistake of mentioning this in the children's meeting and it got back to Umpty Library who immediately got a huge collective cob on because they hadn't been invited.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"It's gone down really badly that only senior managers got invited."

"He invited the people he works with."

"Well, none of us know him here, but some of the lower paid staff should have been invited."

"So your beef is that someone you don't know didn't buy you lunch?"

Any time this service weans itself out of the school playground can't be too soon for me.

Embracing the future

As part of the Consulting Our Children programme, Frog Dropwort's been to a few meetings of the Children's Forum at Senebene Library. As a result, he's come up with the idea of arranging a visit to the library supplier by some kids from the Forum to choose a couple of dozen books for a travelling collection. It would be an easy "consultation tick" for the library service and it would be useful to see how different, or not, the kids' choices would be to the Children's Librarians'. The Children's Librarians meet every week and spend a few hours doing book selection from approvals, so Frog took the opportunity to mention this idea to them. Nancy Flannel, from Catty Library, was most disapproving: "I'm a professional and I don't get to visit the supplier to choose books!" As it takes her all morning to select a couple of dozen books from the approvals I can't imagine she'd be able to cope with a storefull to choose from.

Grace

We don't have many librarians below the age of fifty and the youngest of them, Julie Keemun, is leaving us for another authority. She thought it might be a nice idea to go out for a farewell lunch with a few of her closer working colleagues and approached Mary Dunroamin with an invitation. "Oh no," said Mary, "I've been to Vivaldi's three times already this month!"

Setting an example

T. Aldous has been throwing his weight around at Umpty Library, complaining to the staff meeting that the issue figures are dropping like a stone (why just pick on them?) and that Something Must Be Done. In their shoes I would have suggested that the Chief Librarian might want to renew his loans, which have been overdue since the beginning of September.

Priorities

T. Aldous collared me and Mary Dunroamin for an impromptu meeting about the layouts and designs of Noddy and Umpty libraries. He laid out the plans on the table in front of us; went out and made copies of the plans; went back to his office for to print some emails about the libraries to prove that he was on top of the game; told us seven times how urgent this was (which is what he was telling us six weeks ago when he was saying that we must have a meeting to discuss the plans); explained why Shagger Noakes was making things difficult by having meetings and not telling him anything; realised that these were old copies of the plans and went and got the latest ones, which he copied, drew on and photocopied the drawings; told us it was urgent that we decide on the general layout so that he could get the designers in to sort out the furniture and shelving and then said he'd leave us to it because he had to go and get his hair cut.

Bouncers

The management of Noddy Community Centre have come up with a novel solution to the problem of the local community coming in to use the library, which moves in next month. The latest plans for the library include a small vestibule between the entrance to the centre and the door to the library. Centre staff will man a desk in the vestibule to keep an eye on our customers and make sure they don't get up to any mischief. I can't help thinking that we should be looking at the rent they'll be charging us and deducting sums for nonsense like this.

Roses grow on you

Another complication at Umpty: the library has no disabled person's access despite the requirements of the DDA. All hell breaks loose, quite rightly. It turns out that the problem lies with the local Township Committee, who vetoed the plans to provide ramps and a lift to the library on the grounds that this would mean building over a rose bed in the Umpty Park Conservation Area. As the rose bed is as derelict as the park it sits in it surprises nobody to find that there aren't any roses actually in it.

Still, the disabled would-be users of the library, lying thwarted in their beds of a night-time will sleep the easier knowing that should a rose ever be required to be planted in Umpty Park it shall have a home to go to.

Light reading

Building work at the new library at Umpty has been completed and we're now looking at moving the library lock, stock and barrel into its new home a.s.a.p. or considerably sooner. Needless to say, the planning has been meticulous, helped by the support and attention to detail one expects from the councillors of Helminthdale. Only last week, one of them queried the (very cheap, ask no questions) quote for the removals in the local rag:

"Why are we spending this sort of money on moving a few library books from one site to another? I expect a troop of boy scouts could do the job for a few quid if we provided them with shopping trolleys."

Sigh...

There is one slight complication: the lending library is on the first floor of the new building and it turns out that the floor isn't as strong as one might hope. In fact, it has a load bearing of fifteen Newtons, which is to say 15kgpm², the gravitational force you would expect if you laid a dozen Bramley apples on a floor tile, or, in layman's parlance: you're welcome to walk around the library but don't have any ideas about lying down for any length of time. Luckily, 15,000 books on bookshelves weigh next to nothing at all.

Bliss

The People's Network's been down today. Calloo, calloo, callay! For the first time in many weeks I haven't been reporting a dozen faults a day to the IT Helpdesk. Staff have taken the opportunity to get a breather and re-establish friendly relations with their customers.

The background's a bit interesting. Officially it's down because of problems with the filtering system and corporate concerns that unfiltered internet = all hell breaking loose. Unofficially, it has emerged that three weeks ago the ISP, who administers our filter as part of the contract, notified T. Aldous that there would be changes to the filtering system today and that there needed to be a few tweaks on the pipe at this end in order to take up the new changes. T. Aldous forwarded this email to the corporate networking group last night at half-eight. Bless.

Eh?

More fun at Pottersbury Road. We've finally got the place onto the library management system and the head's kicking up a fuss because I won't let her staff log onto it, set themselves up as borrowers and issue books to themselves. In the end I have to invoke the Data Protection Act and point out that it's no more appropriate for us to give them unsupervised access to our borrower database than it is for us to have access to their student records. Things were tricky until I had a brainwave and suggested that we could download their student records periodically so as to be able to verify the addresses and telephone numbers of their children. This immediately put the wind up her and she spent a good twenty minutes explaining why this was a monstrous proposition. In which time she totally forgot any idea of her staff having access to our system. Thank God! What I say is that if the school doesn't trust the teachers to write letters to parents why should I let them anywhere near my nice library management system?

ITMA

Shagger Noakes twice in one week? Does the world not hold terrors enough as it is? This morning our favourite trickle down the leg of fate is acting as squire to Ardley Corduroy as he presents the Best Value Action Plan to the troops in the trenches. Not a single one of those four little words can be objectively applied to what one wit has already dubbed "the twelve PowerPoint slides of the Apocalypse." There's all the usual guff about community focus, which is Helminthdalespeak for "when we duck out of difficult decisions we'll blame the community." And customer values, which turns out to be code for doing everything short of providing a service to the poor buggers. There's a vision sub-plan which "umbrellas the service strategies into one unifying direction." "We'll be doing more outreach work to reach out to people who don't come to the library." And no end of "consulting with the community about high value business activities."

In the end I could stand no more:

"There are a lot of pretty major systemic changes proposed here. Change of that nature is going to need people available to manage that change if it isn't to degenerate into a complete shambles. You've already established that we're under strength with managers as it is. Who's going to be doing it all?"

"Don't you worry," said Ardley, "there'll be people who'll be doing the job."

Actions speak louder than words. The Community Outreach Librarian's post has been vacant since Nettie Rosencrantz ran off to live in Wales. This afternoon we find out that the post's been deleted to help pay for the staff overspend in Sheep City.

Order from chaos in plain sight

For many years I've been trying to fathom out the reference library's shelving scheme and failing miserably. The books are given Dewey numbers but aren't shelved in Dewey order. Each is given a numbered sticker. If you consult the library catalogue you'll get the Dewey number but not the number on the sticker. To get that, you have to know the title of the book you want and then go over to a card index on the window ledge (I kid you not) to find the number. Thank God! they are shelved in numerical order.

But what order is it? It isn't anything obvious like author or subject matter. Nor date of publication as the 2005 Writer's Yearbook sits next to a health service directory published in 1997. Publisher? No. A few of us got talking about this recently and picked holes in our respective theories. In the end we had to ask Reggie Clockwatcher as it was driving us barmy and putting Frog off his crosswords. I felt like Doctor Watson being deflated as Sherlock Holmes explained the trick. So very, very obvious.

The books are shelved in order of height.

We've a little tiny crocodile that sings like Bing

A visitation from from our beloved Head of Culture and Library Services, Shagger Noakes. What joy. The man is a blustering gobshite and a know-nothing bully. One of the inspection teams (I forget which one) asked what was the point of having an intermediary between T. Aldous, the Chief Librarian, and Ardley Corduroy, our Director of Services. Legend has it that an inspector asked the about-to-retire Senior Curator of Museums: "What is the point of the Head of Culture and Library Services?" To which Arthur Champions replied: "Oh, you've met him then?"

Shagger was laying down the law about the need for our supporting and promoting the new Centre for Local Culture and Natural History Studies. The need being that he's spent all the capital for the next eight years on the damned thing and councillors are getting twitchy. Our staffing budget's been frozen to pay for the publicity and marketing team for the centre, which hasn't gone down well. It isn't as if they need to market the centre: the place virtually sells itself. The Natural History Galleries include one of England's largest collections of stuffed sheep (I'll let you make up your own jokes) and there is a huge interactive exhibit celebrating the life of local music-hall star Edie Grimsdale. By all accounts, Edie Grimsdale wasn't the sort of person you'd go out of your way to interact with, but you try your best with the materials to hand.

He spoke for forty minutes without interruption and when he'd gone we all compared notes: none of us have the first idea what he was actually telling us. Never has so much verbiage gone into so little communication.

God gives nuts to them as have no teeth

One of the things that always gets my goat about library management group in general and T. Aldous in particular is their utter passivity to events. The wheels fall off the wagon on a daily basis and they just throw their hands up in horror and cry: "Oh woe, look at what the world does to us!"

Case in point: we still haven't heard anything officially about the last inspection. If I were in T. Aldous' shoes, whether the report was good, bad or indifferent as soon as I got the first informal feedback from the inspectors I'd have been spinning it like a top in a whirlwind. As it is, staff are hearing odd bits in dribs and drabs and with no context to work in.

The latest word is that the inspectors were baffled by our pattern of opening hours. Well good luck to them. There's not a member of staff who can reliably recite the opening hours of all our libraries without a crib. All of our libraries open at 10.00am, except for the ones that open at 9.30am or 9.45am and those that don't open until the afternoon, in which case they open at 1.00pm. Or 1.30pm. Or 2.00pm. Some libraries close for lunchtime, either at 12.00 or at 12.30pm or at 1.00pm. Some don't open in the afternoons at all, caring not to catch the after-school trade. Some close for one afternoon a week. Some close for a day a week. This madcap pattern would be alright if it meant that a steady level of branch staff were available for providing cover throughout the week. It doesn't. We have a glut on Monday and Friday afternoons and Thursday and Friday mornings are a famine.

What arcane methodology led us to this position? Enter Reggie Clockwatcher, who was given the job of devising the curtailment of opening hours during the budget crisis of 1994. And how did he choose the opening hours of each library? Did he analyse use patterns? Did he consult with the local community? Did he use the experience of other library authorities? No, he asked branch library staff which afternoons they fancied off. So half of them chose market day. Then they found out that they weren't going to have the time off: they'd be working at their local main library.

I never did find out what the saving was here. The building costs remained constant, as did the staffing costs -- no one's hours were cut. I can only imagine that there's some huge saving on the use of lightbulbs.

I half expected a nymph to appear

The girls at Catty Library have had another of their Anne Summers' parties. Not something you want to hear about before you have your dinner. Arrivals at the party were greeted at the door by their hostess, Roxy Clutterbuck, dressed in a PVC nurse's outfit notable for being both very tight and very short. Now, Roxy is a lovely lady but this is not one of those mental images you want to cling to in the aching voids before dawn.

Rosy Dalston won a vibrator. The dear old thing was ever so happy as she does a lot of baking.

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.