An information professional at work

"I can't make head nor tail of this," T.Aldous tells Seth. Seth has made the mistake of giving him the lists of equipment in the throwing-out pile and in the computer room towards the end of an extremely trying day.

"That's the equipment that's being thrown out. And that's the equipment that was in the computer room that's being kept."

"But what about all these?" asks T.Aldous, referring to what appears to be the fifth or sixth generation two or three times removed arising from his orginal asset list.

"That's stuff that wasn't in the computer room."

"Well, where is it?"

"I don't know."

Seth recounts this to me and I weaken and have a look at T.Aldous' list. The original was obviously a corporate asset list not just confined to the library service. The PCs in question belong to the Environmental Health department.

The wheels fall off the cycle of life

In my lunch break (what T.Aldous calls my lunch hour and my clock card calls twenty one minutes) I nip out and buy a couple of bottles for Seth in appreciation of the work he's done on the computer room and the prolonged aggrivation he's had from T.Aldous today. I'd have killed the man, and may well yet do so.

"He's asked me about that bloody screen again," says Seth.

"Courage, mon brave," I say as I clasp his shoulder. "This cannot be forever."

We both know better. This is one of Hell's waiting rooms.

How come there's never a whacking big stick with a nail stuck in it when you really need one?

Seth is knee-deep in electronic archaeology when T.Aldous butts in.

"What's that screen?"

"I don't know."

"Why aren't we keeping that?"

"Because Kevin says it's broken and should be chucked out."

"Put it to one side, I'll check with him."

And so he toddles into my office. I'm knee-deep in the Library Service's contribution to the corporate specification for an online bookings system, in which Library Management Group is actively involved in pretty much the same way as the dead tree at the bottom of my garden is contributing to the London Olympics.

"What's that screen in the pile over there?"

"Which one? There are four."

"The black one."

"It's a black broken screen."

"If it's broken why is it here?"

"Because it's broken, I replaced it with a spare and I didn't know I was allowed to dispose of broken equipment."

"Why are we throwing it away?"

"Because it's broken."

"I think we should keep it, just in case we need to account for it."

"Isn't that why you've got Seth making a list of equipment that's being disposed of?"

"Are you sure it's broken?"

"Quite sure. If you shake it about it makes an interesting rattling noise and when you plug it into the mains it fizzes."

"So it needs to be thrown away then?"

"Yes, honestly."

Chasing rainbows

"Good news," emails Arthur Sixpence.

"We've been a bit busy lately but we're now able to do something about the software you wanted ordering. We'll be discussing it next week."

We've been "doing something about it next week" since November. It's good to see that in these turbulent times there are still some things that never change.

Rubbing salt in it

I've rescued what equipment I can from the chucking-out pile. A dozen items in all: a PC screen; an inkjet printer; a Braille embosser and some barcode scanners. Only the screen and printer are on the asset register: barcode scanners are treated as consumables by our IT section and they wouldn't know a Braille embosser from a badger's arse (I'm the local expert on them, which shows how bad things are). There might be some more "spares" that I could rescue but I can't be bothered. What's the point?

In flounces T.Aldous to ask whether I've taken the details of all the equipment in the chucking-out pile.

"No. You had Seth do that when he was clearing the place out on Saturday."

"But that was before you took some of the equipment out and put it back in the computer room."

"The stuff I'm keeping's in the computer room. There's only a screen and a printer that you need to keep on the asset register."

"So you've not made a list of all the serial numbers of the equipment that's to be thrown out?"

"No. You've already got that. You just need to cross out the screen and the printer from that list."

"So I can leave you to go through that equipment then? I'll leave the list with you."

"You can take the list away with you. I'm not going to do anything with it."

Half an hour later, Seth tells me that he's been instructed to go through the equipment in the chucking-out pile, taking the serial numbers. He suggested that he could just take a note of the kit that was being kept and cross it off Saturday's list. Not good enough. T.Aldous wants to see him checking all the numbers.

Emptying the rummage cupboard

On Friday afternoon, T.Aldous told me that he wanted the equipment in the computer room checking against the inventory. This consists of a few bits in the network cabinet; a few working spares and a load of kit that's broken but which I've not been allowed to throw away because "we may need to account for it."

"I don't know why you're holding onto equipment that's broken, what's the point?"

Says the man who I asked precisely the same question six years ago when he insisted that I find room in the computer room for twenty-seven defunct dumb terminals and three bookcases full of old Latin dictionaries.

I arranged with Seth the caretaker that we'd spend this morning clearing the room out, making a pile of the stuff that's being chucked out (having taken the details of those bits of equipment that should/would have been on the asset register at some time or another) and taking the asset details of the kit I'd be keeping.

Alas! T.Aldous was in on Saturday and decided that this wasn't good enough, insisting that Seth clear out the computer room that afternoon. So, this morning I'm rummaging through the pile trying to rescue the kit that I want to keep.

Seth's quite embarassed and upset by it. I don't know why, he's not to blame and he's made a splendid job of tidying up the computer room. T.Aldous, on the other hand, is a time-wasting prat.

Statesmanlike

Having a drink in "The Monkey's" with a council colleague to celebrate his retirement. The Leader of the Council, Councillor Oblong, enters the pub, sees Warner Baxter standing at the bar and shouts across:

"Oi you! Have you closed that fucking library yet?"

"What's that about?" I ask my friend later.

"Didn't you know?" he replied. "He's got a down on one of your libraries because the librarian there sent their kid to private school."

Rattle of pebbles in a potted meat tin

3.15pm: after eight months' of trying, the network team get the OK from the planners to put a wireless link on the back end of Grimly Library between the burglar alarm and the anti-vandal fencing

3.40pm: the planners change their mind and decide that they need planning permission and the equipment needs to be painted brick red

A sailor's farewell to his horse

Someone here has realised we are not going to hit our targets for stock replenishment. Oh dear that bad. The action plan which was floating around last week, which I haven't seen, suggests I will confirm by last Friday the number of withdrawals from stock we have made this financial year. As I don't know I am supposed to be doing this I haven't done it.

Somehow the solution to the problem is to withdraw material like it is going out of fashion. Someone has come up with the glorious solution that if we get rid of 20,000 items before March 31st we might have a chance. Where the 20,000 has come from I don't know, as if you don't know how many you have got rid of up to now — and I know they don't as no one has asked for the figure — how do you know this action will get you where you think you ought to be?

Being the helpful sort I am I have offered alternative solution. I will buy, for the princely sum of one new penny, the entire stock of Pottersbury Road Library, total 11,510. (This figure has to be treated with a little caution as some of it was counted by the Pottersbury Road Library staff.) I will then sell my entire purchase back to the library service for 1p, thus creating a turnover of 2 x 11,510. (At this stage I am still working on the small print of purchase/sales contract, though writing into the terms and conditions a line that none of the stuff can be used for Pottersbury Road branch library seems like a very good idea to me.)

Oddly, and I don't know why as I can't see a hole in my logic, initial reaction to my proposal hasn't been well received.

Geography for the damned

email exchange between Frog and t. Aldous:

"The storysacks and the storysack racks have arrived. The latest are for Catty and Dutch Bend libraries (bought from Surestart money - so have to be housed in Surestart areas) The racks have been assembled and will be delivered shortly. "

"Where is the SureStart area in Catty Library ? "

"There isn't. I was meaning Surestart areas in the geographical sense as in Catty, Dutch Bend, Sorry & Oblivion, etc. "

Ain't it grand to be bloomin' well dead?

People's Network. This time it's the Reference Library. They wanted a scanner, so I arranged for someone to put in all the electrics, I ordered scanner, took it and box up to the Reference Library, unpacked it, installed it, went away.

"We can't have that," they screamed, "someone might pinch it."

Put scanner back in box, went away.

Customer complained about lack of scanner. I quote Reference Librarian via reliable witness: "We did have one, but the IT guy took it away".

Now it seems I have to reply to official complaint. Bless.

Life can be a dream

A couple of months ago one of the library assistants successfully applied for the job running the branch library at Oblivion. I asked her if she's got a start date yet.

"God no. I'm beginning to think it was all just a strange, exotic dream."

Pathetic point scoring

Up in the reference library to sort a problem created by Reggie Clockwatcher. He tells his customers: "I've asked the technician to have a look at the problem. Here he is now."

A few minutes later a customer asks me where to find one of the directories. I point to Reggie:

"Ask the receptionist over there. I'm sure he'll be able to help."

And now a day in the farmyard...

Global corporate email:

Please be aware that some people are receiving emails that include a potential virus threat. These emails have the subject "Re:[]"

Do not open the attachment in these emails. The anti-virus software on the network should block any problems but it is sensible not to take any risks. It is best all round if you just delete emails with this subject heading without reading them.

Please make sure that colleagues without access to email see this message.

Why?

Post haste

There goes T. Aldous, running up the hill to the post office to get a statutory submission in the mail by the alloted deadline. If a thing's worth doing it's worth doing on the back of an envelope at the very last minute.

Sitting on us assets

T. Aldous is still tinkering with the asset registry entry for the libraries. Had he left it for me to do once I was back from Xmas leave on the 3rd I'd have had it done and dusted in a week (albeit with a lot of bitching and bad language). He's got three different versions on the go and, as he doesn't understand the concept of version control, he's made different notes and alterations on each in turn and made different generations of corrections on different sheets such that it is impossible to correlate the data. He then compounds it by hovering over the shoulder of Nettie the secretary as she amends the spreadsheet, gets her to print out the results and then that becomes version four to be scribbled on. Except he loses that and reverts to making corrections on version two. He's confused the hell out of every library in town and I can't find any of the "grubby spares" equipment that I keep hold of for emergency.

Keeps him out of mischief I guess.

Dressing up

For reasons we won't go into here, we've been given a couple of tiny teddy bears to help promote romantic fiction. Having a bit of time on our hands while the world goes to hell in a handcart, Frog and I set to dressing them up suitably. Mills and Boon, the Bondage Bears, have black leatherette jackets and thighboots (we cut up a bin bag), string vests (I'd just bought some satsumas) and spiked dog collars (black masking tape and drawing pins). They look very fetching, though their initial appearance on the children's librarians' bookshelf was controversial and had to be toned down for the audience.

I'm really worried that

1. We found the time to do this; and


2. We both turn out to be so knowledgeable about bondage gear.

Frog's now making a cat o'nine tails out of an old drinking straw. I think I should leave him to it.

The equipment has the best tunes

The lift is broken (again!) Some wag sticks a note on the door:

This Otis regrets it cannot come down today

Oh yes it can!

"Ah well, at least it can't get any worse," they say. And then it bloody well does. In a bid to kill the jinx I've instituted a rule in my office that anyone saying "It can't get any worse" has to put 10p in the cocoa tin by the door. I've just checked the current state of play: since the beginning of December we've collected £3.40 for charity.

Puzzle

"What do you do for a living?" asks Warner Baxter.

Do you know, I had no idea either.

Life imitates art II

My colleague has given me the OK so here's the picture I referred to a while back.

Now will you stop nagging?

(The note was thrown away, but not the flipchart despite it being a risk to life and limb. I'm not aware that the note itself was broken. Probably a misunderstanding.)

Terror

Oh hell. This is enough to freeze your waters... T. Aldous has just popped his head through the doorway and said:

I think we need to prioritise your workload.

This means that any attempt on my part to do absolutely anything except, perhaps, go to the lavatory will be stymied for the forseeable. "Don't do that just yet, we need to review whether or not it's a high priority," they'll say. But you can bet your bippy that I'll be held personally accountable for anything that's not done.

Boxing clever

Last Thursday, Seth the caretaker approached T. Aldous:

"I've got a pile of flattened cardboard boxes in the back there. Are you going to be needing them for Tench Lane?"

"No, I've sorted out what we're doing about moving the books away from the building work."

"So is it OK for me to chuck them then?"

"Oh yes, we need the space."

Today T. Aldous approaches Seth:

"Do we have any cardboard boxes? We need about thirty or forty of them for moving the stock at Tench Lane."

He then scoured the building looking for likely boxes. He spotted a pile in the acquisitions team's corner.

"What are these boxes?"

"They're new books that have arrived from the suppliers this morning."

"Can you unpack them now? I need the boxes."

"No. Each box includes the invoice and delivery note and we need to be able the check the boxes' contents against the paperwork."

"Can't you pile the books in the corner over there, using the invoices to separate each box?"

"Is that your 'phone ringing?"

A mismatch of realities

T.Aldous, having been frightened by news about the council's strategy for transforming e-government, comes in for a chat.

"It's a pity that you told us to kill that project last month. That would have been our contribution to the strategy and we'd be sweet with Warner Baxter."

Me kill that project?!? http://helminthdale.blogspot.com/2005/12/sprint-finish.html

Nobody would convict me.

Mañana is a bit frenetic for some people

Time's a-wasting, we have some outstanding projects that have to be completed by the end of March and the hand at the tiller is Arthur Sixpence's. God help us. I chase him up again...

Hi Arthur,
For a couple of months I've been asking how we get to spend the money on the online services agreed in March. As you know, this project's a bit urgent now, especially after the comments by the inspection team and the Chief Exec's response to them. We need to get this moving a.s.a.p. Can we make a start soon?

Response:

Kevin,
I'll check what we're doing about this and I'll get back to you next week.

An utter waste of time and effort

Email exchange...

From T. Aldous:

Is it possible to have the statistics for new borrowers collected and reported on a monthly basis?

My reply:

Yes it is possible and I've been emailing the figures to you at the beginning of each month for the past three years.

Reverb

Public spat:

"Who told you to send those boxes out to Catty?" demands T. Aldous.

"You did," chorus Seth and Lemuel the caretakers.

"I did no such thing. Mary and Reginald have no right telling you to send boxes all over town. Where will it end? We won't know where anything is."

"We don't know where anything is anyway," retorts Seth, stopping short of saying the L word.

"Those boxes need to be over here so that we know where they are. I'll leave you to make the arrangements."

One day someone will open one of these boxes and find out that something important's inside. Frog's running a book on the contents. I'm a bit put off that the five favourites are all body parts.

Oopsie daisie!

Another year another directorate. Warner Baxter, our new director, comes along for a hastily-convened Management Group meeting.

Apparently, at the end he said: "that was a useful introduction, thank you. I'll come along to the next meeting so that I can get a feel as to how things are progressing. When's your next meeting? How often do you meet?"

Nobody could tell him.

Static libraries

Our beleaguered and decimated acquisitions team are swamped with boxes. It's a bit early for the usual end-of-year panic buy. It turns out that those first signs of spring have been augmented by yet another pile of boxes of booksale; a pile of books from Tench Lane, which is about to be closed for a few weeks to have a new lavatory (I must have missed the announcement that this was European Year of the Lavatory); and a pile of boxes of books that have been bouncing between Catty and Milkbeck for years for no apparent reason.

"Good news!" cries Seth the caretaker, "himself has told us to send these boxes back over to Catty."

The acq. team loosen their stays a little and breathe out. Out of sympathy I lend a hand loading the Big Berha trolley.

"What's these boxes?" I ask.

"Leave them, they're fixtures."

Being dead nosy I have a look in one of them. Italian children's books.

"A present from the twin town visitors. They've been processed but they're not on the catalogue because T.Aldous wants to look at them first."

"When did they visit?"

"1997"

I look around. "Are all these boxes Italian books?"

"Oh no. Those over there are circulating collections, we're waiting for Mary to decide where they're circulating to. Those six are waiting for the children's librarians to allocate to libraries. That lot on the wall are Richard & Judy collections waiting for someone to decide how we're going to issue them - they aren't sure whether they're normal fiction stock or whether they should be short loans. Oh, and that lot's for Reading Groups. Which Reading Groups, where, and why we're lumbered I don't know and I don't care any more, I retire in eight years and they'll all still be here when I go."

I feel that I have stumbled against an open wound. I come back later and leave behind some chocolate.

Care in the community

"What do you think we should do about that PC in Noddy?" asks T. Aldous.

"Can't we postpone the move until the centre management's died?" I suggest.

Big Brother is up your nose

Invited to Noddy Community Centre for a site meeting. The centre management is the usual collection of elderly volunteers that you'd expect to meet on a workday morning. They seem OK on the whole, expect for one latecomer who casts a pall on all the others and spends the meeting lobbing in crabby comments like: "Can't we close the football pitch? That would stop the young lads using the car park," and "who's paying for the carpet in the corridor outside the library?" I think I can guess who doesn't want library users coming into the centre in case they turn out to be paedophiles.

T.Aldous broaches the subject of service level agreements. This is surprisingly sensible of him. And very naughty, as all around the table know the council rule that service level agreements can only be negotiated after the library has moved in and the old library building is sold. (Please could any passing Audit Commission inspectors wondering why Helminthdale's service charges are four times those of comparison authorities forget they read this paragraph).

We pop into the library-to-be, full of workmen and painters. Slap bang in the doorway is a PC sitting precariously on a Homebase pine bracket shelf five feet above the ground.

"What on earth is that?" I ask.

"It's the PC for the CCTV. We've just bought a camera so that we can have security footage of the car park."

"Why's it there?"

"It's the most convenient place."

"Convenient? It's the entrance to a public library. You can't put it there!"

"Why not? What's wrong with it?"

"Well, for a start it looks horrible. For next it's unsafe. And for finals it's insecure."

"Well, we can't move it. It has to be there."

I spend an hour trying to explain the folly of having an unsecured PC perched on a shelf in the entrance to a public library. I make noises about security, health and safety, maintenence and replacement insurance. They think I'm being awkward. Finally, old crabby asks: "Are you going to pay for it to be moved?"

I shrug and give up. I won't pretend to be sympathetic when they come along bleating that somebody's either stolen or broken the processor.

I had the last laugh. Just before I left it dawned on the centre management that the equipment wasn't plugged in.

"No it's not, love," said the sparks, "we're rewiring the room."

Merry Christmas to all our readers

T. Aldous approaches me as I hunt a kettle for my caffeine fix. "I've had a memo from IT. Apparently there's a row because the tender for outsourcing said that the council's got 400 PCs and there's actually 600. They're reviewing the asset register."

Big shock. For the past decade somebody over there's been deleting items from the asset register without doing anything about either telling the people using the equipment or arranging for replacement. Presumably it's to hit some performance target or other. I know I'm not the only person to have reported a problem with a PC only to be told: "that PC was replaced two years ago." And you can never find out who replaced it and what with.

"They've sent a form over. We need to do an audit of all our equipment in all our libraries and complete the form so that they can update the asset register. It needs to be done by January 4th."

It's the season of goodwill so I just smile and walk away.

The man without a cork leg

Over to Sheep City for a chat with Bosko Landscape in Archives about some work on the local history portal. Deep gloom. Sheep City's part of Helminthdale Leisure Trust, an arm's length company set up so that instead of being a constant drain on the corporation's finances it'll be a nice little earner with the capacity to obtain finance from external sources. Reality bites and the cost of emergency repairs to the roof of Dutch Bend Lido and the new signs at Catty Golf Club have bitten hard. Savings must be made. It is proposed that Sheep City closes for an afternoon a week. God alone knows what savings that'll make, but there we go.

Sheep City's manager, Maurice Batchelor, was at an event in the Town Hall this morning when he was approached by Councillor Mountebank, a long-term opponent of the place.

"We'll be closing you down soon, Batchelor," says the councillor.

"How many customers are registered at the leisure centre in your ward?" asked Maurice.

"Eh?"

"Two hundred and thirty two. We had eighteen thousand visit us last month."

Crouching tiger, springing limpet

One of our IT guys takes agin the new library management system. Arthur Sixpence sends me this email:

I really don't think that this system is appropriate for use here. Why do they need it to do all these things? We could, and should, have been allowed to write something to do this job.
Marc

Kevin,
Can you contact the company and sort this out. Thanks.
Arthur

I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. Certainly not one that the Library Service or its customers have encountered. Nor do I have any patience with the idea that these guys could write, let alone support, a viable library management system for the later 20th Century. I'm being asked to contact the company who had to wait two years for the system to be installed and paid for to sort out an unspecified problem.

I take the opportunity to put the recent lessons learned into practice and like the dashing gazelle I act.

I do absolutely nothing and get on with the rest of my life.

Kicking the ball into the long grass: a masterclass

Having spent hours watching the masters at work lately, together with the usual impulse for an end-of-year review, I suddenly feel enlightened as to the workings of our organisation. I offer this insight as a public service...

Want to do something? Achieve something? Make something happen? Ah well...

"I'm a bit busy at the moment"
This is Reggie Clockwatcher's favourite put-off. It's utter drivel, of course, and he knows that we know that he knows we don't believe him because for Reggie "busy" is not having the time to spend a couple of hours on the 'phone negotiating an inflated deal for business directories we don't need. It doesn't stop anything happening but you know Reggie won't get himself involved.

But you knew he wouldn't anyway.

"It'll be done next week"
This is our friends in IT. The cheque's in the mail. Have your girl talk to my girl. It doesn't taste of anything. Conkers.

"What do other libraries do?"
The instruction is to ring around and ask if anyone else is doing what you suggest, with the implication being that if it's a novelty it's not on. What the uninitiated don't realise is that if anyone else is doing it it still might not be on. No decision has been made one way or another, it's a stall.

This is Mary's favourite mode of prevarication. It's pretty much nursery slope stuff in the scheme of things but it can be profoundly irritating when effectively deployed.

"We need to discuss this"
This is a low-level T. Aldous stall. He has no intention of ever discussing it, whatever it is. This leads on to...

"We need to have a meeting about this"
He has no intention of having a meeting, either. This can go on for months. Unless you're really unlucky and it becomes...

"I think we need to review this now that ..."
Now you're screwed and may as well pack up and go home. The van driver's post has been vacant for six years because T. Aldous wants to review the delivery route.

Cheese & onion

We've had the pie lunch and for the life of me I don't know how many cheese and onion pies we had in the end.

Poetry corner

Xmas lunch at Dutch Bend. I popped in towards the end just to let on and say hello to everyone, including a few retirees. Just in time to catch the cabaret: Nancy Screech strolls in dolled up as T. Aldous Huxtable, complete with ginger fright wig and a furry caterpillar on a stick acting as the trademark eyebrows. "He" proceeded to recite a poem. I won't weary you with all twelve verses, but one in particular stood out:

"Sometimes things go very wrong;
Things often go that way.
But you know that I'm not to blame
I was on leave that day."

A la recherche de posts perdu

I'm technically on leave for most of this week. Except that I'm running system back-ups on a laptop on my bedroom floor because there's no one to do it in my absence. Except that there is: Jimmy Huddersfield's replacement. Except that Jimmy's been retired for months and his replacement's no nearer being appointed.

Reason? "Now that Jimmy's retired we can review his post. There are a few other functions that might be taken over by whoever's doing that job."

They couldn't possibly have reviewed his post during the year's notice he gave them of his retirement.

The ultimate non-communication strategy

A colleague shares this, in the hopes that his organisation may compete managerially with Helminthdale...

"Just as we were leaving for lunch a police van came roaring down the street and into the side street by the library, closely followed by a Paramedic Ambulance. Apparently their destination was the library.

"The paramedics turned up at the Reference desk saying 'Where's the guy having the heart attack?' and no-one knew what they were talking about - they hadn't called an ambulance, so they rang Betty (Bob's PA) to find out - and Bob himself answered the phone: 'What are they doing there? I told them to come to the back door - they're for me.'

"Bloody marvellous - they obviously went to the back door and couldn't get in so they came round the front - and no-one knew. Could he tell anyone? Nah.

"As yet we still don't know what's the matter with Bob but it'd be all the same if the stupid old sod had died in the back room. There's more...

"Apparently Betty went with him to the hospital (so why didn't she tell the front desk anything or open the f***ing back door? oh well) so all the phone calls for Bob and Betty were coming through to Lending. Susan asked Cynthia (head of Reference) what was happening about Bob's calls because staff were saying 'He's just gone off with some paramedics.'

"Cynthia told Susan: 'you'll have to put them through to Betty' and Susan replied: 'didn't you just tell me Betty had gone to the hospital with Bob?' 'Oh, yes.'

"About 2 hours later we've just had an email from Betty saying Bob's in hospital.

"Aagh."

There's a happy ending...

"In the end, he was off for a few days but it transpires it wasn't a heart attack. When they took him in they said he had very low blood pressure. They have no idea what caused it. No more has been said since."

Hello?

T. Aldous has just spent two hours trying to convince me that the BBC's Read & Write initiative is a major problem that we couldn't work with. At one point I heard me tell him that if we weren't in the business of promoting literacy and weren't prepared to try and help customers find reading material that met their needs then we had no business calling ourselves public libraries.

He came back into my office a few times with "proof" of the BBC's perfidy: "look, they sent this email at eight o'clock!" (eh?)

In the end even he realised he'd gone too far and kept out of my way when Mary suggested it might be prudent. I'd told her that I would kill Huxtable if he came within three yards of me.

Well worth it

I've spent my weekend working on IEG5 stats and BVPI157. Important e-government stats that determine how much money the council gets and in which the Library Service's senior management show no interest whatsoever, no matter how much I mither them.

Bless.

The veriest bliss

T. Aldous takes a few of us to one side to brief us on the council's new job evaluation programme. Very useful:

"I really don't know anything about it but we must all do it and it's important because it could affect your pensions."

Still none the wiser.

Raw nerves

T. Aldous has just belatedly woken up to the BBC's RaW campaign to encourage reading and writing. The BBC wants to work with public libraries to further this cause and they're providing lots of publicity materials, etc. for it. Unlike some other BBC campaigns there aren't any strings and lots and lots of positives. Here's how he brings it to the staff meeting:

"This is a pain but I guess we have to do it, we can't avoid it. The BBC have sent out lots of these packs. They promised us stickers but they've not arrived yet. It's just typical isn't it? The stickers were supposed to have arrived last week."

The latest in the cheese & onion stakes

Two weeks to go and three portions still to be claimed. A nation trembles in anticipation.

Olympian table tennis

The first of a brace of meetings with Arthur Sixpence, one of our friends in IT. As expected, it's bad-tempered and functionally useless to anyone wanting to actually get something (anything!) done but a fascinating terpsichore for the disinterested observer. People who know me are amazed when I claim that I don't contribute to the bad temper of these meetings. This isn't because I'm not very, very annoyed. It is because I'm very, very annoyed with both parties to the arguments -- I think they're both feckless, useless lumps -- and to get involved in the rows is to have one or other claiming me as their champion and expecting me to get them out of the latest fix they've got themselves into. Ah, no, learnt that lesson early on. This meeting revolved around a project for automating the various notices we send to borrowers, including telephone and text contact. We were told rather late in the day that we had the funding for it and that we had four months in which to have it all done and dusted and paid for. Two obstacles: we'll be relying on the guy in IT who's been "ordering that software next week" for another project for 25 months; and there's no way I can this project on my own. I've told T. Aldous that I need help with it. T. Aldous responded by running out of my office and refusing the discuss the matter further. These are the people having the meeting.

It really is impressive, truly. Forcing myself to take a step back and not get involved, lest I kill one or both, I suddenly realised just how good these guys are at what they do. What they do is their utmost to avoid being held accountable for anything. Anything that happens is a result of somebody else deciding on a course of action and imposing their will upon the blameless waif. Watching one or other on their own is infuriating. Watching the two in mortal combat is fascinating, like watching two chess grandmasters at the peak of their powers with games lost or won by sequences of apparently minor nuances. Or two ghosts trying to nail blancmanges into each other's backs.

Forty-five minutes later, the meeting adjourns with honours equal and each convinced that the ensuing stalemate is a resounding personal victory.

Chimps off the old block

Bless.

I'm asked to a meeting with T. Aldous and Arthur Sixpence to discuss getting IT into the "new" library at Noddy. Arthur brings along Bill Nedlow, who's appalled to hear how far things have got with the building without notifying IT. "It'll take BT at least six months to get a line out to the new place," he warns. We had hoped that whoever was doing the project management in Property Services had mentioned that they were doing this. I don't mention that I happen to know that Bill knows all about it because he signed the petition against moving Noddy Library back in August.

Arthur takes the opportunity to ask about the project I'm worrying about.

"Have you decided what you're doing about this project? Can we write it off and put the money in as a saving?"

"What are we doing about this Kevin?"

"You and the others are discussing it to see whether or not the library service can deliver on this project."

"We'll have to get back to you on this Arthur, we're trying to find out whether or not we can deliver on this project."

And so it goes. Like ping pong, Arthur desperate to kill the project and save the money, so long as he can say that the Library Service killed it; T. Aldous desperate not to commit himself to any course of action and desperate to blame IT for non-delivery; both desperate for me to say anything that gets them off the hook; me saying nowt, just in case. As appropriate a finale to the year's achievements as I can think of.

Sprint finish

T. Aldous swears that he's not been told anything about the successful IT bid. It's remarkable how many such things he's not told about. Perhaps because of things like this...

There's one project I can't do by March on my own. Absolutely not a chance. This makes me physically sick as I've been trying to get funding for it for five years. It's important for e-government. It's important for our meeting standards that determine how much money the council gets from the government. Much, much more importantly, it improves the service we're providing to our customers by leaps and bounds. I am depressed and heartsick. Still, nil desperandum, there may be some way to retrieve the situation. With a bit of will and ingenuity we may be able to pull together and make things happen. I try to talk to management team. Who don't want to talk to me about it.

The closest I get is when T. Aldous comes in to witter about a letter he has to write ("is 'e-government' hyphenated?") I tell him that we need to discuss what we're doing about this project as a matter of urgency. I stress the importance. I stress that I can't do it on my own. I stress that I need the help of management team. The 'phone rings. In the time it takes me to turn, pick up the receiver and turn back, the bugger has escaped.

While it's quite sweet that a man of his age has such a turn of speed, it's dispiriting to know that the one time I ask for help he runs out of my office.

Opportunity kicks the door in

'Phone call from Arthur Sixpence, our IT liaison bod. The guy who's been "just about to order" a key piece of software for us for the past twenty five months. Apparently, the bid for funding I submitted in September 2004 for a bunch of projects were approved in March and why haven't I done anything about them? First I know about it, that's why. It's urgent that things get in train as if the money's not spent by March it's lost.

One of the projects involves the software he should have ordered two years ago.

"Can you get that ordered a.s.a.p. Arthur?"

"I'll send you an email about it next week."

Just like my socks, they are neglected

Interesting gossip about Harry Presto's leaving do. Apparently, he wanted to invite any and all library staff who could get away for a bit that afternoon, so he asked T. Aldous for a list of all staff. And asked. And asked.

Surprisingly enough, T. Aldous himself managed to get to the do and had a nice time.

Looking after pennies

It's axiomatic that the further up the greasy pole one goes the more careful one gets with one's money. Case in point: each week staff put 30p into the tea money kitty to pay for milk. Library Assistants do this without demur, depsite knowing full well that the likelihood of their getting through the week without being shipped out to provide emergency cover somewhere or another is vanishingly slight. One senior manager puts in 20p because she's stopped having tea at lunchtime. Another has taken to putting in 27p because she doesn't get a Monday evening cup of tea.

Yuletide cheer

Every other Tuesday, the Mobile Library's last stop is outside O'Grady's fish and chip shop, so they pop in and get their dinners and bring them back with them. Being nice lads, they've taken orders from other staff at Helminthdale and we've had a regular lunchtime social gathering of it.

This has been noticed by management. Mary Dunroamin has changed the Mobile Library schedule. The stop outside the chip shop is now served at 2.00pm.

I have always thought in the back of my mind...

Good news: we've decided that we'll have a pie and pies lunch for Chrimbo Eve at Helminthdale. The housebound van will pick up the order from O'Grady's fish'n'chip shop and merriment will ensue on their arrival. Not necessarily festive but it's very informal and an opportunity for staff to socialise a bit during the working day.

Bad news: Mary Dunroamin has complicated matters fearfully. You see, we put our names down, saying whether we wanted meat and potato or cheese and onion pie. There's eight portions to a pie and Mary makes the ninth for cheese and onion. Instead of waiting to see how many more people sign up for cheese and onion, she sets on a recruitment drive. The library van is taking portions out to branch libraries; a couple of assistants are taking pie home for their partners; recently retired staff are only allowed to join in if they're having cheese and onion pie. At this rate there'll be seventeen for cheese and onion and she'll be spending all day tomorrow recruiting takers for pie number three.

The reason why paradise lost

Also from Milkbeck staff meeting: a couple of members of staff have recently lost relatives... oh, I couldn't tell you...

Despair held by water

More from Milkbeck: one of the temporary staff has been unsuccessful in getting a permanent job in the library. T. Aldous invited the rest of the staff to commiserate with her. Needless to say, the poor girl was mortified.

He sang a salty song about a girl from Bangalore

Mr. Strategic took his "I've got a niggle" roadshow to Milkbeck Library's staff meeting today. Mistaking a combination of dumb insolence and downright contempt for mute incomprehension the idiot elaborates... "The first thing you learn at library school is how to fold a cardboard box so that you don't have to tape up the bottom."

The lesson does him no favours. It confirms many people's long-standing prejudices about "The Professionals." More to a point, four of the five librarians' posts are vacant and the library is down to half a librarian (if you're very interested in knowing what happened to the other half of a post the Human Resources department would like to meet you in a dark alley). Staff gather in corners like school Shakespeare, muttering: "I'll give him bloody niggle."

A drowsy numbness pains my senses

Have a letter in front of me complaining because the Kirklees web site has been down recently. For once I can justifiably, without contradiction claim this has nothing what so ever to do with me. Apparently though it has as the letter is from someone who tried to access it from one of our People's Network PCs. Obviously my fault.

Mind you, last week I was asked to download a "website" onto a CD-ROM. The conversation quickly got rather terse and apparently I am uncooperative! Besides the technical difficulties of downlaoding a website, a whole website, my PC doesn't even have a CDROM drive, let alone writer! "Mine does" replied requestee, "but I don't know how to use it." I kindly offered to swap PCs to better match user capability, but that was turned down, but we really fell out when I asked if she had a CD to write to, "No I thought you'd have one." Worse still I was required to perform this miracle "Now".

Shake, rattle and roll

T. Aldous is fixating on the kettle in the staff room. He has noticed that there are occassional flakes of material from the element. He is addressing this by hacking any loose stuff off the element with a knife and giving it a damned good scrub with a manky old washing-up mob.

We're all noticing that the coffee's a bit crunchy today.

Like two rubber ducks that pass each other in the bath

Leadership...

I tried to hint to Mr. Strategic that it wouldn't be a good idea to have anything in the Helminthdale's staff meeting tomorrow headed "T. Aldous' niggles" (= too much brown tape on boxes), especially in a week where the library was run by a branch assistant plus one temp and someone who started with us last Tuesday. "I used it at Catty and Dutch Bend and I've got to give the same message to everyone."

So there you have it: if you do something stupid it's OK to do it repeatedly so long as you're consistent about it.

There is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro

Word from Dutch Bend: at the end of their staff meeting, the usual monologue, T. Aldous comes up with "T. Aldous' niggles." This turns out to be: "you're putting too much brown tape on the boxes you're sending into Helminthdale for the book sale." My how they laughed.

Laughing their hods off

The caretakers are in tumult. They spent all morning tooling round libraries picking up boxes of books that hadn't sold locally in sales. They've just shifted ninety-two boxes of books and sundry trestle tables into the side room for Helminthdale's big booksale. Now T. Aldous tells them that the room's got to be cleared on Friday morning for a meeting. And then three hours later the books and trestle tables have to be replaced. The air is ripe with Anglo-Saxon invective.

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.