Jollop vapour

One of the computer screens at Gypsy Lane has gone up in flames. Pansy sees the bright side:

"I'll tell you what, the smell of it's great for getting you to cough up a pile of catarrh."

Mulch

Frog's pissed off. He's come back in from a particularly fraught children's event at Senebene Library to find that his desk is covered in nearly-empty bags of compost. They've been sent in by branches who've been doing seed-planting activities for The Big Wild Read.

In any ordinary organisation they'd hang onto the stuff or chuck it out or something. Not here: everyone's so worried that they'll be held to account for every pennyweight of dirt and the bags besides that they've sent it back to Helminthdale to be on the safe side.

Just at this point I pop my head over the filing cabinet.

"Haven't you got this place cleared out for T.Aldous' sofas yet?"

"Don't talk to me about bloody sofas."

I think he needs his lunch.

Anon.

Popping into the Millipede and Clogger I bump into the Chair of the local Unison branch.

"I had two meetings with that bloody idiot last week," is his opening conversational gambit.

It's a while later before it occurs to me I didn't ask who we were talking about.

Spot checks

Helminthdale Council's started a series of spot-checks to make sure that nobody's found smoking in any of its public buildings, as per the recent change in law. It's our turn today. The chappie came in and let on to the counter staff as a courtesy. They rang down to let T.Aldous know, also as a courtesy. T.Aldous storms upstairs and upbraids the inspector:

"If you want to come and check the library you should have made an appointment."

The response was magisterial:

"I don't have to make appointments."

Grace under pressure

T.Aldous is just going into his meeting about the Children's Centre Bookdrop Project. He's decided to drag Lola along for the ride so that he's got someone to blame if he makes a tit of himself.

Lola's told both Frog and Mary about the meeting and they're not wholly impressed with the fact T.Aldous hadn't deigned to do so. Mary decides to be a bit firm about this one. T.Aldous concedes the point:

"You're not invited but you can come in if you want."

We've had the pixies in

Seth invites us to test our forensic skills.

"When I left last night everywhere was spick and span and the workroom was tidy, with just a couple of dozen boxes of booksale stock stacked up in the corner. This morning there's nothing stacked up in the corner of the workroom and there's empty cardboard boxes littering the lending library."

The work of a moment. We wonder what time Elvis left the building last night.

Knowledge workers

Bear this in mind...

1. Lola is leading the children's centre bookdrop project.
2. Frog is temporarily line-managing Lola and is responsible for the children's centre bookdrop project, together with all the rest of the children's library services.
3. Mary line-manages Frog and is responsible for children's library services, inter alia and is the signing-off officer for the children's centre bookdrop project.
4. T.Aldous is Chief Librarian and his only input on the children's centre bookdrop project was to hold up Lola's appointment for six of the twelve months of the life of the project.

T.Aldous is having a Children's Centre Bookdrop Project meeting with the regional organisers tomorrow morning.

1. He's told Lola to collate all the statistics this evening so that he can answer any questions that may arise.
2. Frog knows nothing about this meeting.
3. Mary knows nothing about this meeting.

T.Aldous' parting shot to Lola:

"Make sure that you show that the statistics can be audited if necessary. I don't want to look a fool in this meeting."

It's to be hoped he keeps his mouth shut then.

The uttermost coil of her bowels

Poppy Cloverdale's the latest with the lurgy. She was sick a few times before coming in to work at Catty Library and she's not too clever at the moment. Luckily, her shade of green doesn't clash with that of the carpet. A few of us have asked her why on earth she's dragged herself in (the answer, predictably, is because they're so short-staffed there'll be nobody to cover for lunchtime)(and of course we can't close for an hour because of staff sickness)(nor could we actually staff our libraries adequately in the first place). Eventually, she gives in to her illness and tells Julia that she needs to retreat home. Julia's response bears all the hallmarks of our human resource support strategies.

"Tell you what. If you work through your lunchtime you can go home at three o'clock."

Be Prepared 2

Probably not the same group's just turned up at Helminthdale unannounced. A panicky 'phone call tears Frog away from his preparing this afternoon's event at Gypsy Lane to talk to the group leader. He quickly improvises some things for them to do with the Big Wild Read craft tables and shows them where to find books and story discs suitable for this age group.

"Can somebody do a couple of hours' storytime for us, too?"

Frog made his excuses and left.

Be Prepared 1

Someone from one of the SureStart projects rang Thelma at Epiphany Library on Tuesday:

"We'll be bringing our SureStart group to the Library tomorrow afternoon. It'll be about twenty children, plus a few parents."

"You won't, you know. The library's not open on Wednesdays."

"It must be: we've sent letters out to parents and everything."

Green dilemma

Frog's having a crisis of ethics about servicing the next batch of Big Wild Read Wild Happenings: should he buy another bag of compost or should we start strip-mining the peat deposits in T.Aldous' office?

Every customer this morning has asked: "What about that old Bubonic Plague?"

Things are a bit fraught. We've all gone down with bad colds, that is to say half of us are suffering and knowing the vagaries of our air-conditioning system the rest will follow in three days' time. The good news is that we've found that a combination of Flu Strength Doctor Collis' Horse Jollop, licorice and hot, sweet tea zonks us out completely: they could drop an atom bomb on us and we'd not notice.

Alas, not all are so comforted. Bronwyn comes down from lending, bringing back the debris of the latest Big Wild Read Wild Happening and news of shortages on the front line.

"We're quarter-staffed due to school holidays, sickness and covering for vacancies in branches. We've got leaves and compost all over the children's library. We're drawing straws to see who's going to cover in ref. And two of the PCs have stopped working.

"But we've rearranged all the books in the book sale so all's right in the world."

Observations on the spontaneous motions

Helminthdale Reference Library is not the haven of quiet, donnish research that you might imagine, nor that the Reference Librarians might claim when justifying their stock selections. Some right yobs come in to use the computers or, worse, read the papers (in my experience some of the people who read The Investors' Chronicle have the manners of pigs).

Dora's covering up there this morning. One of the customers recognises her:

"Oh I wasn't expecting you up here. Shouldn't you be at Gypsy Lane?"

"Not any more. I'm having to work up here these days."

"How are you liking it?"

"I'm not really. There's some very ignorant people up here."

"Yes, and I expect you find that some of the public aren't much better."

Jaw-droppingly lacking in self-awareness

I swear this is true. T.Aldous approaches Noreen:

"I've just put my 'phone through to your desk because you're the only person who answers my 'phone when it's ringing. Will that be a nuisance? People keep interrupting me with 'phone calls while I'm working."

Noreen was too gobsmacked to give any of the long list of entirely sensible responses that came to her five minutes later.

Enterprise

As part of The Big Wild Read Frog's organised a bunch of seed-sowing and plant-growing activities for the kids last week.

Maureen at Roadkill Library has already had one kid trying to sell her the seeds back for 20p.

Art imitates life

This is spooky. The great Winsor McKay, he who did "Little Nemo In Slumberland," drew this cartoon almost exactly one hundred years ago. How could he have predicted Helminthdale's customer transaction processes so uncannily?

Got my feet on the ground

Milton looks out of the staff room window at the sheets of water passing for a light shower.

"What do you reckon? If we get flooded out would it be worth putting all the crappy old equipment into the waters so that we could get replacements on the insurance?"

"Probably not. Knowing our luck we'd get like-for-like."

Chivalry, if not dead, is unwell

"We've not had a pile of new boxes littering the place this week," I mention in passing to Noreen, thinking this is a good thing too.

"We should have had twenty-five boxes of incoming books. They were to be delivered this morning."

"Where they?" I asked.

"They arrived OK: I answered the door when the delivery man rang. 'Twenty-five boxes,' he said. And he expected me to unload them from the van and bring them in myself! I got the trolley and asked him to lift the boxes down for me. He refused: 'I've not got time for that,' he said. So I told him that in that case he may as well go away again. I've complained to the supplier about him."

Noreen is a not tall lady in her fifties.

To a young ass, its mother being tethered

I have had this conversation three times so far this week, with slight variations in vocabulary.

"What does it mean when it says that an item at Glass Road is marked: 'Unavailable for reservation; at old site.'?"

"It means that the item is unavailable for reservation because it's been left behind at the old site."

"So we can't reserve that item?"

"No. It's unavailable for reservation."

"Why is it unavailable for reservation?"

"Because it's been packed away in one of the boxes piled up at the old Glass Road site. It'll probably be coming back here, everything else does."

"So I could place a reservation on it and then when the boxes are sent to Helminthdale someone could look for it in the boxes and then send it to us."

"No. These items are not available for reservation."

"So what happens if a borrower wants to reserve it?"

"If you choose to borrow a set of keys, go over to the old site, open up, rummage through the boxes, take the book back to your library -- having tidied up and locked up behind you -- then discharge the book on the circulation system and thus make it available for reservation then I can't see that there's anything I could do about it."

"I can't understand why we can't reserve these items."
The answer to this last is either "because you're too stupid for words" or "yes you can but you don't like the answer." I should let gentler souls than mine decide on which.

The boundaries of epistomology

"Why are we still carrying so many vacancies on the front line?" asks Jim.

"We need to keep the posts vacant so that we can pay for the temporary staff needed to fill the vacancies," replies T.Aldous.

Whiling away the time

I had a go at a few of the quizzes in Blogthings. You know the type of thing: "Who would direct the movie of your life?" (Ingmar Bergman) "What colour are you?" (Dark grey) "What type of animal are you?" (Dead rabbit) Then I did "Should you quit your job?"

Your Job Dissatisfaction Level is 76%

Your job is a total bummer, and probably the worst job you've ever had.
Your boss is a jerk. And your company is probably in trouble.
Think about finding a new job quickly, even if it's just a not-so-great transition job.
You've got to get out of there as quickly as you can!

Should You Quit Your Job?

Kettle:Pot

"You're too cynical," complains T.Aldous.

It always amuses me that the people who complain the most about me being cynical are the ones most happy to tread on the faces of their fellow man.

You'll never guess what!

"You'll never guess," says Frog.

"What now?" I ask.

"We're having another Big Book Sale."

I am frankly puzzled.

"How's that different from the Big Book Sale we've been having up here for the past three months?"

"That's Helminthdale Library's Big Book Sale, organised by Doreen. The new one's going to be Helminthdale Library Service's Big Book Sale, organised by T.Aldous."

"You're taking the piss."

He wasn't.

Prayers for the faithful

What a thoroughly depressing afternoon.

I've just had a meeting with colleagues from elsewhere in the north of England. This is generally a good thing: they're a nice bunch of people; we have interesting discussions; and it's always consoling to know that we share common problems and aren't just festering in our own private hells.

Unfortunately, things are bloody awful all round. We all have to deal with our local lunatics (for some of us it's chiefs and/or reference librarians; for others it's chiefs and children's; or chiefs and branches)(it's odd how often chiefs feature). This is mostly OK, it's part of the game and adds to the gaiety of nations. The new elements of awfulness are part of a wider, nastier picture. We had our blood-letting last year and still have the gaps in provision and vacancies to show for it. One of our colleagues has had three of his colleagues offered early retirement and is covering for his line manager (sounds familiar!); another finds that their new reorganisation means that there aren't any jobs left for 75% of the librarians but those who choose to remain may be eligible to apply for six posts which might arise from phase three of the restructure. One of our colleagues has been retired early along with his line manager and his line manager's line manager and the people who are standing in for him aren't allowed to go to external meetings in case they compromise local confidentiality issues. We're moving libraries into shared premises in the name of co-location but in reality just finding uses for spare capacity in council buildings regardless of suitability of premises or location. Most colleagues have been doing similarly lately. In one case they've reopened as a Community Information Point; in another as a Learning and Information Centre; another as a Community Learning Centre; another as a Community Reading & Learning Centre; in fact anything other than "library." At one library staff are now generic council workers "doing housing enquiries in between stamping out books," something which sounds horribly like something I successfully argued against in other circumstances fifteen years ago.

The discussion lists this week are full of librarians boasting about not getting their hands dirty with stock selection or stock promotion ("we don't need a local library catalogue"). I can't help wondering how successful Tesco or Wal-Mart would be if they gave up bothering about stock selection. And given the central government push of customer choice (however spurious that choice actually is), I can't see the sense in not promoting local stock locally using web catalogues and web sites as aggressively as possible. Mind you, given the choice between a librarian who can't be bothered doing decent stock selection and leaving the job to a supplier I'd go for the supplier every time. And too many librarians don't give two hoots about the quality or accuracy of their catalogue. Perhaps I've been naive all along.

All in all, I'm not convinced I see much of a future for the public library service in all this.

Spontaneous generation

Seven new boxes in the corridor that ought to be the fire escape. Nothing new there but these are humongous, the size and roughly the shape, of roll-top desks.

"What the hell are these?" I ask Seth.

"I know where five of them are going but not the others," he replies.

"That's not the question I asked."

"I know, but that's the question I'm worrying about."

It turns out that they're display stands for the Books For Sharing collections, of which we have four. A fifth is going to the new Noddy Library as part of the development of this site, so Mary ordered five stands. Somebody amended the order and added the other two. Only one person has the authority to amend an order once Mary's signed it.

"What on earth is she going to do with those two stands?" asks T.Aldous.

What a shocking bad hat!

An overheard classic. T.Aldous ambushing a colleague on his last day before three weeks' leave:

"I know you're getting ready to go home and that you're going to be on leave for the next three weeks -- lucky you, I can't remember my leave -- but could you give me the current stock figures for Roadkill Library? I know it's not moving until this autumn but I'm worried that we won't be able to fit all the existing stock in the new library so I need to know how much of each type of stock we're likely to be dealing with. I know it's not ideal asking you now but we need it before you go on leave."

Serves the poor sod right for not buggering off mid-afternoon. Strangely he's not that pissed off, which makes me suspicious.

"You've already got those figures prepared haven't you?"

"The secret of magic is the art of preparation," he replied smugly.

"Is that why you asked me for the under-fives statistics?"

"End of July, you wait," he winked.

The Diary and Doings of a Moist Visitor

Working as we all do backstage in a darkened cellar we generally have no idea of the doings of the weather of the day except when we come in, when we nip out for lunch and when we go home. Our body clocks are all to cock and seasonality has withered on the vine. As, indeed, have we by and large. The good news is that we're less badly affected by the vile weather of the past few weeks than most folk.

Of course we're not entirely ignorant: if we be bothered to care enough we can divine the weather from the signs about us:

Staff room full of open umbrellas
Either it's been raining or it's an art installation.
Not to be confused with: open umbrella in staff toilet, which suggests an unpleasant medical condition.

"Good weather for ducks!"
It's raining.

"Turned out nice again!"
It's raining.

"God, this weather!"
It's raining.

"Isn't it warm today?"
It's raining.

"They said it would be fine today."
It's raining.

"What's it been like round your way?"
It's raining.

"Will you just look at it!"
If said by someone staring out of the staff room window: it's raining.
In any other context: you really don't want to know.

Questions, questions

"We need to set up a staff questionnaire that we can keep on running to demonstrate that we're responsive to ideas and suggestions," I'm told. "Can you set something up like that?"

Oh I think so.

Pottering about

There was a bit on the 'Today' programme about a row between Asda and Bloomsbury about the price of the latest Harry Potter book. No doubt we'll soon be getting another "why have you bought all those copies of the book at suppliers' discount when you could have popped round to the supermarket and got them cheaper?" or "why didn't you buy them off Amazon and get them a bit cheaper" letters from a councillor or one of the council's accountants.

The answer to the Amazon question's quite tricky to explain if the person asking the question isn't much fussed about the impact of supply times on CPA-related performance indicators and the potential costs of part-order deliveries. Councillors and council accountants should be much fussed about both these things. (Notice the use of the conditional tense there!)

The supermarket one's easy: you're not going to see 95% of the titles we've got on our shelves in the supermarket, they're not high-volume sellers and so can't compete with tins of beans for shelf space. Of course, if we were only buying occasional bulk orders of best-selling titles then that's precisely what we should be doing (and off-setting the processing costs with the discount). But we're a public library and we don't, which is why we negotiate contracts with book suppliers.

The perils of reading

There's always someone worse off than yourself. I guess there are some compensations in having a Chief Librarian who refuses to read things.

An articulator of bones

I'm being provocative:

"So tell me, Frog old fellow me lad, you know how Glass Road's being moved into the school and any library manager you bump into will spontaneously tell you all the plans they have for working with the school: 'We'll get the kids to do this,' 'We'll have to organise some after-school activities,' etc. etc. etc."

"Yes..."

"Have any of them actually spoken to you about doing anything with the school and the kids there?"

"Don't take the piss, it's not nice."

Party animals

The girls at Dutch Bend had another Anne Summers party in the weekend. This is a terrifying prospect for those of us with weak stomachs. One of the participants is Elsie Bradlow, one of the Reference Assistants who retired last year. Elsie is a lovely lady but is extremely away with the fairies. Lucy Raindrop, who's covering at Noddy, hosted the party and told me all about it.

"How's Elsie these days?" I asked.

"She's getting worse. She brought me a birthday cake."

"Was it your birthday?"

"No. But she told us to pretend that it was and we ended up having to humour her. We sat around my living room with glasses of wine and boxes of things you don't want to know about singing 'Happy birthday' while she insisted I blow out the candles."

Singing in the rain

It's my own fault, I've no one else to blame. I was reading yet another newspaper article about corporate bonding exercises and I wondered out loud what our corporate song would be.

When I left the staff room there were three people doing Leonard Cohen impressions, singing "We're h-a-p-p-y."

Designs for living

It's the end of another crappy week at work so of course something like this has to pop up in my inbox at 5pm.

More than sense can scan or imagination attain

"I think we should take Lola off the project she's working on and get her to organise the Big Wild Read," says T.Aldous.

"Bronwyn's already got that sorted," says Frog. "And the Big Wild Read started two weeks ago."

The epidermis of poetry

To be a library (trad.)

"You might have read," T.Aldous said
In some untimbered barn,
"It is your fate to relocate
And all that sort of yarn.
With moonlight flits such stock that fits
Will move quite seamlessly.
Then off we'll go and hey presto!
We'll have a library."
He told us. "We'll have a library."

Such stock unfoxed we found we boxed
And labelled each in turn.
Propped up on planks in serried ranks
For whom it may concern.
They stayed that way for many a day.
They festered fruitlessly.
When people say: "Lord, what are they?"
"They're for the library,"
We tell them. "They're for the library."

The ages pass: hay turns to grass
And pigs fly south to nest.
After this wait they set a date:
"Next Tuesday would be best."
So's not to waste any undue haste
They dither endlessly:
"Now, what goes where?" "Not that, not there."
Around the library,
They dicker round the library.

Despite it all it's a close call
With shelved books of a kind.
A slight snafu means we've no clue
As to which stayed behind.
(We later learned when backs were turned
T.Aldous heedlessly
Shuffled the pack and took some back
To the old library
Or Helminthdale, at least some library.)

Hip hip hooray it's opening day
And you know what that means.
A bunch of toffs who soon sod off
And not a hill of beans.
They'll politesse the local press
But as for thee and me
They'll give short shrift. But once adrift
We'll be a library,
Despite it all, we'll be a library.

(A recording of this song is available on the MLA Victor label)

Time was, that when the brains were out, the man would die

Seth's lending me a hand with some of the People's Network workstations: it takes two to shift the study carels so that I can access the PC processors and the network points. Along comes T.Aldous.

"So that's where you are! What do you think you'e doing? I want you to move some boxes in Noddy Library."

Then he stalks off. I turn to Seth:

"Just remind me: you are caretaker at Helminthdale Library aren't you? Not Borough-wide shit-shifter?"

"Oh yes," he says with feeling. "And if he's not careful he's going to be shifting Glass Road by himself."

Cooee Mister Shifter!

Seth's not happy. T.Aldous has decided that he wants everything shifting out of Glass Road next week after the old site closes its doors for the last time and everything shifting to the new site. Three problems:

For the past decade Glass Road has been the repository for the old crap that didn't take root at Helminthdale.

The new Glass Road site has no storage space and has two-thirds the shelving capacity of the old site.

T.Aldous is expecting Seth to do it all in one afternoon.

You have to bear in mind that we've only had two-and-a-half years to plan and prepare for this so we're badly taken off guard. I decide not to wind Seth up any, I don't want him going the way of Lemuel.

Every so often I can keep a straight face.

"You know that application problem with your web catalogue?"

"Yes...."

"Well the supplier's got in touch with us and he's made some suggestions."

I bet he has.

Unhinged

"What on earth are all these boxes doing here?" shrieks T.Aldous. "I expected them to be out of the way by the time I got back off leave. We need to reorganise this workspace."

"We need to reorganise this workspace," is code for: "I want to budge Frog into the middle of the office so that I can have a waiting area outside my office so that anyone visiting me can sit on settees and have a cup of coffee while they're waiting."

Where are these settees coming from and what budget are they being paid out of?

If people have come over to have a pre-arranged meeting with T.Aldous then he should damn well have the courtesy not to keep them hanging around for half an hour while he prattles on the 'phone with his back to the world.

If we're reorganising this workspace there are a whole heap of higher priorities than his sodding waiting area. Like perhaps somewhere for the Branch Librarians to work, or perhaps something that ensured that Management Group wasn't split over four locations and three floors of this library (teamwork anyone?)

Given his prediliction for commandeering staffrooms and workrooms for private meetings because he can't have them in his office as it looks like a remainder sale in a carrier bag factory how soon before we're all ordered out of the building so's he can have a private meeting on his sofas?

Who's going to be making this coffee then? It was bad enough when he had a secretary but now she's retired and the post gone into T.Aldous' Vacancy Limbo there's nobody left to do it. Clever money's on his asking the Finance Officer to do it because she's not doing anything important like pricing up Book Sale items.

And that's before we even start asking ourselves the question "what on earth are all these boxes doing here?"

Morse code melodies

Jim's getting a bollocking off T.Aldous for all to see and hear in the middle of the open-plan office. He's taking it quite well really, though there were a couple of moments where I noticed his right hand balling up into a fist and the effort of will involved in unclenching and turning the movement into a discursive gesture. In the circumstances it's impossible not to hear the conversation.

"You had no right to do that. I needed to see what you were planning before anything like that could be done."

"But we went through it all in a Management Group meeting before Xmas and we agreed that that's what I should do. It's in the minutes, I'm not making it up."

"Well I don't remember agreeing to it."

"It's in the minutes. And I've been sending you weekly emails giving you and the rest of Management Group details of progress and asking for feedback."

"You should know by now that I only ever read emails with red exclamation marks on them. I'm far too busy for the others."

Jim didn't know that, of course. It'll be interesting to see what he does with the knowledge. Some of us have an archive of hundreds of emails giving T.Aldous exclusive knowledge of what we intend doing whether he like it or not, each one ending

"Please let me know if you wish any variation on this plan."

But the folks are not all of them crazy

Not just us then...

A Librarian's Guide To Etiquette

Motive power

Apparently one of the emails waiting for T.Aldous on his return from Amazonia was one from the Chief Executive asking how many buildings had been released as a result of the library co-location programme that's been running for the past three years. The answer is, of course, none: although we finally decamped from the old place at Noddy and went live in the community centre in March we only finally cleared it out yesterday, despite our being contractually obliged to be out of the place by 30th April. I can't imagine these are related facts.

And there's certainly no truth in the rumour that T.Aldous knew nothing about it until Warner rang him up to ask why he hadn't been reading his emails.

Tote that barge

Seth's been all day shifting shit at the old Noddy Library. This is the stuff that had been sent here then out to Noddy then back again and then back here and finally shifted out again just before T.Aldous went on leave. The library's got to be cleared out (the deadline for clearance was a couple of months ago) so Seth's been given the use of a van and one of the chaps from the council's shifting gang to get the job done.

A nice complication to the job is that we can't afford to take all this gear to Helminthdale's council dump as it's far too expensive so they having to drive over to Pardendale, adding seven miles to each of the eight journeys involved. Not helped by the roadworks: Helminthdale has roadworks simultaneously at each and every junction on the outer ring road at the moment.

Upon his arrival he's met by T.Aldous.

"You've been a long time about it haven't you?"

The power of positive thinking

Bronwyn and Salome have been doing online book selection since they started their jobs as Branch Librarians in the east side of the Borough. Nancy and Flossie refuse to do online book selection, which means that the Branch Librarians for two-thirds of the west side of the Borough aren't selecting any new stock. When challenged they fall back on the good old

"We've not had any training."

The solution is to tell Bronwyn and Salome to do the book selection for those libraries, too.

The irony is that Bronwyn and Salome haven't had any training and just got on with it. While Flossie and Nancy were in the same training session as Lola this time last year and have conveniently forgotten it.

Poll

I've just had my first look at the new Glass Road Library, up round the back of St. Barrabas' Primary School.

Sigh...

Your library authority moves your library to a new shared location. What will be its unique selling point?
	Having the entrance around the back of the building.
	Hiding the entrance behind the dustbins.
	Blocking the entrance by having service vehicles parked there.
	Providing no customer parking whatsoever.
	Having no signage saying that this is a library.
	Being located at the top of the only hill in the village.
	Having the spring for the local beck arise just above the entrance.
	Having to close the library for to accommodate OFSTED inspectors.
	All of the above.
pollcode.com free polls

I don't want that image for my band

Ah well. The good news is that Readers' Digest have written to say that I may have won a prize.

More customer feedback

T.Aldous comes in, flourishing a copy of a letter that's been sent to Warner Baxter.

"Mr. Jenkinson's sent Warner another letter thanking Lippy for the good work she does for his mother who's housebound,"

says T.Aldous as if he were passing drawing pins.

"How many's that he's sent?" asks Frog later.

"Three now," replies Lippy.

"How much does he charge?"

The return of the native

T.Aldous arrives back from leave the worse for wear for jet-lag. Most of us pretend we haven't noticed he's back. It's probably a forlorn effort to prolong the dream but it's worth a go.

A rule for sisters

A plea to the ladies: any time an innocent male asks you why you've got a turkey baster on your desk don't answer the question! Please.

There are no illusions left for some of us

Reference and misinformation

Milton turns up at my doorway.

"Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"

He's just been having one of his occasional forays into understanding Helminthdale's reference stock policies and needs a wet flannel on his forehead.

The trouble started when he got a 'phone call from Dutch Bend complaining that they hadn't had an update of their "Jane's Fighting Sailors." He said he'd look into it, secretly balking at paying that much unless there was a damned good reason for it.

"Is there a copy of Jane's Fighting Sailors here at Helminthdale?" he asked Eileen.

"Yes," she replies, "but it's an old one. It's not being updated here."

"Why is Dutch Bend getting an up-to-date copy but not Helminthdale if Helminthdale's the main reference library in the borough?"

"I don't know; the Acq. team decide on the updates."
[bollocks said I]

"When was your last update?"

"Two years ago."

"So you've not had a copy on the shelves for two years?"

"Oh no, it's still there."

"Hasn't anyone complained about its being out of date?"

"Oh no. I don't think anyone's noticed."

"Why on earth is it on the shelf if it's out of date?"

"Oh, it's used all the time."

This is wrong on so many levels I can only commiserate and reassure him that the rules of information librarianship seem to have evaded Helminthdale somehow.

Just fade away

Having established that we can regain access to our web catalogue on staff PCs by being naughty I now find that some of the pictures on it are missing. I check our Flickr account: all the files are there. It turns out that they're being blocked by the council's Internet Frivolity Filter.

What I can't understand is why half the images and why those ones in particular. King Kong in drag, posted in March, is OK as is a picture of a courting couple posted in January. A picture of Lord Kitchener, posted on the same day as the courting couple, is blocked, as is a picture of a pencil.

Someone in the Town Hall has a peculiar idea of frivolity.

Delusions of adequacy

Amid great fanfare we are presented with the successor to "Scoring Points By Ticking Boxes" (a thrilling yarn, soon to be a major motion picture). The council's Excellence And Expediency Directorate proudly presents "Bobbing Up: An Excellence Toolkit." I grit my teeth and get to slide 78: "Can we do it? Yes we can!" (oh come on, who's going to invent anything as unbelievable as an eighty-four slide PowerPoint presentation?) Anyway, I got as far as slide 78 before I started rocking to and fro and moaning. My neighbours had curled up into balls on their chairs. Three people at the front (including one of the presenters) fell asleep and a lady at the back had to be given air. All in all a rousing success.

I get back to the office and dig out my Scoring Points by Ticking Boxes" mantra card. To my utter lack of astonishment I find that the summary of points is exactly the same as the "key outcomes" list in slide 65.

So at least we'll all be consistent non-achievers then.

Quick! We must find a library!

I've spent the day trawling round libraries in the rain. All for to make one simple change to the desktop at each library, a job that would take literally a minute each time were I allowed to proxy into them from my office. No chance of that as not even the IT helpdesk are allowed that.

Sodly massed

"How's Lemuel doing?" we ask Seth. Seth tells us he's doing fine and he'll be out of hospital at the end of the week. Very good, we say:

"Tell him we've got some boxes for him to shift."

Alternatively...

I discover that I can get onto our web catalogue on the corporate network after all. It only involves hacking into the server from the intranet and then entering the IP address to get onto the site.

The software supplier agrees with my diagnosis:

"They do like passing the buck, don't they? They've been fiddling with the network again."

"Can you have a chat with them again? They don't believe me."

"Will do."

I'm now debating whether or not to put the instructions for connection on the intranet...

I've run out of headlines with box puns in them

"What are all these boxes?" I ask Seth as a new load of battered baked bean cartons are piled up against Frog's bookshelves.

"Stuff from Noddy that didn't go to the new library," says Seth with ill-disguised disgust.

"Why's it come here?"

"Why does anything come here?"

It turns out that T.Aldous has decided that this stock's got to come here for transfer or withdrawal by one of the branch librarians at Helminthdale. Despite the fact that that half of the borough's got more branch librarians, including one who's directly responsible for Noddy Library.

Bronwyn is not a happy bunny as she has been volunteered for the work as she's only preparing for the Big Wild Read, a programme of reading group events and covering for the reference librarians who are on leave.

"When I was at Milbeck when it was closing for two years while we put in a new floor, walls and ceiling I had to do all the withdrawals and transfers myself. There was no 'oh just send all your shit to Helminthdale for them to sort out' then, oh no."

The situation's made worse when Doreen warns Bronwyn that T.Aldous expects it to be cleared by the time he's back from leave so that Frog can be shifted into that area to make the way clear for a couple of settees to be placed outside T.Aldous' office for to make a waiting room.

I thought I had a wide vocabulary of invective and profane language but evidently I'm a rank amateur.

Oozing through cavities of unrestrained passion

A romantic novel is sent back to the Acq. Team from Windscape:

"I think this has been sent in error. It seems to be a work of erotic fiction."

I suppose the clue was in the blurb on the front cover: "Erotic Fiction for Lovers."

We have a scout round to see what's happening to the other copies. The copy at Helminthdale has been confiscated and put into the Group Librarian's office (it's still on the shelves on the catalogue I notice) while Benzedrine Drive's copy has been issued three times (mind you, they've got an active Art Group, nuff said).

Glancing through it I find that the sex scenes are a lot milder than those described in some of Alan Titchmarsh's books. Must be the pullovers.

Connections

As of ten minutes ago we can no longer get access to the web catalogue on staff PCs. It works fine from the public PCs and my colleague in Pardendale can get on it OK. Obviously someone's been monkeying around with network settings again. I log a call with IT.

"It's an application fault."

"We've been using it for years without incident; why would it be an application fault?"

"You'll have to contact the software supplier. They'll have changed something last time they were on the server."

"They're not allowed on ther server. Come to that, neither am I."

"I'm sorry, it can only be an application fault."

"If it's an application fault how come it only doesn't work on our corporate network?"

"Sorry, you'll have to contact the supplier."

Eternal happiness is rhubarb tart

Popping into Dutch Bend I notice that Daisy and Mimsie are in one of "those" moods. For people who claim not to be in middle age yet they do a very good impression of Cissie and Ada when the mood takes them. Invariably this means that they're planning on doing some matchmaking for some poor devil. I've no idea who's in their sights this time: it could be anyone, staff or public. My God, I hope it's not my turn again, life's full of shit as it is.

Can't be wrong all the time

I appear to have established a reputation for fatalism:

Kevin was walking into work when he spotted a banana skin on the pavement fifty yards up the road.

"Oh bugger," he said, "here we go again."

What about them? Now — they're not!

Good news: T.Aldous is now on holiday.

Good-ish news: Mary is also on holiday.

Good news: In the absence of obsessive micromanagers we should be able to get something done.

Bad news: Nobody else is allowed to sign orders, invoice payment slips, contract workers' time sheets or building repair requisition dockets.

So that's fine then.

All the refuse lying hereHas no life to give it cheer

I'm doing yet another bit of the catalogue maintenance that apparently isn't necessary to have anyone doing because catalogues maintain themselves and we'll soon be moving to MARC21 anyway, which transformation happens by magic and won't involve any specialised work. I've mentioned before that I don't understand some librarians' attitude to cataloguing: I can understand them not wanting to do it themselves but the utter neglect that's apparent in some organisations' catalogues is breathtaking. We'll soon be joining their ranks. Management Group can deal with all the complaints about people not being able to find anything, they're the ones who've deleted the stock manager/catalogue post without telling anyone.

This time it's authority maintenance: I'm tidying out all the blind authorities in the subject index. It's an object lesson in the transience of fame: out go Peter Butterworth, Neville Chamberlain, Eamonn Andrews, Paul Merton and Danny Kaye. Disconcertingly, it becomes apparent that we no longer have any stock on Babylonia, Carthage, cervical cancer, the Channel Islands or metaphysics.

Unwrappings

We unwrap the mummy in the corridor. What a let-down. After removing about twenty yards of bubble wrap it turns out to be the most boring island shelving unit I've ever seen: two vertical aluminum poles with six open-ended aluminium slat shelves.

And some irresponsible craziesMeander around there at will

Someone from SureStart is talking to Lola:

"We'll be starting under-fives' story time at Windscape next week."

"Err... Can I just check with the staff there to make sure they know about it and we've got the arrangements sorted."

"Oh we agreed it at the friends' group AGM meeting the other week."

"Well they still might not know about it..."

"T.Aldous was there and said it was OK."

So the staff at Windscape don't know about it, Lola the librarian responsible for Windscape doesn't know about it and Doreen the Group Librarian doesn't know about it. It also comes as a surprise to Frog, but he's only responsible for children's library services so it's nothing to do with him. But Himself does, so that's alright then.

Useless

There I am with an audience in front of me waiting to be delighted with a demo of some online magic when I find that I can't log onto the PC, which tells me my PC account is disabled. I ring the helpdesk: they can't fathom why either.

An hour later it turns out that it isn't my account that's disabled, it's the PC. Apparently some of our friends in IT have decided that if a PC hasn't been used for a few weeks they'll disable it on the network. But not bother telling anyone.

C**ts.

Teamwork

Milton's arranged for Lola to join us for a day-long meeting about online services. In part this is because one day when I was away someody rang up and asked who was representing the Library Service in a corporate e-Implementation Meeting, T.Aldous and Mary panicked, saw Lola and volunteered her for the job. In part it's because Milton and I have been doing this type of thing for too long and need a fresh pair of eyes to cut through all the natural assumptions.

Mary is not happy that Lola's doing this so she's told Milton that she's got to pay for her day's work out of one of his budgets. Considering that we're all paid out of one service-wide staffing budget and that I seem to spend half my working life doing work for parts of Mary's empire this is a little cheeky.

Any similarity between Management Group and a working team is purely coincidental.

Nomdy Gurr

Lippy's taken the name of McMoo, probably preparatory to being adopted into the clan so yclept, though it might be a numerology thing (with Hettie having been and gone we've lost the expertise in that area). We're not sure how official this is so I'm not having her name changed on her PC account. Apparently the tartan is grey, plum and grey and a Marigold glove is carried in lieu of a sporran. I'm not sure what the nursing homes think when she turns up like this.

Nuts

Apparently there's no truth in the rumour that Beryl puts peanuts in the foyer of Senebene Library so that the squirrels' jumping in and out pumps up the visitor figures.

A shame, really, that would have been a positive to put into our Improvement Implementation Report.

And they frequently talk to a stranger

Overheard:

"I see your secondment's been extended to January."

"Has it? That's the first I know about it."

"Well, I've just filed copies of the extension form that T.Aldous sent to Human Resources last week."

Customer care

I get a 'phone call from Roadkill Library:

"What does it mean when the system says that money's got to be refunded to a borrower?"

"It means that we took them some money off them and now we have to give it back."

"That's a bit of a pain. Is it OK if I just leave it as it is so that it can pay off his future overdues."

How Useful Redux

Human Resources have rung Daisy to ask why she hasn't sent written feedback to one of the candidates for one of the Relief Assistant posts. Bit cheeky really as she only got the request yesterday and she then found out that HR have lost the recruitment paperwork!

And they sometimes escape, it is true

Hettie Mistletoe's last day. I take the opportunity to nip round to have one last look at her legs.

"Aren't you having a leaving do?" I ask.

"What? And have T.Aldous insist on giving a speech before giving me my leaving present?"

Oh dear

Oh hell. It turns out that Lemuel has had three heart attacks. He was rushed in for emergency surgery yesterday and he's had to have angioplasty. Seth breaks the news to everyone, most of whom are suitably shocked. I can't imagine that all the hassle with all the sequences of pass the parcel has done him any good.

Needless to say, despite the fact that we've got a couple of months' worth of shifting and lumbering crap about the Borough; a whole heap of early summer events for kids; and another Big Book Sale up in the library next month Seth's going to be working single-handed. Let's hope the usual suspect has the tact not to piss him about so much as usual or we'll have someone else in Accident and Emergency.

How useful

Bad news for Daisy at Dutch Bend: whenever we interview candidates for jobs we have to fill in a Recruitment Scoring Matrix for each candidate, marking against the person specification and interview questions, and submit this to Human Resources so that it's on file in the event of query.

Daisy's chaired the last lot of interviews for Relief Assistants and one of them has asked for written feedback. Daisy got in touch with HR for a copy of the Matrix. Only to find that they've lost it.

A futile but joyous irony

Maybelle's been lobbying to have maps and street maps in the lending stock at Helminthdale for the best part of a year now. She's just had another row with Mary about it and has been quietly steaming in the work room since then. Enter Mary:

"I'm going to a meeting in Pardendale this afternoon but I'm not sure where the nearest parking is. Do we have a street atlas?"

"There'll be one up in the reference library," replies Maybelle innocently.

"That's no good, I'll need to take it with me."

"What a pity there aren't any lending copies."

Calm down dear

I'm steaming a little less about the continuity plan now I've seen the emails Jim had to deal with. It's apparent that "somebody" sat on the forms for three months and then forwarded them to Jim, telling him: "The deadline for this was four days ago. We need to fill this in as soon as possible. Please fill this in and return it to me by tomorrow."

After a chat with Jim we've settled that the result was unsatisfactory. Then we both start to wonder why we've got a secret business continuity plan. It isn't unknown: after all, we're the library service with the stock selection policy that's so confidential that half of management group aren't allowed to see it. Even so...
It turns out that it's never been sent on to the Business Management Unit in the Town Hall. It should have arrived in January. Jim and I resolve to rewrite the thing into something that people can actually use and then see if we can't slip it under the wire in a couple of weeks' time when T.Aldous is irritating the natives of far Amazonia.

Highly collectable dragons

Overheard:

"Where's T.Aldous going this time?"

"He's on a boat trip up the Amazon."

"I hope a fucking crocodile eats him."

Flinders Petrie

As if we don't have enough impedimenta we receive delivery of a disturbingly-familiar, unlabelled, bubble-wrapped package.

Disturbingly-familiar? The first job I had was in a museum of ancient antiquities (my career has come full circle), so when I see an object that's the height of a sarcophagus, the shape of a sarcophagus, the width of a sarcophagus and the depth of a sarcophagus I can but surmise that it is a sarcophagus.

Nobody has ordered a sarcophagus and knows nothing about the package.

I would have thought the archaeologists would have been coming round to take stuff out not put stuff in.

Mabel bathes in axle grease

What kind of person leaves an open tube of vaginal lubricant in the children's board books?

Who told you to stop doing star jumps?

Jim took a day off sick last October after catching a really bad cold and spending a day shivering and throwing up.

We had a sickness monitoring briefing this morning. It turns out that we're the third worst service for sickness this year after social services and the one-stop shops. Something must be done says T.Aldous. To my dying day I'll never know how nobody said: "why don't you retire then?"

Instead, T.Aldous stares at Jim and pipes up:

"Well one person here had a day off sick last year."

This appears to be the sum total for his strategy for progress.

Spinning blancmange on a nail in the ceiling

Let the welkin ring! The staff newsletter has finally been published and circulated. (This is issue one of the regular monthly newsletter that's been published since December). It's OK-ish up to the point where T.Aldous' responses to the long-abandoned staff suggestion scheme appears in print.

There is spin and there is spin. Even the questions are rewritten to fit T.Aldous' peculiar mindset. My suggestion that we put the stock in the reserve stacks to use in displays and historically-themed stock promotions is turned into: "What's the point of having reserve stock? Let's get rid of it all."

It looks like I'm not alone. A zamizdat version of T.Aldous' responses is now doing the rounds. Starting off with:

Staff ask:
"When are you going to fill the staff vacancies in the branch libraries?"

Management hears:
"Well done you for managing the service so well."

T.Aldous replies:
"At the turn of the century, explorers regarded the North Pole as the last prize in the Northern Hemisphere. The quest for the Pole turned into an international race with teams from Britain, Norway and America vying for the distinction of reaching it first. Robert Peary, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, made his first attempt to reach the Pole in 1893. Two more expeditions followed (1898-1902 and 1905-1906). Both fell short of the mark, but the efforts propelled Peary to the distinction of America's foremost Arctic explorer. "

We all know where this is going. The next time we get inspected, Himself will be asked about staff consultation and he'll say:

"We have a staff suggestion programme but staff don't use it."

Servus interruptus

I'm trying to set up a vote of no confidence motion with regard to our IT section. They have spent thousands on the room housing servers etc, only for the air conditioning to blow on Saturday and take five servers with it, and last night a power cut took out the lot.

I innocently asked what happened to the UPS, "Oh, that must have failed as well".

Marshalling resources

"We need to get the Library Service Strategic Plan onto the web," says Milton. "Jim's going to send you the document."

"It should be easy enough. We just need to find someone with a pdf writer so that we can convert it," I answer.

"I've got one on my PC. I got it installed when I got my PC. I got Visio, Photoshop and a few other things as well while I was at it."

...

I confined myself to mentioning that it's always useful to know what resources are available to the Library Service.

Another of life's mysteries

Something catches my eye as I read some auditors' notes on the CIPFA stats collection:

"...In the event of system failure these data are secured by the implementation of the Business Continuity Plan."

This is news to me. I ask Jim if we do have a Business Continuity Plan.

"Oh yes, we wrote it a while back."

I'm not impressed. I'm even less impressed when I read it. I manage to persuade myself that I really do need to make the effort to get this revised into something that might actually work.

Marching backwards to a brave new tomorrow

A colleague writes:

Much to my delight I find that our council has a Maximising The Potential Of Our People Project Board, charged with creating a culture with a "can do" attitude, which is flexible, nimble, inspirational and focussed on making things happen.

So yah boo, sucks to Helminthdale! We got there first.

And damn me, he's right: we have no such thing. I intend writing a stiff memo to our Performance Team telling them that I'm worried that we may be quartile dipping on our non-deliverable bullshit outputs.

Tomato! Thou art like the mind

Our Corporate IT Newsletter comes a-pinging into our Outtake mailboxes, sandwiched in between the offers of cheap Rolex watches; offers of cheap v!agra and "press releases" from some bunch of rogues determined to have us believe that Helminthdale appeared in the top quartile for customer satisfaction in the last perfomance cycle.

"Investing for a better infrastructure!" proclaims the screaming headline. Actually reading the article (I know, I know) it turns out that the sole strategy for transforming our network architecture is "we will be attaching our Outlook server to a spam filter."

The Michigan Insane AsylumIs up on the top of the hill

Some more of the furniture's arrived for the new Glass Road Library, round the back of St. Barrabas' Primary School, but it can't be delivered. The school's commandeered the library to provide office space for the OFSTED inspectors who are in this week and they won't let us in.

The new library opens at the end of the month.

We've been paying rent on this place for the past two and a half years.

Doesn't bode well for the future.

A noble structure which has many charms

Jim's been working out the floor areas of libraries for the performance reports. Much to my surprise it turns out that public floorspace only accounts for 52% of Catty Library. Surprising because there's nowhere for staff to work at Catty, the workrooms barely having room to swing a cat. We think it through: the 48% staff area has to include the five small rooms off the entrance hall (each the size of a broom closet); perhaps the entrance hall itself (it accounts for a good third of the building) and the attic.

Catty Library: a great façade on a derelict bike shed.

Why, is it possible that 'tis the same!

By one of those coincidences beyond the nerve of creative writers, Daisy tells me that she's spent all morning looking stuff up for one of the planners at Dutch Bend.

"I told him that he could do it on the web but he said that the connection in the planning office is so slow that he can't do anything on the web without it timing out on him."

Some rare bits of brain lie here

We're having a problem with one of the library portals. It worked fine yesterday. It works fine on public PCs in the library. It works fine when someone logs in at home. It is completely inaccessible on library staff PCs. We're used to it timing out on our PCs — everything on the internet times out on the corporate network at one time or another because it's so damned slow — but this is a new wrinkle.

I log the call with the corporate helpdesk. They proxy into my PC and see for themselves. After twenty minutes' worth of trial and error they find that if you search for the server's name and then enter the IP address as the URL then it'll open up a session on the portal. Which stays open until you change pages. This is peculiar on so many levels I'm boggled. But not any more so than when I'm told:

"It's an application problem. You'll have to contact the supplier."

Err...

"How is it an application problem? It's working for the public but not for us. What's changed overnight? I'm not allowed on the server. The supplier's not been allowed on the server since the software was installed."

"Well it can't be a network problem. It must be an application problem."

I do as I'm told and report it to the supplier. My account manager 'phones me up:

"This isn't so much passing the buck as throwing it bodily out of the window."

"Can you tell them that? They won't believe me."

They might throw pennies

Compare and contrast, from the world of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport:

Cost of execrable 2012 logo for the London Olympics: £400,000, cash on the nail

Budget for the national Framework for the Future Library Improvement programme: £4,000,000, to be paid in instalments

One to bear in mind the next time some politician starts banging on about the return of investment of the public library sector.

Skip

Lemuel's off sick (he's been looking peaky for weeks), so it's down to Seth to look after the ship single-handed. This doesn't stop T.Aldous' providing him with more things to do elsewhere. Today it's shifting a pile of crap down to the old Noddy Library site (it's some of the crap that was brought back the other week and it's the old Noddy Library site that should have been cleared out by the end of April). T.Aldous has hired a skip for an hour and Seth's to fill it up with the aid of Kevin the van driver. If they've the sense they were born with they'll make a day of it.

Dust and yesterday's greasepaint

An odd morning for posters...

There's a new one at the railway station saying: "Go back in time... ...Travel with Northern Rail." I thought this was very appropriate as I decamped from my 1985 Sprinter and got onto the Transpennine Express (like the Pony Express but slower and less reliable), built in 1988.

Walking down from Helminthdale Station there's a new one put up by the Regeneration Unit:

Put on your dancing trousers and boogie on down
To the bars, pubs and clubs
In Helminthdale Town Centre

As the local nightlife is made up of The Monkey's; The Duck & Pullet and O'Rafferty's Catholic Ukrainian Club I can't imagine John Travolta strutting his stuff of a Wednesday evening.

Library –2.0.1

Investigations show that the corporate ban on blogging sites only covers those sites with the character string 'blog' somewhere in their URL. The only thing more fun than an irrational ban on online resources is a lazy irrational ban on online resources.

Library –2.0

Picking up a reference about online learning resources for public library staff on a site in the States I make the mistake of trying to check it out at work. Access denied By Order Of The Management. I log a call with the corporate IT helpdesk asking for access to this site.

Sorry, this site's blocked because it's a blogging site.

It pays to talk

T.Aldous is disputing the architects' costs for the move to the new Noddy Library. He insists on an itemised bill.

By far the biggest item on the bill turns out to be "telephone conversations with T.Aldous Huxtable."

You really don't want to read this one

One of the cleaners, a lady in her sixties, has just come back from her holidays in Blackpool.

"My daughter bought me a vibrator for me holidays. Does anyone want it? I've only used it once."

To sunshine and song I but just awaken

A wave of optimism surges round the staff room table. And hits a breakwater.

"When's T.Aldous going on his holidays?"

"End of the month."

"Ooh, I can't wait: three weeks' bliss and getting stuff done."

"He's only going away for two weeks."

"Shit... Ah well, at least it'll be two weeks without his meddling interference."

"Nobody's told you the story about the postcards from China, have they?"

Uh?

Noreen comes back from leave to find a note on her desk:

Half a bottle of milk was thrown away last Thursday because it has gone off.

Perhaps we should hold a wake.