A brown study

A colleague's AV facilities are in the main reading room and in a rather bijou space called the auditorium, (it's like a great big drawing room in a country house - it's huge and it has a stage and all the gear). You can plug all kinds of things in there (PCs, Video, wireless PA with microphones, etc. etc. and it has wireless Internet too, not that I'm envious at all). There's also a switch for lowering the motorised blinds on both floors of the main reading room - all very Bond-like I can assure you. It occurred to them the other week that they needed audio out so that people videoing lectures, events etc. could plug directly into the PA and not have to use their own microphones for recording the audio track.

The controls for all of this are in a number of little panels/switchplates which are either on one of the walls of the auditorium or discreetly on a pillar in the main reading room where the audience can't see them

So, he got a quote from an electronics company we use and kicked it upstairs for approval. The quote is approved. But with a caveat. "The chair of the board of trustees objects to the brushed stainless steel face plates quoted for this installation - we would prefer a smooth brown faceplate" It's mentioned to the Great One that *all* the faceplates installed to date are stainless steel, (except for the two white plastic ones some divot used for the switches for the blinds) and said do you want to continue and try to get a brown one given all the others are stainless or white?

Well, now he has to go back to the company and ask them if they can install the XLR audio out connector as quoted, except on on a BROWN face-plate, and by the way can they quote for changing the other six or seven they have in different parts of the library and make them brown too.

The spirit of T.Aldous walks abroad!

A man whose work has been spread over many fields

Leaving do last night for "African" Brown, who's got his 40 years and packed it in. Astonishing opening to his retirement speech:

"When I started in the 1960s we didn't have to bother with all this crap like Equal Opps and Performance Monitoring."

All kinds of everything

Five of our branch libraries closed last Saturday for good. Have spent all day with a caretaker in a van going round and taking all the IT equipment out of them. Apparently it is a risk to leave equipment in empty buildings. They have been empty but for eight hours per week for the last however many years; how much greater risk now, and what are our priorities really? Cost of van hire, salary of caretaker, salary of Systems Librarian, huh! Feel a strop coming on.

Oh! Don't the wind blow cold!

My turn for the latest round of daft in-house reservations. It's always interesting to see what other people come up with. This time I've received a book on male sexual fantasies. I am very much against our having books like this in our lending library stock.

There aren't any pictures.

A view from the other side of the mirror

I'm not enamoured of the new council web site. I understand the whats and whys and hows but I'm still not enthused. So I understand what people mean when they say to me that they think it looks dead boring. But like I say:

"Just as we're being kept securely under the thumb as to what we can and can't do on the web site by the Press Unit, they're having to work to central government expectations as to what is and isn't on the site and how it'll look and feel. In the end we're going to have to accept that it's written by suits for suits, and not for libraries' preferred target audiences."

It doesn't escape me as I say this that the Press Unit all wear jeans and I'm the one wearing pinstripes.

Forms

For various reasons, mostly sentimental, I'm doing a lot of printing today and my ink cartridges are running low. I can't get replacements as I need to fill in a stationery form to give to Tilly so's she can give me the cartridges. But I don't have a form and can't get one because I've not filled in a stationery form asking for one. Luckily, Noreen comes to my rescue and lets me know where they keep their secret stash.

With my shovel and my pick and my lamp and little wick

I once went down a coal mine. It took considerably less time than it takes our lift to go up two floors. It's this slow so as not to frighten old dears who may worry that they are falling to their doom. Instead they panic that they'll never escape the damned thing. Today it's playing up: as well as being phenomenally slow it's shuddering about like a jelly in a hurricane.

I mention it to Seth the caretaker. Apparently the nylon casing's worn off one of the wheels on the cabin. The engineer says its safe but needs replacing for a smooth ride.

"Should we let people use it?" Seth asks.

"It's up to you," says the engineer.

"It's up to you," says T.Aldous.

Which in both cases means: "whatever happens, you're to blame."

Imagine me on the Maginot Line

Up until a couple of weeks ago I was really looking forward to getting on with the Library Service's contribution to the new council web site, with lots of plans ready for getting the existing stuff online plus a range of new reader development resources.

A fortnight is a long time in Helminthdale. None of the child-centred stuff is being allowed on; the reader development material falls outside the editorial guidelines; the results of our local studies digitisation project are going down the pan; and the stylesheets make things like the Mobile Library schedule pretty unreadable. And I'm engaged in trench warfare in the hope that I can stop the Press Unit's wrecking the web catalogue.

Fuck 'em. I'll do enough to fulfil our obligations for e-government. For anything more clever we'll need to work in collaboration with other organisations and have the results hosted on their sites.

A chorus girl went fishing

Trying to get some after-hours work done when to my horror himself appears, armed and ready to talk at length about the auditor's report again. Just as he takes a breath the 'phone goes. It's Daisy with a problem with one of the PCs which isn't closing cleanly. T.Aldous hates hanging around waiting for people to finish 'phone conversations so off he goes. The problem's sorted pretty quickly, I notice that he's gone to mither Mary, I put my coat on and do a runner.

With one bound he was free!

Hello?

One of the girls in the Acquisitions Team is deaf. As the team's generally assumed to be the people answering everyone else's 'phones they try to make sure to arrange that somebody else is around to cover that function. A neat trick given how few of us there are backstage. Today, for once, the arrangements fall down for an hour or so because of hospital appointments and meetings off site. Which doesn't stop our senior managers and Tilly Floss putting their 'phones through to the Acq. Team for the afternoon. Sigh...

Drowning by numbers

We might not be having our accounts qualified after all: apparently, our supplying the issue figures for the Mobile and for Roadkill Library should do the trick.

Don't try and work it out.

I wish I was back on the farm

The Press Unit is seriously getting on my wick. Now they're demanding that we (I) remove unspecified "superfluous links" from our web catalogue. In the name of branding.

Bad enough that the IT Department dictates so much of our service provision. If we're at the stage where the Press Unit tells the Library Service what services it should be providing to its customers we may as well all go home.

I always get to bed by half-past nine

There are so few of us backstage these days that invariably one or more of us end up working late to try to catch up with work undone. And invariably one or other of us has that attempt foiled by T.Aldous' coming along and talking at us until we see a bright light and start hallucinating. This evening's a rare opportunity: himself is out of the building. Mary and I are heads down to our tasks when Julia comes over.

"What time did he say he'd be back?" she asks.

"Round about now," answers Mary.

There followed an unseemly rush to clock out and leave the building.

Rubbish

Every day's a revelation. I've been working here 13 years and only today do I find out that every waste paper bin in the building has a typewritten card taped to its underside to say whose bin it is.

That'll do nicely sir

There's Clement the Mobile Library driver filling up the tank for the day's lurching round the backstreets of Helminthdale. He goes to pay and finds that the council's petrol payment card's no longer acceptable. We have a whip round and send the hat over to the garage. Why is the card no longer acceptable? Mary rings the transport section to find out what's going on. Apparently the council's got a contract with a different company and it starts today:

"You should know about it love, I sent an email to some folk about eight or nine months ago."

The mountain comes to Mahomet

Yet another car window broken in the car park at Senebene Library. That makes the third in as many weeks. T.Aldous' solution is firm and simple: he tells the caretaker to collect all the stones and bricks from round the library and send them to Helminthdale.

Perhaps we're going to have a rockery.

Setting an example

They're working on some activity sheets for the children's library when I overhear this exchange between Mary and Tina:

"Tina, I don't think we should be using this picture. Don't we have a picture of a burglar who isn't smoking?"

"What for?"

"Well, I don't think it sets a good example to the children."

"So breaking and entering people's houses and stealing things is a good example?"

Continuing the ceaseless fight against literacy and good taste

I have a conversion with the Press Unit, who have overall control of the new web site as part of the Corporate Branding Initiative. All goes awkwardly OK as we reach a modus vivendi in principle about the fact the Library Service (i.e. me) intends continuing to use the web site as a means of service provision and not merely a promotional information tool. Primarily because I've given up the fight and I'm resigned to the fact that I'm going to lose most of the good stuff on the current site. Then it gets nasty: I'm told I've got to dismantle the Library Catalogue and rebuild it to fit in with corporate branding. I politely decline.

What is it with this council? It took four years to get IT to install the system; IT keep telling us that the Catalogue should only include books; and now the Press Unit are telling us that we have to pull it to bits and take out all the stuff customers and inspectors have said that they like. Next time some bloke from a quango takes us to task for not doing this, that or the other online we should make these idiots take the rap. I'm sick of being held accountable for the decisions of these people.

Waterloo

Lovely start to the week: "training" on the council's new content management system, which consisted of two hours' worth of increasingly convoluted non-explanation of the National Local Government Navigation Scheme taxonomy and long-winded but unilluminating discourses on information to the public but no information as to how to work on the council's new content management system. As I've been working on e-government for the past five years and was one of the people who worked on the spec. for the CMS this was a bit of a waste of my time. Especially as I've spent donkey's years working with information systems including the best part of a decade working on information systems (not IT systems) for council one-stop-shops.

After half an hour I was mentally bouncing off the walls. An hour later I had an epiphany: this must be how librarians feel when they have to deal with me. I'm almost but not quite sympathetic.

Up in the air and down in the dumps

A colleague shares an internal email:

Hi...

I've had several folks report hearing phone calls to elevators over the last few weeks.

The elevators have emergency phone lines so you can call out in case you're stuck in an elevator.

The phone lines are set up so that the monitoring company can call you back if they get disconnected.

So, if someone else happens to dial that number, they're going to get to talk with whatever random staff member happens to be in the elevator at that time... annoying the poor staff member and confusing the heck out the person who's calling.

I wasn't terribly worried about this because the phone lines for the elevators aren't part of the (number) groups, so folks aren't going to get transferred to them accidentally by us.

Unfortunately, the $#*%&(*#&$% phone company has messed up. If someone calls Directory Enquiries and asks for this library, they're given the phone number for one of those elevators! Argh. I've got a call in to the phone company to fix the problem.

And it's an hour before I can go drink some lunch. :(

More when I know more.

You can just about get two vests in a turnip

We're having our accounts qualified by the Audit Commission because when we did our annual submission for the Chartered Institute for Public Finance & Accounting we didn't include a separate figure for the book stock for the Mobile Library. We didn't because CIPFA didn't ask for it and don't want it but that's not good enough for the auditors and so the council will lose some of its central government finance next year. (This is the Audit Commission, the one that nods through multi-billion pound cost and ten-year-plus time overshoots of defence projects and Health Service IT programmes.)

Colleagues in London are having their accounts qualified because they couldn't say how much of the stock available on 1st April 2006 had been overdue at some time or another in 2005/6 (eh?).

Madly enough, a colleague elsewhere in the north of England has discovered that the numbers in their submission were made up by his predecessor; and their figures were accepted nem. con. by their auditors!

It's no good, Alice, we'll have to lay off the lettuce

We're all getting to that age now. Between us we've had a spate of funerals of friends or relations and many of us are concerned for the well-being of the elderly and infirm amongst us. Every so often the pressure gets to us and we either explode or get ill, or both. Poor old Frisby Dyke at Dutch Bend is a case in point: both his parents haven't been too clever lately and his mum's just had a hip operation. Pile on top of that the pressure that he and Daisy have been under with T.Aldous' constant meddling at that library and it's no wonder he's not so good himself. Even T.Aldous has noticed: after a particularly bitter argument in today's staff meeting he pulls Frisby to one side for a talking to.

"You're not looking too well Frisby. I know you too well: you're not eating properly. I've got two bananas in my briefcase that you can have."

Well meant but bizzare.

Lydia, oh Lydia, have you seen Lydia?

Lunch time in the staff room and they're comparing their tattoos, or at least those ones on body parts that can be shown in the staff room. One of my friends often wonders how all these young girls with tattoos will fare in later life when their skin is less elastic. Well I know now. It has to be said that the onset of bingo wings brings a certain abstraction to even the most clearly delineated image. Common sense prevails and I don't ask if it's Elvis or Frankie Howerd.

I remember the days, not so long back, when the only people who had tattoos were sailors and war criminals (well that's how they always identified them in the movies; must have been a major drawback to their incognitos, like burglars having to wear stripey jumpers and carry bags marked "swag"). I've come to the conclusion that half the women I work with used to be in the Merchant Navy. Thank God they're not likely to be reading this!

Insincerity of purpose

I'm in a meeting with staff from other library authorities to discuss a collaborative project and none of us have the power or authority to commit to any action because none of us are the people who should be there. Some are first reserves for people who are off sick or on leave. Others, like myself, are covering vacancies. And then there's Debbie Potterthwaite:

"Looking forward to your new job Debbie?"

"Yes, it should be good."

"When's your last day?"

"Today."

Court jesters of the Apocalypse

Overheard:

"I'm right fed up. Give us some good news."

"We're all going to die."

Icing on the cake

Urgent meeting with the architect dealing with the new site for Roadkill Library. By pure happenchance T.Aldous blundered into a site meeting last Thursday and was told that the job's nearing completion and when are we moving the books in? This was news to T.Aldous, and the rest of us. Especially when he heard what the architect imagined "nearing completion" to be.

By now I have enough experience of these matters to know that T.Aldous' usual communications problems notwithstanding the blame will lie entirely with the architects. The meeting is the usual miscellaney of surprises.

The plan bears no relation to any of the plans for this library we've seen at any time over the past two and a half years. "What's that?" asks T.Aldous. "That's the worktop for the computers," answers the architect.

"What worktop?" Turns out he's decided that the only full working wall — where we'd quite like to have shelves for books, etc. — would be taken up by a worktop "like the one at Sheep City." That particular worktop is a long, ply-and-formica fixed work bench that has the ugly utilitarian look of the benches we had in the chemistry labs at school back in the sixties. As well as being ugly and inflexible it also cost a four-figure sum (how???) We gracefully decline the suggestion, me suggesting off-the-shelf desks for the PCs and T.Aldous suggesting a library design company for the library design. We further disgrace ourselves by insisting that the electricity points are distributed more usefully in the room rather than all being clustered around where the architect has decided that the counter's going to be (and won't be if Himself has any say in the matter).

"It's a bit late to be making changes like this," says the architect.

"The library has to be functional or we can't move in," replies T.Aldous.

Afterwards T.Aldous has a completely justified rant about the stupidity of the situation and our always having to work in the dark up to the point of the last minute panic. Sadly, he cannot take the next step and recognise that this way of working isn't good within the library service either. Ah well...

Time management

I don't have any particular story about time management to stick here. I just needed to confirm that the phrase actually exists and wasn't just a figbox of my imagination.

A flood of lyric melody

Euterpe works her magic again (see: it isn't all lavatories)...

(Apologies to HMHB)

When it gets hot
You'll never guess what:
I've got Library Service Management.
When the shit hits the fan
And I'm carrying the can
I've got Library Service Management.
I've got Library Service Management.

Oo-ooh, last-minute decisions.
Oo-ooh, thinking on your feet.
Ambushed more than three times daily
By my Library Service Management.
By my Library Service Management.

Have you just heard
I haven't heard a word
From my Library Service Management.
No matter what you ask
Reply’s a no-no task
For my Library Service Management.
Oo-ooh, try and guess your work plan.
Oo-ooh, if you get it wrong
You're left holding the tar baby
By my Library Service Management.
By my Library Service Management.

[guitar riff and book sale]

Aimless drift and stagnant flow.
We’ve got Library Service Management.
No new blood when old folk go.
We’ve got Library Service Management.
Talk to the wall, talk to the wall!
We’ve got Library Service Management.
Bash, bash, bash, bash!
We’ve got Library Service Management.

Oo-ooh, tied up, gagged and helpless.
Oo-ooh, mushroom-managed mess.
We’ve been stitched up like a kipper
By my Library Service Management.
By my Library Service Management,
Management, management, management, management….

My grandfather’s clock was too tall for the shelf
So Point Eight were asked for some plans
By my Library Service Management.
By my Library Service Management.

Hallelulah!

Reet petite and gone

We bid farewell to yet another member of staff. Bosko Huckaback's going off to work in a school library. His departure wasn't without incident: having established with Personnel that his period of notice started at the point he gave Julia the nod verbally he was a bit dischuffed to find T.Aldous sticking his oar in and insisting that nothing could be done untile he'd received the notice in writing. Strangely enough this wasn't one of the instances when T.Aldous sat on the reference for a month or more.

Bosko and Julia have had a stormy relationship. Which might explain why a book on employee relations appeared on the staff room table. I thought no more about it until I opened it up and read the inscription:

"To Bosko, Merry Christmas,
Love from Julia"

Ouch!

A reassuring idiom of melancholy

Crumbs: it's Pansy's turn to be off sick with stress. Three other branch assistants and at least two library assistants are under the doctor with stress-related problems, at least three others should be but are "being brave" and I'm hanging on by the tips of my fingernails myself.

Good to know the ship's on an even keel.

Captain of the space ship

I've upset Himself. I emailed everyone to tell them not to email visitor stats to Jessie as she's left. I also said that I'm not doing anything with the stats as all year I've been trying and failing to get a decision as to what needs doing.

"Kevin, why have you sent this before asking me? This is unacceptable."

"As you haven't replied to any of my questions about this there didn't seem any point. The whole subject is unacceptable."

"Emails need to be sent to Jessie's PC for continuity."

"Sending emails to Jessie won't send the statistics to that PC."

"Your whole tone is unacceptable."

As I was busy mucking out the debris after Wednesday's system crash (while I was on leave my non-existant oppo did a lousy job of preventing a simple server crash becoming a wholesale corruption of the borrower file) and he'd also just dumped a load of auditor's questions in my lap I thought my tone was quite reasonable in the circumstances.

You've got something there

This is fun and might help some of our staff cope with the later 20th Century: http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/

Now we just need a virtual closed-stack-access reference library with a virtual windowledge for to keep the virtual catalogue cards on.

Soldiers in skirts

My mentioning the knocking shop on Creamery Lane reminds a colleague of a story about when he was working in the Tourist Information Centre a few years back:

"One day a gentleman came into the Centre and asked where he could 'find a lady to show him round town.'

"As it happens a Blue Badge lady was within hearshot and offered her services. The gentleman's humming and hawing made it very clear that he didn't want to be shown the highlights of the town's historical sites by a lady in her late sixties. We tried to intervene and explain the situation to her as politely as we could but she wasn't to be deterred.

'He wants a bit of female company,' we said.

'Well what am I if not company?' she replied.

"Eventually we made it extremely clear what was actually involved ("have you been medically screened, lass?"). She cast him a look that could curdle the milk in the cow and stalked off.

"My colleague rang a drinking friend in the local cop shop and they suggested directing him to Creamery Lane. We didn't tell the Blue Badge lady, just in case she decided to include it on her itinerary."

Count your blessings and smile

Himself is mithering all the libraries for their visitor statistics for August. "These are needed urgently. Send your statistics to Jessie and Kevin," he tells them.

Dead waste of time: Jessie left last week and I've no intention of doing anything with them. Still, a bit of urgency's always good in these exciting times.

Let's have a ride on your recycle

We're told that local authorities are taking recycling of waste Very Seriously in the light of government targets, landfill taxes and the like. Barely a week passes without someone hectoring the general public about it. I'm all in favour: all my organic waste gets composted and put into the garden and I lug carrier bags full of bottles and cans a mile and a half to the local recycling centre because the council's recyclable waste collection service is rather a lot less than perfect. Even so, I do get browned off with the strident stuff coming from local government, especially knowing what really goes on backstage...

If you think about it public libraries do generate a huge amount of waste paper. As well as the usual detritus you'd expect from any local government department there are old newspapers and magazines, telephone and trade directories, and of course the books that don't get shifted in our interminable booksales. What do we do with them? We send caretakers down to the local supermarket to dump the waste paper and newspapers in the recycling bins there and hope that nobody sees them do it because we'd then be fined for dumping trade waste. We bin a lot of the rest but seem to have to hang onto the tatty old books ad infinitum. We don't directly or officially recycle our waste paper because we can't afford the fee that the council charges its own departments for the collection. The fee is set exhorbitantly high so that the engineering department of the council can claw back some of the money lost in penalty charges for not meeting the targets for recycling waste.

And thus does local government work.

Five thousand deckchairs were removed and used as evidence

I'm approached by T.Aldous:

"I told the staff at Senebene to take a daily note of the number on the visitor counters as it's evident from the downloaded spreadsheets that the counter isn't recording any figures. Beryl's sent me the figures but something's not right: every day the figure's 1559. Can you find out what's going on?"

"Perhaps the counter isn't recording any figures so the number isn't changing."

They left when my dog got drunk

It is with great sadness that I hear that they've closed the jazz club next to Sheep City. Whilst not being up to much musically it featured in more divorce cases than any other building in town, including the Town Hall and the knocking shop on Creamery Lane. It's best remembered as being the best way of finding out who Shagger Noakes was jiggling about with lately. Famously, one night a certain lady, the worse for drink, staggered to her feet and addressed the crowd:

"I thought I'd best make it clear, for all of you who listen to gossip, that I am Shagger Noakes' mistress!"

There was an astonished hush, which was broken by a voice from the crowd:

"No you're not! I'm his mistress!"

"No! I am!"

"What's going on here? I thought I was!"

My informant laughed himself silly when he told me about it.

"Imagine 'Spartacus' in action slacks!"

The naming of parts

A colleague sends me an interesting link to a report about a library that's selling naming rights to rooms, etc. to sponsors.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006608090365

This appeals very much to us. Already there have been four suggestions as to The Paxo Room, with suggestions that the occupant could be sponsored by Preparation H.

Playing the loyalty card 2

T.Aldous to new bod:

"You'll find that Helminthdale Library Service is a good jumping-off point to better things."

Standing on a peak in Dariae

Staff at Milkbeck Library are peeved: T.Aldous has decided that they can't use the newly-refurbished upstairs community room for children's events. "There have been fatalities," he tells them.

"Have there been fatalities?" I ask them.

"Next time he goes up them stairs."

You always pass failure on the way to success

T.Aldous is having one of his habitual panics about issue figures. There's legitimate cause for concern: the figures in some libraries are alarming. Unfortunately, T.Aldous' preferred method of addressing the crisis is to go round to libraries and say: "you need to improve your issue figures, they're awful," then he pisses off. As you can see, his motivational models lean heavily towards constructive development and positive reinforcement of rewarding behaviours. Attempts to increase issue by simple means like: "before we put these CDs in the book sale can we put them out for free loan," and "is it OK for me to set up a reading group?" are generally frustrated. Which is why some of the cannier/bolshier staff just do things and wait for the flak if and when Our Beloved Leader finds out about it, by which time any attempts to revert back to the status quo result in Letters Of Complaint by the public which are A Bad Thing. This, of course, is a mixed blessing as it's a bugger to try and provide any standardised services across the Borough. "Why don't staff consult the Staff Manual?" asks the unwary reader. "Go and sit in a corner with a wet flannel on your neck," is the considered response.

Anyway up, back to issue figures. Being a team player I suggested that we need to be more aggressive in our marketing of the Lending Library services in the Borough. For some reason my suggestion wasn't viewed favourably...

Dress for success

Norbert Spudulike is sporting his "Most Disgruntled Staff Member" T-shirt. He's working up to wearing it to one of T.Aldous' staff meetings.

Both Frog and I have been having to address alarums and excursions at home lately otherwise we'd have finished creating and distributing the "I was on leave that week" badges to all staff.

Providence protects children and idiots

Frog's in a hurry: he's just been told that he needs to be in Preston for a meeting about meeting the needs of teenagers in care.

"T.Aldous has signed us up for meeting the proposed new standard on service delivery," he tells us.

"That's surprisingly ambitious of him. It's not like him to be held to account for anything," I replied.

"He thought it was a training course."

I'm almost as surprised to find T.Aldous arranging training for anybody.

A bell rings in the back of my head:

"Shouldn't you be finalising the arrangements for tomorrow's 'Back to School Day'?"

The wan smile I got in reply tells us everything we could need to know.

Quackers

Pub lunch at The Millipede & Clogger to celebrate Lippy's birthday. It isn't Lippy's birthday but we needed the excuse to escape the confines of our captivity. We'd arranged beforehand for the landlady to make us a cheese & onion pie (it's an occasional special that's not been on the blackboard for a while). As a thank you present we bought her a wooden duck to add to her vast collection (the snug's officially called "The Duck Room"). She was moved and touched and has decided to call it Rommel in our honour.

Let the good times roll

It's distressing to think how many of the entries in this blog involve toilet functions. Here's another one...

They've replaced the bog-standard (pun intended) toilet rolls in the staff toilets with a new-fangled thing that looks like a wall-mounted dalek that takes a roll of tissue the size of a small pouffe (no names, no pack drill). The idea is that the ginormous rolls provide a considerable economy of scale, such as to delight the council tax payers of the borough.

I would hope that the cost-benefit analysis would include the cost of the new kit in comparison with the old nail on a stick. And the fact that you end up folding the tissue four-fold to account for the fact that it's about as durable as wet rice paper. Oh, and the staff time involved in blindly groping around with your arm up the orifice while you try and find the end of the roll. I'm told this last is exactly like the first gynæcology practical at medical school. I'm happy to take my informant's word for it.

Go out and buy proper prunes

Tales from the staff room. Lippy's annoyed:

"There I was, stark naked and doing my yoga exercises in the bedroom when he walks in, slaps me on the arse and says whatever it is I'm wearing, it needs ironing.

Grrr...

This is good. The Reference Library's now passing difficult enquiries down to the acquisitions team to deal with. I take over one of the 'phone calls and discover that the customer just wants to make sure that she's filled in the Community Organisation Database form correctly and would we want some copies of the Natural History Society's Autumn Programme for the reference library?

Obviously far too difficult for the beggars.

Looking five pounds lighter in his Cyril Lord wig

About ninety percent of the incoming "work" email is spam and phishing messages. I find it distressing to keep getting email messages asking me if I need gentlemen's medications to solve erection problems and give me a manhood that "she" would thank me for.

I find it distressing because my memory's so bad these days I can't remember whether or not I have a problem.


[Editor's note: "She" = the cat's mother.]

What's another year?

Staff at Dutch Bend tell me that poor old Mr. Bunskins is extremely ill.

"We're hoping that T.Aldous replies to his nice letter while he's still alive," I'm told.

If I'm so bad why don't they just take me away?

A comment from one of the IT guys:

"Your problem, Kevin, is that you're too damned polite."

Interesting. His boss made an official complaint about my being aggressive.

You can't do the things with a goat that you can with a Sopwith Camel

My turn to do stock selection (everyone else is on holiday or off sick). I buy a copy of a book on body-piercing for Noddy Library. It'll give the old biddies on the committee something to think about!

The stuff that dreams are made on

There must be a charabanc arrived...

Frog's on the enquiry desk. He's just had a rather rough-looking customer come in with a question. [A quick note here: the rough-looking folk are usually really pleasant customers. If you ever see a club blazer or a pearl brooch you just know you're in for a shit time of it.] Anyway, this chap's question:

"I keep having these dreams about teeth. I keep dreaming they're falling out. What does it mean? What does it mean?"

Frog takes him over to the section in non-fiction where they find the books on dreams and dream analysis. He picks one up, checks to see that "teeth" are included and passes it to the chap.

"Here you are."

"I'm not so good with me reading. Can you read it out for us?"

"Err.. OK. It says here that dreaming about your teeth falling out is a sign that you're worrying about impotence and a loss of virility."

"By gum! That's exactly right, that's me to a 'T.' Thanks mate, that's brilliant!"

And off he toddled.

We've 'ad 'em all here you know

Lippy's on the enquiry desk (she's usually on the Housebound van). Her first customer sets the tone for the rest of the day:

"Have you got Big Breasts And Wide Hips?"

"Not since me diet, no."

It turns out that the customer was a "student of biology" and that there was a book of that name in the library catalogue. Checking to be on the safe side, Lippy found out that there really was, but unfortunately it was in adult fiction, not non-fiction.

I shouldn't be surprised by anything that's on the shelves of public libraries. Especially after the Regional Library Assistant successfully got hold of a copy of the book about the chap who wraps himself up in clingfilm for sexual excitement.

With pictures.

And a bad tattoo.

I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart

Felicity's been covering at Helminthdale for a few days and has been receiving nothing but grief from T.Aldous since she started. She finally snapped this morning and cornered him by the photocopier:

"I've been having nothing but snide remarks off you all week. What have I managed to do so wrong so quickly?"

"You're too sensitive Felicity. But seeing as you're asking, I've not been impressed by your attitude, You didn't even look at me in the staff room, let alone smile."

Felicity's face was a picture.

"Must be love," I said.

She went white:

"Not even in jest," she hissed.

I wonder if every library authority uses back-copies of the "Bunty" comic as a human resource manual.

Have you had an accident in your underpants and it wasn't your fault?

Poor old Frog. Up to his gills and he gets stuff like this...

This morning T.Aldous told him that he'd just had an urgent job sprung on him. (Public service notice: every job T.Aldous dumps on people has been sprung on him at the last minute. By people who have spent weeks ringing him or emailing him and leaving messages asking him to ring back. We know: we're the people who have to answer T.Aldous' 'phone.)

"The council's having a "back to school" day next week and we've been asked to do something for it. Can we?"

"I can certainly do a display in the window. We've got posters and things and I can put together a "these are what your parents read in their schooldays" display with some of the junior reserve stock."

"Good. I'll leave it with you then."

Imagine his surprise when he found out this afternoon that he's also doing a storytime, a word search and a competition with prizes. He was slightly bitter:

"The winners can have the book tokens for the Easter Egg competition. If I'm allowed to buy them."

Keep your sunny side up

T.Aldous tells us that Tench Lane will be re-opening for business next week "come Hell or high water."

So naturally it pisses down for three days straight and the rain shorts out the telephone...

Secret Origins: How I became a systems administrator

The road of the systems administrator is long and hard and once trodden cannot be left. Many are the ways of joining the road: some were bitten by a radioactive computer bug at a Library Resources Exhibition; others were rocketed to Earth from the planet Emelae; yet others took a mysterious serum that turned them into shield-slinging sentinels of librarianship. This is how it happened to me…

It may be hard to believe now but once I was but a callow youth, barely a stripling, in fact I’d hardly ever even stripled (it was frowned upon in my reform school) selling newspapers on a street corner in the rough side of town. One day I was approached by a strange man in a raincoat who had me follow him to a disused subway station in a part of town I didn’t know. Pausing only to write Max Clifford’s ’phone number on the back of my hand I did as he asked. We entered the station and picked our way down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a huge chamber, as unlike any subway station as you could imagine. It was clean and well-lit. Along one wall were statues of the Seven Deadly Sins of Librarianship:

• Noisy Children;


• Overdue Books;


• Reference Enquiries;


• New Shelving;


• Automated Reservations; and


• Accurate Numbers.

We walked the length of the chamber to find an old man sitting on a huge stone throne, a copy of the Ecclesiastae by Erasmus hanging above his head by a thread.

"My name is immaterial", he said. "Fred Immaterial. You have been chosen to receive great gifts my son. Yours will be the gift of Systems Administration!"

At which point there was a flash of lightning which cut the thread and before I could move the old man was crushed by the huge tome. Horrified I rushed over, expecting to find a mangled body and perhaps a wallet and a spare set of teeth. Amazingly, there was nothing there. I stood perplexed for a moment or two and then was startled by a sound at my side. There stood a ghostly representation of the old man. He spoke:

"The gifts of Systems Administration are yours. These are they:

• "You will spend many years carrying boxes to and fro, packing and unpacking computer equipment. Stacking the boxes up when you receive them. Unstacking them to get the delivery notes and stacking them back up again. Unstacking them and shifting them out of the way of the complaining masses and stacking them back up again in the most inconvenient places imaginable. For this you will need the strength of a Buffalo.


• "You will also need the wisdom of an Owl. Not least because you’ll be thashing about in the dark most of the time.


• "For problem-solving you will need the tenacity of the Limpet, especially when you realise that most of your problems will have two legs and be paid more than you are.


• "Come to that you may as well have the mental acuity of the Limpet as well otherwise you’ll run a mile before taking on the job.


• "You will need to be able to simultaneously hold the ’phone, write notes with a pen, use a keyboard, unpack a box and clean the gunge off the insides of a mouse, gifts given to you by the Octopus.


• "Oh, and you may as well have this Xylophone; it’s been cluttering up my attic for years."

There was another flash of lightning and the old man’s words appeared inscribed on the wall before me.

"Go on, Billy, say the word!"

And I said the word. And I am now a systems administrator. And I say the word three or four times every bloody day.

A kettle talks

T.Aldous has been to Catty for a meeting with branch library staff to wind them up about the job evaluation process. On his return he tells Mary about it.

"I was parking in the Duck's car park when Pansy's car arrived. She'd given Beryl a lift to Catty. You should have seen them when they saw me, ooh the scowls! Yet when they came up when I was waiting to be let into the library they were all smiles. Two-faced sods!"

Ugg ugga boo ugga

T.Aldous's solution to the problem with the people counters is to issue instructions to staff that each morning they should take a note of the number displayed on the front of the counters. It doesn't take a lot of thought to realise that if the counter isn't recording visitor figures the number isn't going to change.

I get a message from Senebene Library:

Kevin,

Do I have to keep writing down the number on the people counter every day? I'm getting fed up of writing 1559. These numbers are rubbish aren't they?

Beryl


Beryl,

Do as you're told, it's character building. You know, and I know, that the day after you pack it in he'll be on your neck for the numbers. The whole thing's crap, just like everything else about working here.

Kevin

O Lord make my enemies ridiculous

As if to add insult to injury at Dutch Bend the lad himself tells them in the staff meeting:

"Catty received a really nice letter praising staff for the service there. I forgot to bring it with me, otherwise you could have had a look at it."

Somebody piped up:

"When you're hunting it down do you think to could have a look for the letter Mr. Bunskins sent you praising us?"

I'll repeat that...

A gentleman has been found in the children's library at Catty with his flies open and salacious material on the people's network terminal.

It's his second offence in a week and staff want to ban him from using the computers (and ideally from using the children's library!) T.Aldous insists that this cannot be done for legal reasons without the proper evidence. T.Aldous' standard of proof is so rigorous as to be beyond the limits of CSI (though if Marg Helgenberger does want to pop around in one of those T-shirts I would be a very happy man).

The focus shifts... instead of our taking action to persuade this pervert to behave himself we're now having a witch hunt to find out why the filtering system let through some naughty pictures. On my desk I find a note to this effect in T.Aldous' fair hand. Mary discretely removes the copy of The Children Act I put on T.Aldous' desk before the idiot comes back from lunch.

False dawn

It's taken years of trying but I think I've finally got T.Aldous and Julia nibbling at the concept of e-government.

"What do you think is the most important consideration for a public e-government terminal?" asks the supplier.

"It needs to be green to go with the rest of the decorating," they trill.

You can lead a horse to water...

Somewhere to put your Mars Bar

I expect there's a good reason for 67% of management group to be on site at Tench Lane to oversee the workmen there. None of us can come up with a plausible explanation that doesn't make us want to toss our cookies.

Answers on a postcard

Whenever we get letters or cards of complaint T.Aldous is always quick to pass it on to the offending library for a prompt response.

Two weeks ago one of the borrowers sent him a letter to say what a good job the staff at Dutch Bend had done providing a service when he was ill recently. Each day he pops in and asks: "have you seen the letter yet?" Each day nada.

Thus are staff motivated.

Nymphs and shepherds

Children or dwarves have literally burrowed into Roadkill Library and stolen the PC that wasn't nailed down yet. The burrow starts just at the back wall and comes up in the work room, missing the big metal safe (that's been empty for years) by a couple of feet.

If we ever catch the blighters we really should co-opt them onto the Library Service Escape Committee.

At every word a reputation dies

I take a call for the Acquisitions Team (she'd gone to the lavatory). It's the reference library.

"We told a customer we'd be buying a copy of a book he asked for. He's just come in and he's asking if it's arrived yet."

"What's the book?"

"I don't know. It's about coins."

"I'd need a bit more of a clue than that to check the requests and orders file."

Amazingly enough, Noreen can find the book on her return. It's a prodigiously over-priced tome which raises the perennial question about our reference library. How come we tell lending that we probably won't buy requested titles over the price of £25 but expensive references are bought ad lib to suit individual customers?

Taking the piss

A customer empties his bladder on part of the history section of the reference library.

Library Assistants ask if he's qualified to do stock editing.

Taking back the empties

As if school holiday activities, job evaluation interviews and the endless battle to get permission to buy book tokens for the winners of the Easter Egg Competition isn't enough to shred Frog's nerves he's now been told that the prizes advertised for children completing the summer Reading Challenge aren't forthcoming. Every time a competition's suggested he suggests that the prizes should be procured before announcing the competition, every time nothing happens. Yet another lesson we never learn.

The Ministry of Fear

We're sitting around the staff room over lunch when Mimsie Nettles pipes up:

"You know, I'm dead browned off. I don't know what's up with me lately. It's like all my self-confidence has drained out of me in the bath."

Of course, any of us could have told her that it's because she's working in a disorganised mess of a place with managers whose first and foremost priority is to keep everyone in their place by emphasising what they can't do instead of celebrating what they can. Ordinarily we would have, but T.Aldous was earwigging at the time.

A few minutes later he got Mimsie on her own and advised:

"I'm very concerned to hear that you're lacking in self-confidence. I'm telling you this as a friend: don't trust anybody."

You may die of a misprint

Our Glorious Leader is excelling himself with the job evaluation lark. As if using it as an opportunity to foment discord and jeapordise teamworking within the service isn't enough he's now playing fast and loose with personnel policies and procedures. This morning he had a meeting with the assistant librarians about the evaluation procedure.

"Use this job description."

he tells them, unveiling a document dated "May 2006." None of them have seen this before. Even in Helminthdale it is a requirement that new job descriptions are negotiated with the post holders and ratified by the joint union/personnel panel. Sheesh....

Tempus flux

Swapping "T.Aldous being late" stories with the union shop steward.

"It's usually buses on Cattermole Street or else he's got to move his car," I say.

"Lucky you. He always tells us he's late because he's got diarrhoea."

"That's too much information."

"I'll say. They're lunchtime meetings."

Mutinies Mondays and Fridays

T.Aldous is being his usual supportive self on the job evaluation front. Latest game is for him to insist that library assistants don't do stock editing.

"So what is it I've been doing for the past five years?" asks one.

"It's stock maintenance," answers T.Aldous.

"Repairs and binding? So you're saying that I don't go through the stock on the shelves to see which are falling to pieces, which haven't been out in years, which are old and tired, or which have been defaced inside; and that I don't withdraw them from the catalogue? And you didn't tell me to pull all the stock that's more than ten years old and you didn't see me with a trolley full of old books which I was withdrawing on the computer? Is that what you're telling me?"

"You're being far too sensitive. I'm trying to be constructive so that there isn't any confusion during the evaluation interview. And you don't 'assist with book selection,' either..."

"So I didn't do a stock profile of this library, go on a visit or buy £15,000 worth of books then?"

T.Aldous had the last word. Just as he was leaving he collared the Counter Supervisor.

"We must do something about the stock editing in this library, it's a mess."

Donkey rides, a penny a glass

I'm asked why there's been a vacancy for a Group Librarian at Dutch Bend for three years. Here's a bit of a clue: the last Librarian ended his first day in tears in the staff room. Daisy Duck was aghast:

"What on earth's the matter?"

"T.Aldous..."

Enough said.

Happy days Toytown

At tea break Noreen and the girls were discussing T.Aldous' performance at the staff meeting where he unveiled the job evaluation interviews.

"I didn't want to hear all that stuff about who wrote what and when. I just wanted to know what it is we're supposed to do."

Mary overheard this and told T.Aldous. He in turn has spent the whole day suddenly materialising at Noreens desk every half hour or so to tell her that "not everybody could go to the briefings."

The covers of this book are too far apart

We've all just been issued with our official Helminthdale Stress Handbook for Staff. Much to our surprise it doesn't include any tips on how to create far more stress than anyone could ever need. Evidently there must be a official Helminthdale Stress Handbook for Managers with that sort of thing in it.

Having finally convinced a library assistant that she really needs to talk to somebody about the stress she's under she takes up a suggestion in the book and contacts the council's stress management hotline. Who tells her that she needs to be referred by her line manager.

Who happens to generate 80% of all the stress experienced in the building.

Bloink

Horrendous problems with the People's Network. (Dog bites man)

Today's problems are caused by the internet security software which is generating error messages on the public terminals at a rate of two or three a minute. Each dialogue box you close generates at least two more in their stead. Eventually it gets so bad that the sheer volume of dialogue boxes crashes the network connection and the terminal fails.

Only in Helminthdale could an internet security system generate its own denial of service attack.

Kismet

I walk through lending and find Seth the caretaker manning the counter.

"When's your job evaluation interview?" I ask.

"Last month," he replies.

"Did this feature highly?"

I ask as he issues some books to an old lady. His reply was commendably professional.

A prickly little soul mate

As milestones down the road to Perdition go this one's notable: Bronwyn Fazakerly, one of our most easy-going and professional branch assistants, has just had a stand-up row with Julia about a library assistant called Lizzie.

Bronwyn and Lizzie are working their socks off to get Tench Lane Library ready for re-opening p.d.q. (the library's been closed for repairs since January). Yesterday Lizzie turned up an hour early and instead of hanging round doing nothing until the official start of hostilities she got stuck in with the work. Acknowledging this, Bronwyn suggested that Lizzie leave half an hour earlier so that she can get the quick bus home instead of having to wait twenty minutes for the one that goes round the houses. Unfortunately, Julia bumped in Lizzie in the bus station. "What are you doing here?" asked Julia (Lizzie could fairly ask the same question as they work the same hours). Lizzie's explanation didn't satisfy Julia who called Bronwyn in for a bollocking this morning.

"I call the shots here, not you,"

says Julia. Splendid.

Carriage trade

Seth and Lemuel, the caretakers, are not happy bunnies. Two palettes' worth of kit has arrived here destined for the SureStart Resource Centre over in Cocinoco. Mary's told the boys that it all needs to be shifted over today as a matter of urgency.

"Why couldn't it have been delivered straight there?"

"There won't be anyone there."

As we don't have a forklift the only way to get it on the van is for them to break open the packing and lug the stuff on a box at a time. They then drive over to the Centre to find that someone's on site eight to five every day. When they get back they mention this to Mary.

"Well, I wanted to see what it looked like when it arrived anyway."

It looked like a couple of big cardboard boxes stuck on palettes. I hope that assuaged her curiosity.

Anyone remember Chocolate Yoyos?

Today's big mystery is: why is there a lone Jaffa Cake in the booklift and why has it been riding up and down in the lift all day?

Shocking

An electrician's just called to install some new power points. He asked Seth where they were to go: he had no idea as this is the first he knew of it. He asked T.Aldous about it.

"It's up in the reference library, the reference librarians know where it's to go."

"Wouldn't have been a good idea to let me know about it?"

"Oh no, the reference librarians know all about it."

So there we are then: workmen report to the reference librarians and the caretaker does the enquiry desk. Never let it be said that we aren't keen to explore new ways of delivering the public library experience.

Beau Geste redux

Here's where we are staff-wise: Seth the caretaker's timetabled on the rota to do the enquiry desk for visually-impaired borrowers. It came as a bit of a shock to him to say the least.

There actually is something more petty than petty cash

Priceless. As if we don't have enough problems just keeping the doors open T.Aldous sees fit to play divide-and-conquer and team disruption games again. Katie, the counter supervisor at Helminthdale, is phenomenally upset. Our Fearless Leader's told her that as she doesn't do the petty cash like the supervisors at Catty and Dutch Bend she's likely to be downgraded by the pay and grading review and that the only way to avoid this is for the supervisors to be rotated on a regular basis.

Utter crap.

As the petty cash is just one of a score or more time-consuming pootling little administrative jobs given to the supervisors it isn't much of a factor in the review and certainly not enough to treat that post any differently to those elsewhere in the Borough. And all of the supervisors are underpaid for the responsibilities laid at their door by largely irresponsible senior managers. All that rotating the supervisors would achieve would be a maximal disruption of the teamworking of the library front line.

Which would suit T.Aldous' mania for micromanagement just fine.

If I knew myself, I'd run away

I've been given the date for my job evaluation interview. I've refused to attend it as I've no idea what job it is that's being evaluated, mine being one of the posts that were jiggered about fundamentally during the restructuring a couple of years ago and, like so many others, any attempt on my part to try and get a rewrite of the job description has been stonewalled. As it is, I've got the original job description — yet another of Shagger Noakes' execrable back-of-the-fag-packet affairs — and sod all else. What larks, Pip.

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny

It's our turn for the smash-hit national pastime "Pay and Grading Review," a treat for all the family. Especially of those paid at too high a scale to have to join in. As for the rest of us we're helpfully reminded that the value of our salaries can go down as well as up. Good game, good game.

It turns out, we're told today, that we were originally slated to go through this process this time last year but T.Aldous cited problems with staff availability due to staff sickness (we're sick of him) and school holiday activities (but hey, we're only providing a front-line service to the public). It was subsequently postponed to some undefined autumn period but "I only found out in December that we were going to have it in February this year." Then "we had it rescheduled to September as that would be better for us but now for some reason it is going to be this month with Mary having the first of our evaluation interviews this morning."

So get this: we've had at least a year's notice of this happening, have won at least three postponements and have done absolutely sod all about preparing anyone for something which could have serious financial consequences for low-paid staff. The one consolation, I suppose, being that the library assistants are so badly paid there's nowhere to downgrade to.

In briefing those members of staff not having to staff the counter or enquiry desk or answer telephones T.Aldous spends half an hour telling us that none of this is his fault and listing the emails he's received on the subject from Human Resources, citing date and timestamps for that added touch of authenticity. He spends precisely no time whatever telling us what we need to be doing.

Could library assistants get together to make sure that they're singing from the songsheet and not accidentally doing themselves down by underestimating the value of the work that they're doing. Our Leader replies:

"They've got together at Dutch Bend and Catty but I don't know what's happening here."

How about support during the evaluation interviews?

"Your line manager will be in there with you. You could ask a union official to accompany you but they'll be too busy."

And then the classic:

"I'm only here telling you this because Human Resources wouldn't make more briefing sessions available this month."

And there was me thinking he was telling us because he's paid to manage the service and the staff providing it.

There are no winners, only survivors

That's torn it: I've just heard that our token Young Lady Library Assistant at Dutch Bend, Mitzi Thunderbird, has got a job elsewhere in the council. That puts the median age of staff in this library service back to 49.

Playing the loyalty card

Conversation between Daisie Mutterbucket and Our Glorious Leader:

"There isn't any career path for librarians in this authority."

"You can always go and work for another authority."

I should like to have a good epitaph

T.Aldous is still obsessed with "leaving this service in a better shape than I left it." Which is OK in principle, if risible in objective review. This is one reason why we'd hoped that our meeting an unlikely number of performance targets might have prompted his retirement. Not many of us are convinced that the trick could be repeated.

I think I'd settle for "Didn't do nearly as much damage as he might have."

The country where the Hot Fudge Brownie Blast isn't a video presentation

It could be worse here: a colleague elsewhere tells me that she's been told that she's not allowed to go on a training course because "you've been doing this work a while so there's no need." What particularly irks her is that the edict came from the chief accountant, not the chief librarian. Doubly irksome is that the chief accountant is being paid to do a full-time job but only works four hours a day, three days a week. Even we wouldn't stand for that!

Obvious, really

Maybelle Googly used to run the old Glass Road Library and has today started working at Helminthdale, taking up part of the Counter Supervisor job-share. (The job-share is a story in itself which I won't be telling here.) First day in the job, she's had the ten-minute introductory chat with her line manager, Julia; then the tour of premises and fire escapes with the caretakers; and now T.Aldous is giving her a lecture about the booksale. At least she'll know her working priorities.

A yearning for a past time or place

A long, long letter in this week's "Catty Examiner" from the chair of the Friends of Noddy Library calling upon the shade of Andrew Carnegie to smite the council from beyond the grave for daring to imagine that it might move the library from the present picturesquely-decrepit building into shared premises in the community centre 150 yards down the road.

Of course, they can't see that the options are to move the library and try and use the savings in premises costs to improve services locally or close the whole thing down and save a whole pot of money for the council and ease some of the strain on the library service's resources by having one less service point to resource and staff. I can't say that I'm entirely enamoured of the idea of moving the library into the community centre — they have strange ways — but I'm even less enamoured of closing this particular library as I think that even though it's generally underperforming there is scope for renewal.

I happen to know that that view isn't universally shared: this was one of the libraries in the frame for closure proposals earlier this year. I don't think it's on the final hit-list/wish-list that's currently being looked at by our local equivalent of the great and the good. In times like these it's a relief not to know who's on the chopping block.

An amiable weakness of human nature

Stock-editing again. If we didn't have stock-editing I don't know what we'd do for feckless confusion. T.Aldous, panicking about Public Library Standards and the fact that we are officially overstocked by about 50,000 items, keeps going around saying that he wants more stock editing to be done.

"It's essential that we get all the old and tatty books off the shelves: it helps us with our performance targets and it also makes the libraries look better. What's the point in buying lots of new books if you can't find them for old rubbish?"

So far, so fair. Unfortunately, he's also going around saying that none of the people who are available to do the stock editing should be doing it. A few of us have tried to gently make the point that the "professional" posts he says should be doing the stock-editing have been vacant for years and that perhaps these posts could do with filling. You might as well kick a carrier bag in a wind tunnel.

The latest to-do is at Windscape, where last year's inspectors tried to pick a copy of "The Gruffalo" from the shelf and accidentally removed three yards' worth of children's fiction which were packed together like sardines. Lola has removed one small box of children's fiction (as much as she could do in the half hour available to her this morning) and there are already complaints about the library being denuded.

"Are we being lined up for closure again?"

asks an assistant.

The polar bear's pyjamas

Throwaway line in a conversation with someone from corporate IT:

"By the way, has anyone told you that we won't be letting your customers save to disk on the People's Network?"

"No..."

"Oh, right. They probably forgot. Not to worry."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggghhh!!!!!

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought

I'm peculiar as although I work in a public library I think that cataloguing's quite an important function. To my mind if we can't be bothered to tell the public what we've got and where to find it why should the public be bothered to hunt it down and use it? This used to be one of Jimmy Huddersfield's many unsung duties before his retirement and his lack of replacement is reflected in the amount of non-fiction stock awaiting classification backstage at Helminthdale. For once we are swimming with the tide: a colleague tells me that their cataloguer had been replaced by the head of service's personal assistant (the new head of service having decided that he wanted his old PA to come along with him), but had proved such a bad choice for the job that she was moved to a new post running a project digitising the library's special collections. After six months, the total throughput is one photograph (which is an improvement on her throughput as a cataloguer) and she spends most of her time writing her Rotary Club newsletter and running copies of it off on the laser printer.

One of the things I can never get my head around is that librarians — who make such a big deal of being 'professional' — don't set much value to the skills they learn at library school but imagine that their library qualifications automatically make them top-notch generic managers.

His baroque attire may not only interest but even delight the observer

Personnel management: a small master-class...

Senior manager to backstage member of staff who has just won an argument by quietly demonstrating that the senior manager doesn't know what he's talking about, saving a three-figure sum in the process:

"You really must learn to smile more at work. I've been getting a lot of complaints about it lately."

Sophisticated boom boom

A colleague is visiting the States:

"All the non-fiction books on the news stands have titles like: 'Being Growly: how Fred Bloggs is ruining the country by being an utter tosspot and his friend Alan's a bit of a wanker, too, and his dog's got bad breath and he drives a shit car.'

"Good to see that it's not only our library service that hasn't found its way out of the school playground yet."

Heaven only knows

Frog's in high dudgeon. He's been trying to finalise the arrangements for the summer holiday activities (it's delayed in part by his being off ill a while; part by pressure of work which is getting silly; and part by his spending so much time trying to get permission to buy some book tokens to give the winners of the Easter Egg Competition ). Just at the point where he knows what's happening, where, and that he's got the wherewithall to do it, T.Aldous chucks a spanner in the works: there has to be three holiday activities at Mattressbrook, despite the fact there's been no library at Mattressbrook for years.

"It's politically sensitive," says T.Aldous.

I expct the fact that Mattressbrook will consequently have one more holiday activity than any of the main libraries and two more than most of the branches and will contribute nothing towards any of our targets will register not one blip politically.

Doing the numbers

A friend's just got a new job in another library authority. As always, there's lots of talk beforehand about all the challenging and exciting things that he would be expected to do in that post. Turns out that the first challenging and exciting thing he's going to have to do is find some way of addressing a hole in his equipment budget that's equal to what he had to spend on equipment in his old job over the past four years.

It's easier to cry

I get a 'phone call from Henry Kendal, who's filling in for Arthur Sixpence while he's off sick.

"We've got a £10k project from last year that really needs signing off. Do you intend doing anything about buying any online services?"

• http://helminthdale.blogspot.com/2006/01/why-put-off-today-something-that-you.html


• http://helminthdale.blogspot.com/2006/01/maana-is-bit-frenetic-for-some-people.html

Not poetry, but prose run mad

It turns out that the reason why I can't get the dead PC on the counter replaced is that "according to our records this PC was replaced in 2002." As so often before, I point out that that PC has sat on the counter since 1999 and I'd be very interested to know what it was replaced by.

Obviously The Great Stock Inventory which IT required of us at the beginning of the year was an utter waste of time.

• http://helminthdale.blogspot.com/2005/12/merry-christmas-to-all-our-readers.html


• http://helminthdale.blogspot.com/2006/01/rubbing-salt-in-it.html