Bleak

For the first time in human memory the fire exit corridor is empty. There is absolutely nothing there: the Acq. Team shifted through all the incoming boxes of new stock (helped by all the incoming boxes of new stock being three boxes of picture books and a business directory); T.Aldous gave Seth permission to get rid of the stack of old (very) bentwood chairs and the bookmarks have been distributed to the four winds.

There is a bleak, majestic beauty to the corridor but we are not used to it and cling to the walls for security as we walk along it.

Morbidity

I was late leaving the sausage factory so left by the stage door which is the fire exit. Which is how I came to have the shock of my life as I bumped into what appeared to be a relict prop from a particularly cheap and nasty 1960s horror movie.

I actually don't know what this thing is, and I'm not sure that I shouldn't be grateful for that. I'll try to describe it. It was about six foot tall and apparently covered in a rather nasty, mottled, flesh-coloured cheap plush velvet. But for a revolting flourish of morbid growths about the crown the whole thing could have been an object of phallocentric worship left out in the rain on the doorstep of a charity shop for twenty years or more. Utterly, utterly revolting.

I pray to God it's being chucked out and not chucked in.

Pet's corner

Staff room's on form today. This is peculiar on so many levels I may have to enter it for the egg and spoon race. Any further comment from me would be entirely superfluous.

"...and her friend's upset because she had to have her snake put down."

"What for?"

"Well, it was one of those boa constrictor type things and it just wasn't eating. She tried feeding it with its usual favourites but it didn't want to know. Couldn't be tempted. It just would'nt eat.

"Well this went on for a month or so and she was getting worried about it. The peculiar thing is that one night she woke up and found that the snake had got out of its tank and was just sitting at the bottom of the bed staring at her. She got up and put it back in the tank and thought no more about it.

"Well, a couple of weeks later she decided that the snake's not eating must mean it was ill or something so she took it to the vet. And he said: 'I'm sorry but I'll have to put your snake to sleep. It's deliberately starving itself so that it can eat you.'"

"Good grief, I've never heard of that before!"

"That's what he said, apparently. What gets me is how he could be so sure of it. Even if he were an expert on snake psychology he must have some evidence to go off. Perhaps there's loads of cases of pet snakes eating women in Pardendale but it just doesn't get in the papers."

As they say on Crimewatch: "don't go having nightmares."

Serendipity

We were talking about the unfrocked Vicar of Stiffkey who died when he was mauled by a lion (he'd been unfrocked for being "the prostitues' parson") but I was damned if I could remember his name.

Stap me, I picked up a copy of 'The Chap' from the newsagents and there's an article about the chappie, with pictures.

Life is good.

As described on The Third Programme

Norbert Spudulike rings from Dutch Bend.

"Here's a funny thing: I've just issued a CD called 'An Evening With The Brighouse & Rastrick Band' to a customer but it shows on the system as 'Swan Lake.' I've just looked up the barcode on the system and it's 'Swan Lake' on the catalogue. The CD cover's got a brass band on it. There's not a brass band in 'Swan Lake' is there?

One word, repeated, as per Alice In Wonderland, springs to mind..."

I check it up. On our system, if the item barcode's not recognised it asks you if you want to create a temporary catalogue record with just enough information in it to let it get issued to the borrower who presented it.

So somebody scanned the barcode on a copy of "An Evening With The Brighouse & Rastrick Band," was prompted to create a temp. cat. of the item in their hand and they gave it the title "Swan Lake."

The word Mescalin springs to mind...

The auditorium is completely full of Orson Wells

T.Aldous has told Seth that the boxes of booksale books in the meeting room need to be redistributed to no more than three boxes' height for health and safety reasons.

"Is that three little boxes or three big boxes?"

"It doesn't matter. Three boxes high."

"What about all those boxes that are stacked six-high in the fire exit?"

"Just get on with the meeting room."

Definition

Sometimes the obvious needs pointing out.

"You need to get rid of all those web links on the Library Catalogue. It isn't a search engine you know."

"Actually, that's precisely what a library catalogue is."

We band of brothers

Things are fraught at Roadkill. We had expected the boys to deliver and install the new PCs yesterday, as per a sequence of emails Milton's received from the IT Section's project management team.

"Thank God you've arrived!" said Milton, "I was expecting you yesterday."

"The project was only started yesterday. First we knew about it was just after lunchtime. Luckily we had a few PCs in the store room that we could bring over. We've not got enough to do the public desks and the counter, though. We should be able to get some more tomorrow."

Click

Part of today's incoming is a printed web page. Yet another of those local leisure & listing sites, this page being a listing for Tench Road Library.

Attached post-it note:

Dorrie
The address on this page is wrong. Can something be done about it?
Evelyn.

Attached note:

Kevin,
Can something be done?
Dorrie

I went to the web site at the URL supplied.

I clicked on the button marked "Details wrong? Let us know."

I let them know.

Saga holiday

Roadkill Library's closed while we shift it over to its new home and we got to wondering about opening ceremonies. All the famous celebrities [that's not a redundancy in today's world -- I've never heard of any of the celebrities on any of the celebrity reality shows on telly this week] that come from round here couldn't wait to bugger off out of it first chance they got.

"What did we do at Glass Road?"

"We got the daughter of the first borrower at the old Glass Road Library. She's about 108 now. She lives in Garstang so we had to fly her in to Burnley International Airport then stand for a taxi over here."

"That'll be why I didn't see anything about it in the paper."

Frankly my dear....

Raccoonville's been closed for a couple of weeks while a new bog's installed and is likely to be closed for another couple. Today I get a call from Wilma, the branch manager there.

"What's happening with Raccoonville's reservations?"

In her shoes I'd have asked before I shut up shop. I don't have the first idea myself and have stopped caring about it

Woefully misguided

Freddie Jumbuck, the chap what runs the council switchboard, is a lovely old bloke, as camp as Christmas and "known by the appropriate authorities" for his recreational use of public conveniences. I only mention this because it was he who took this call this morning:

"Are you the council's Morality Officer?"

"No dearie. We haven't got a Morality Officer. Could I help at all?"

"I want to complain about that poster on Cattermole Street with the woman almost falling out of the front of her frock."

"Ooh, yes. I know what you mean, dear. I'll pass on your complaint to the proper authorities."

My constellated hate bears the black sun of melancholy

I've found out why a search on the council's web site for "Senebene Library" gives me a Best Value report on schools on the Senebene Estate; planning applications in Senebene; Traffic Act Orders in Library Crescent and, finally, the page about Senebene Library. Despite my embedding all the appropriate keywords into the page.

The search engine just looks at the first thousand words, counts the frequency of each and reports accordingly.

That's right, in this day and age we're using a context-free word counter as a search engine.

I query this with the Web Team.

"You need to think about the information you put on your web pages."

I see.

Senebene Library is a library on the Senebene Estate.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 20.00 on Monday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 17.30 on Tuesday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 13.00 on Wednesday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 18.00 on Thursday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 17.30 on Friday.
Senebene Library is open from 09.30 to 16.00 on Saturday.
See Janet.
See John.
See Janet see John.
See John see Janet.
Janet sees John.
John sees Janet.
See Barry the dog.
See Janet see Barry the dog.
See John see Barry the dog.
'Woof!' says Barry the dog.

I think I'm having one of me turns.

Hold their manhoods

A conversation upon the breaking up of a meeting with colleagues from another library authority:

"Ooh that woman does irritate me!"

"I know what you mean. If only she wasn't so bloody pious."

"Don't let that kid you: it's not so long ago that she and Janey Spindly used to go down to Obchester Docks to pick up Russian sailors."

It ain't gonna rain no mo'

Pansy rings up about a problem with the People's Network and follows through with:

"You buggers all went home early last night, didn't you?"

"Did we?"

"Yes, you all went home when Helminthdale Library shut at 5 o'clock." [Monday's our late night, when all our libraries are open until 8pm]

"Did we? I wasn't here then. Did anybody tell the other libraries?"

"No. The only reason I knew was because Mary rang me about something else and said in passing that the library was closed and they'd all gone home."

I can't begin to comment on this.

And gentlemen in England now-a-bedShall think themselves accurs'd they were not here

Policy Team have decamped, unannounced, to an off-site meeting. Apparently, they're meeting the healthy reading co-ordinator over in Crippen Terrace Social Centre. We'd been rather hoping they were being sectioned en bloc. Ah well.

Mary was to have been their guide but she was nowhere to be seen at the appointed time. She'd earlier rung the Acq. Team to ask when the recycling bins had to be put out and then announced that she was going for a shower (I assume this wasn't a works call).

PT, having milled about the foyer like more-than-usually-disorganised sheep for quarter of an hour, decided to make their way over despite the fact that none of them were sure of the way so that they'd only be slightly-ish late.

A couple of minutes later Mary turned up.

"You've only just missed them, they've started making their way over."

"I thought they might."

Rather than following on, catching them up and guiding them to their destination she went into her office.

Made a couple of 'phone calls.

Came out to try and tell Noreen that this week's licorice wasn't as nice as last week's and we should keep the wrapping paper for it. (Presumably so that we can mount it on a spike to warn off potential offenders.)

Fussed about the photocopier.

And finally put her coat back on to go to the meeting.

The gene pool needs a little chlorine

I went home straight from a meeting rather than returning to the sausage factory so I decided to get the bus home. I got the bus that goes down Cattermole Street and round the houses a bit (evenings aren't light enough for the Dutch Bend bus). It's a longer ride but there's not the same lunatic element to the patronage.

Usually.

"How much is it for the dog? I don't usually bring the dog on a bus but I've got to take it to the vet's. It's got chronic diarrhoea."

But I never drink the waterIn case it gives me the shits

The Town Hall's been evacuated because it's raining.

OK, it's pissing down but why is the council going home? Our first thoughts were worries about flood. It would have to be an apocalyptic downpour that would transform the drunkard's trickle that is the River Helminth into a raging torrent that would threaten all ten stories of the Town Hall. So we got scurrying round to see if there was any gopherwood on the premises.

It turned out not to be necessary. They were all sent home because of the traffic problems caused by localised flooding of Bencup Old Road and the Scatter Bypass.

Remarkable.

Two roads taken out by rain for an afternoon: everybody in the Town Hall go home.

Whole town in gridlock for nine months because all eight hub points connecting the main roads with the inner ring road are being dug up to convert the roundabouts into traffic light-controlled junctions and the traffic light-controlled junctions into roundabouts: business as usual.

We few, we happy few

Alas! One of our frequent friendly correspondents, The Topiary Cow, has fallen victim to network guys infected with the English local authority attitude to the Internet in general and Blogger in particular.

They can pick us off one by one but we can still make little fists in our pockets.

Harness the power of the electric corset

I'm having a bit of a fulminate about the council's lack of progress, or corporate blocking-of-progress, with our web services. My butty bar companion smiles grimly.

"Executive Directorate Group cut the funding because: 'the internet isn't business-critical'."

Half leather binding and bold lower case

Interesting event to come at Grimley Library. This library's not received any new books for a while, but we have a thousand stacked up and we will be inviting customers to come along and unpack them for us. What fun.

(No matter that they have already been unpacked, received and invoiced, updated on the catalogue, discharged and made available on the system and then repacked ready to be unpacked!)

Our Health and Safety bloke is having fits over this, even to the extent he wants us to do a risk assessment to the reputation of the Council! Obviously even he realises this is a little odd.

For days and days among the trees

About this time last year the Books For Sharing Collection was bought for Helminthdale Library and put through the receipt and invoicing process by the Acquisitions Team as an urgent. For the next ten months it sat around in boxes, generally getting in the way of the Acq. Team. Imagine their relief when it finally got taken upstairs to the lending library...

For the past two months this collection has sat in the lending library's lift lobby, generally hidden by an assortment of silk pot plants that turned up for no apparent reason before Christmas.

Job well done, I say.

Controversy

The new MLA guidance on controversial materials in the public library stock has been issued and circulated.

We don't survive past point two: "Every library authority should have a stock selection policy."

A short, sharp visit from the Slap Fairy

Youth Information Services have just announced they have renamed themselves "Encounter!" I never really knew what they did before, but at least the title gave me a clue, now it is just a cunning plot to make sure no one has a clue what they do, so they can pretty much please themselves.

As they always have done.

They keep pushing work our way "as we have no staff to do it" yet have this week banished one of their number to work on a rota basis around the branch libraries as they can't stand her in the office. I must admit she is not my favourite person, but then there is a rogue's gallery of them in there. Thing is no one told the branches they were getting this individual a day a week, so they are now all upset.

Not that it would have made any difference had they been told beforehand anyway.

If any of you care to stand on your heads to listen it would be appreciated

Talk of reorganisations prompts correspondence from Monty O'Burr, a colleague in another place.

You will be pleased to learn our restructure, too, is still incomplete. It is now celebrating its four and a halfth birthday. You can imagine what this is doing to staff morale, particularly as some of the jobs got severely ring fenced and those already doing them find themselves outside the fence.

I am still trying to work out why, but lots of things are outside my comprehension.

Human resource management at play.

The world is such a cheerful place when viewed from upside down

There are times lately when Milton's driven me barmy, making me wonder why he's doing stuff that I would have thought were within my remit and not always letting me know about what he's up to in the process. Before I get too pissed off with him I need to take into account our working realities in this land of lies and treacle: like everyone else, there are times when he needs to do something because it can be done not because it can be done by him.

I'm reminded of this today because we've been doing yet another Impact Assessment exercise. Lately we've been required to do Risk Impact Assessments, Equality Impact Assessments, Target Impact Assessments, Cultural Impact Assessments, Reading Goals Impact Assessments, oh, the list rolls on. If somebody were to tell Jim that there's a Two Weeks In Scarborough With A Drag Queen Called Bubbles Impact Assessment I dare say he wouldn't bat an eyelid (I'd like to think that I might).

This time it's a Customer Service Impact Assessment (the grammarians amongst you will have noticed the lack of 'doing' words). Working through the forms with Milton it's pretty apparent why he's getting frustrated and looking for Things That Can Be Done. Although he's held responsible for our reference library services he doesn't actually have any authority over stock selection and expenditure, staffing, local studies or any of reference libraries themselves.

In the circumstances...

Everything's coming down this weekendWhat time do you finish?

Day off today so I repair into town to avail myself of the January sales in Hannigan's Truss Boutique (abdomenal protectors 25% off). Lo! Bobbing up from behind the gentlemen's supports is Ken Barmy. He's taking a lunchbreak away from their routine madnesses.

"We're having a reorganisation!" he crows.

"Have you finished the last one yet?"

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

It must be like the bloody Cultural Revolution over in Pardendale.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a cauliflower

The current fad for renaming things has turned its attention to the Target Improvement Meetings, which have had more names than a serial fraudster. They're now called "Performance Monitoring Meetings."

"We've given up on improvement then, have we?" I ask Milton.

"Well, at least it's a more accurate description of what we do."

They looked up my postcode

On our management system if one of Catty Library's books, for example, gets returned at Dutch Bend it's given the label "returning to home location." Once it arrives back at Catty is should be discharged and it'll become "In" like the rest of the stuff on the shelves.

I've emailed all staff reminding them that all incoming stock needs to be discharged so that any rovers are returned and any reservations triggered. To emphasise the former I pointed out that there's currently over 3,200 items "returning to home location" and they can't all be on the library van ('cos that's still full of bog rolls and mop heads).

"What are you doing about all those books?" I'm asked by T.Aldous.

"Nothing."

"What happens to stock that's 'returning to home location'?"

"With any luck they arrive home. Out of my control. Not my problem."

Cry havok!

In an unaccustomed fit of planning we're talking about perhaps doing some events and activities themed on the First World War and the Armistice.

"I know a lady who can do a corn dolly demonstration," says Mary.

It's that stain you see on the underside of a labrador

The newspapers and telly are full of the brouhaha surrounding Peter Hain's failed bid to be deputy leader of the Labour Party. This puts our local idiocies into perspective: the amount of money "forgotten" about is the annual budget of any of our branch libraries -- staff, buildings maintenance and materiel -- and if any of us acted similarly we'd have had the bollocking of our lives.

The rules are different in the Westminster Village of course. Public library authorities across the country implement the People's Network (ouch! ouch! ouch!) and management systems migrations within time and within budget, something central government can only dream about. But their projects are always "successes" and we're always "inefficient and ineffectual."

Our friends across the water wouldn't know this but I would be breaking the law were I to comment further. As a local government officer I'm not allowed to publicly voice opinions that may be construed as political. This is one of Margaret Thatcher's laws which the Labour Party anathemised at the time but found convenient to hang onto once in power themselves. So I couldn't wonder whether somebody who can't manage his own private office should be running a complex department like Work & Pensions. It would be like making T.Aldous responsible for the Benefits Office.

The return of the Bog Roll Fairy

Seth takes a 'phone call from Pansy at Gypsy Lane, wanting lavatory requisites.

"I'll put some bog rolls on the van for you," he says.

"No, we can't have bog rolls."

"Why not?"

"We've got one of those new disabled toilets and we're not allowed to use bog rolls with it. We've got to use antiseptic wipes."

If we can find enough nails to pegs the sheets onto we may well find a use for the paper we can't recycle after all.

80 pages brimful of knowledge

Dances With Books points us to a nice example of a really useful staff notice. This reminds me of our last inspection.

The inspectors made a lot of noise about the proliferation of "Now then... no... no.. naughty... mustn't..." notices we have on display in our libraries. Their indignation was tempered a little once they came backstage and found that not only were there many more notices to staff than to the public, but they were also a good many degrees more patronising.

Pap

Helminthdale, like all English councils, has a government-imposed duty to increase the amount of recycling of waste.

Helminthdale Council charges itself commercial rates for bulk disposal of paper for recycling.

Helminthdale Council cannot afford to pay itself commercial rates for bulk disposal of paper for recycling.

Some paper waste is picked up at the Town Hall for recycling, at standard waste disposal rates. This service is not available to the Library Service, Planning, Social Services or Environmental Health, all of whom have offices not ten yards away from the Town Hall. The barrier being the transport costs.

Helminthdale is likely to fail its recycling targets and will probably be fined for its failure.

The fine for failing to meet recycling targets is ten times the commercial cost of its collection.

Discuss. Do not write on both sides of the paper at the same time.

At gunpoint in the rain

When the management structure for Sheep City was being set up the new directorate decided that they didn't want the Library Service including in the empire they were slicing off the old Leisure & Culture directorate "because it is a failing business" (this coming just after the Audit Commission said that they could "see no prospect of improvement in the Library Service while departmental resources are monopolised by non-statutory services").

I notice a recent quotation from the head honcho saying: "library services naturally fall into the cultural remit of our organisation."

This can only mean that the dodgems and gee-gaws have been losing money hand over fist again.

Stagnation of the liver

We'll have to submit a project request for a new spam filter. The spam we need to filter out comes from our IT section, recently outsourced to the venture capital enterprise Humgrummit, Vector & Bunion. Today's marvel of the age is a half-hourly update, complete with half-meg logo, telling IT section staff that their email isn't working.

As their email isn't working they're the only people on the network spared the half-hourly updates telling them that this is the case.

The Bog Roll Fairy cometh

Bronwyn's back from the latest expedition to Epiphany Library. The library's closed while they put a new floor and walls in and T.Aldous wants it clearing out by the end of the week so that the building contractors can start promptly on Monday.

We had all thought that the place had been cleared out but this morning your man declared that Seth and Bronwyn had to nip over to retrieve all the kitchen and cleaning gear, with especial emphasis on spoons and Windolene. And so it was that they've spent the past couple of hours loading the library van with cardboard boxes full of old mop heads, Vim and paper towels. Then they had to jam in the vacuum cleaners, brushes and big-sticks-with-a-hook-on-the-end-for-opening-high-windows-with.

"Coming back from Epiphany we must have looked like the Clampetts," said Bronwyn.

A line has been drawn, though:

"I know he told us to bring back all the toilet rolls but I've left a couple behind," says Bronwyn. "The builders need to be able to go to the toilet. In fact, I feel a bit mean about this; if I'm still feeling guilty about it in a few weeks' time I'll pop in and leave a couple more. I'll be like the Toilet Roll Fairy."

I am Spartacus!

A colleague in another place has told me that he's had unofficial word from his bosses that he might want to stop writing this blog.

Personally, I think the fact that any library service managers have such low self-esteem that they would willingly identify themselves with the clowns populating Helminthdale is sad beyond belief.

But it also means that my colleague must have a rich seam of stories that he'd like to share with us (this is a hint, nudge, nudge).

I was going to say that there is just one Helminthdale, but given a lot of the feedback I get from people working in the public libraries of three continents this is evidently untrue. I can only conclude that Helminthdale is a universal state of grace, a sort of Platonic ideal of a particular kind of public library service.

It follows, then, that I must be something similar. In that spirit I've made the cut-out-and-keep badge on the left. I thought we could all wear it on a given day as a mark of solidarity of experience.

Ah, but which day? I had thought St. Lone Ranger's Day (26th May), which this year falls on a Monday when we'd all need cheering up. But that seems a long way away. Then the blindingly obvious struck me. If we're to be true to our organisations and our managers there can only be one solution.

We would all have worn the badge on the 25th of December but we were on leave that day.

On the breeze that follows sunset I could hear that sad refrain

Milton and I are discussing the communication arrangements we're going to have to put in place for when the call centre takes over as the first line of telephone communication with the public.

"I know you keep saying that we're not very good at communicating within the service..."

"No, I said that communication within the service is crap. Just take the New Year's Afternoon Spectacular upstairs. How many of us down here knew about it?"

"What New Year's Afternoon Spectacular?"

Q.E.D.

Gormless farting skittles

Overheard:

"We really should do something about filling the reader development post, what with the National Year of Reading coming up."

"Could we get one of the work-experience graduates to do the project work?"

Gah... How about filling the bloody post, you only advertised it a couple of months ago.

The bombazene she wears is bulletproof

"Was that Henry Irving in your office yesterday?" asks Bronwyn.

"Yes," I reply.

"He's had another makeover, hasn't he?"

"It's that time of year again."

"I like doing storytime in local studies. You're always guaranteed a good audience because they make a point of really selling the event beforehand."

"Yes, they're very unprofessional like that."

Pillar to post

Having a look at the proposed plans for the refurbished Catty Library. The only new feature appears to be a new disabled toilet, replacing the staff room (which moves up into the attic, with the pigeons). Why no change in layout? The council's Heritage Planning Officer has forbidden any changes.

Service delivery in Helminthdale Council is always compromised by unnacountable Town Hall noddies.

If it were down to me we'd clear out completely, extend Carbootsale Library, which is ten minutes' walk down the Penkage Road, and have that as the main library for the Catty area. The Heritage Planning Officer could then have the old Catty Library as a late Xmas present.

Sitting the baby on the boiled ham

Frog's had a few children's librarians in for a meeting. A couple of them were reminiscing about the good old days:

"Remember how we weren't allowed to buy 'Topsy & Tim' when they first started being published? We couldn't buy them because they didn't have any noses in the pictures..."

"And we couldn't buy any Enid Blyton. She'd written so many books they couldn't possibly be any good..."

"I remember going to a children's library meeting once with Piggy Throgmorton. When he came out he said to me:

"All children's librarians should be made to go on the game. If it turned out that they were any good they'd be making a better living out of it. If not, then at least they'll have seen something of life."

Very unreconstituted was Piggy. Mind you, my sympathy was with him that day."

An olde English folk song

Henry Irving floats in from Sheep City. He's had another makeover and looks like the repertory edition of Raskalnikov.

"We're having a new feature display in local studies. We're going back to the seventies."

"Back?!?"

He's currently having to act as go-between with the Museum Service, something he's enjoying immensely (he has my sympathy, I got that t-shirt about a decade ago).

"I know you think that librarians are precious about being 'professional' but they're not a patch on some of the people in the Museum Service who keep telling me that they're professionals."

"Oh yes... Are they looking down on you because you've not got a Museums Diploma?"

"If I suggest anything they say I don't know anything about it and then about two months later, when it's too late to make a difference they'll pipe up with the same idea. And they're so bloody cavalier!"

"How's it going with the new software?"

"It's being installed this week and we're training on it the week after next. I want to copy the local studies digital files over to the new database but I'm not sure... Tell me, am I being paranoid? Ideally I'd want to put all the high-definition pictures on there but I'm scared of what the museum people would do with them."

"Don't they understand the concept of digital rights management?"

"What do you think?"

"I'd just let them have access to the thumbnails."

Thinking on, I think I'd degrade the thumbnails before letting the museum folk near them.

Grandson of secret gig

Frog and Salome have decided that they're going to have a children's treasure hunt upstairs in lending but they're not going to tell anybody about it. To increase the pleasure they've scheduled it for when Doreen's covering the enquiry desk.

A recently detonated circus

Raccoonville and Roadkill libraries are closing for a while at the end of the month. Raccoonville's the latest library to be getting a new toilet (they've had to shift half a ton of Dutch Bend Bystanders in preparation). Roadkill's moving to new premises next door.

I circulate an email telling staff about the closures and the arrangements we're making concerning due dates, reservations, etc. I get an emailed reply from Jim:

I didn't know about this. Then again, I am just a member of Policy Team. (-:

Secret Santa

I was telling Daisy Duck about Frog's encounter with yesterday's secret gig upstairs.

"Is that what they wanted Amelia for? I had to jiggle the rota about so that she could go over to Helminthdale to sing carols."

"You jest! Christmas carols at a new year's event?"

"Oh, this was last week."

Standing there all cold and shiverywaiting sadly for the next delivery

The Acquisitions Team are piled high with boxes of incoming stock and two hundred-line long invoices (we approach yet another financial year end with last-minute panic-buying of lending stock to meet the targets). So imagine their joy at the latest one from Dagmar at Doggedly:

"I need you to process those books quickly because my reading group needs them."

"Well, they won't be done today, we're snowed under."

"But I need them now. They're doing this title in their next meeting."

"When's that?"

"The twenty-fifth."

"I might do them early next week."

"But I like to have them at least a month before the meeting."

"Well it's not happening this week."

Mobile nightmare units

"While you were out Milton came down and took away a printer from your store room," Noreen tells me.

"Thanks. I might find out what he's doing with it some time."

"Why don't you ask him?"

"I can't be arsed any more. Apparently it's none of my business."

Son of secret gig

Frog's covering on the enquiry desk upstairs in lending. Salome comes back in laden with mince pies and orange juice "for the New Year's Afternoon Spectacular."

"What New Year's Afternoon Spectacular?"

"Oh God, not another one nobody's told anybody about! I assumed the publicity went out last week when I was off."

"Afraid not."

The afternoon was saved by Norma going out into the shopping centre and virtually dragging customers into the library.

Frog mentioned the lack of publicity to Doreen, who's the responsible adult for the library.

"Well, there were notices up in the lending library all week."

From the mouths of babes

A little child wanders out of the children's library and looks around for her mother, who's getting some books for herself. Rather than panicking or running round the library in alarm she calmly approaches one of the library assistants.

"Where do you keep the mums?"

Optimistically-titled

A happy new year to all our readers.

It's to be hoped that 2008 will be a better year in Helminthdale but all the available evidence suggests that's a forlorn hope.

I hope you fare better.

The sighs of the saint and the cries of the fairy

Somebody has noticed that we're playing a ringer in the staff room crib. Alas, the "real" Little Baby Jesus has been mislaid -- there are so many boxes lying around the place that the poor little mite could be anywhere so the Millennium Bug is acting substitute. Suitably swathed in swaddling cloths he does a fair job of it.

"Isn't it a bit impious having the Millennium Bug in the manger?"

Mary, Joseph and the three kings are clothes pegs. It's the thought that counts.

Time gentlemen please

I'm surprised to me Mabel Shufflewick here this morning.

"Shouldn't you be back home at Sheep City?" I ask.

"It's closed this week. And last."

"Is it? I didn't know."

"Neither did I until I read the paper a couple of weeks ago."

"Ah..."

"I was told to take it as leave but all my annual leave's booked up so I'm working over here while they're closed up."

"It's not just us then."

"Oh no. Mind you, I still won't be able to do a full day today because we're being locked out at four."

"Are we?"

Evidently so.

Roll on the Ice Age again

'Phone call from IT Support:

"You know that faulty monitor you reported at Umpty Library?"

"Oh yes..."

"Did they tell you about the fridge magnets on it?"

I used to come up here at dinnertime

I'm going to have to switch my hearing aid off when I'm in the staff room, which is difficult as I don't have one. Even so...

"That looks nice, what is it?"

"Tongue."

"Yeugh! I don't know how you can eat that."

"Why, what's wrong with it?"

"Well, just think where it's been. It's been rolling about in a cow's mouth. Yeugh."

"What are you having, then?"

"Eggs."

The Prince of Acquitania in the forgotten tower

Another News Year's Honours List another disappointed staff room. Not so much as an O.B.E. between the lot of us. If the Queen's reading this — I know she's a fan — this is definitely a hint: let's have a gong coming our way in the Birthdays, please.

Over the past few years there's been a lot of guff about "democratising" the honours lists. This turns out to mean a couple of honours going to a lollipop lady and/or a dustbinman so that the Establishment can preen themselves for being meritocratic and journalists can cobble together a bit of patronising drivel to take the gloss off the medals a bit. You won't see many front-line library staff in the Honours List. Scarcely suprising given that library mangers routinely discount their achievements. If local bosses won't recognise staff's contribution to the community it's hardly likely that the Queen's going to become aware of them.

Having said that, none of us would sniff at an O.B.E. if there's a spare one lying round. (hint, hint)

Glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults

Hanging about in Hannigan's Truss Boutique while waiting for my Tenor's Friend to be re-tuned I bump into Ken Barmy.

"Season's greetings and joy to the world," he says. "Smile, you cynical old fossil, it's Christmas!"

(Somebody got a case of hypocrisy in his stocking this year.)

We got talking and I remembered to ask him about something I noticed the other week.

"How come your business plan is published on Blogger?"

"Same reason our library news and the reader interactive stuff is."

"Which is...?"

"You're not the only one having problems with his corporate webmasters. We're not to have any pages longer than one screen and if it's not in the National Local Government Navigation list you can't have it on the web site. And I'm having to copy your idea of hosting pictures on Flickr. I'm having to do that so that we've got pictures in our kids' catalogue."

"Sounds horribly familiar... How many news items are you allowed at a time?"

"Just two."

"My God, are they using the same handbook?"

"The lead officer on our corporate development strategy is talking about setting up a Facebook account to host the pages explaining the strategy to the public. And you know the best what?"

"Go on..."

"The web team have volunteered me to do the corporate customer feedback pages."

Local government has a definite Alice In Wonderland feel about it these days.

I've got crates of his 78s

Well, the festive cheer didn't last long...

We'd rather hoped that Santa might have taken away some of the boxes but no luck. Not for the first time I'm wondering why on earth we're buying new stock for two libraries that won't be reopening before Easter. It comes in, it goes into the box ready to be sent into long-promised storage. Most of our 2008 Richard & Judies have gone into storage, together with a pile of CDs and the new collection of e-books we're supposed experimenting with (this last case may be something in the way of a scientific control sample).

I made the mistake of asking why we're doing this. Sigh...

A rose by any other name

Management Group are having a rebranding. Nothing too drastic, just that from the New Year they'll be known as Policy Team. As far as we can tell this just means that instead of them being a group of people refusing to make management decisions they'll be a team of people refusing to make policy.

Though we think "team" may be pushing it a bit.

Glitz

A bit of a surprise when I popped into the caretaker's office. Seth and Kevin have been shit-shifting so much that it's been a Christmas-free zone. In fact, they've been doing it so long that it's been pretty much an autumn-free zone, too. Now, all of a sudden, like the transformation scene in a pantomime, the room is filled with tinsel and glitter.

Literally.

It looks like Shirley Bassey's handbag but the lads are happy enough.

As much fun as a bloodhound's funeral

Frog's in reflective mood:

"It's been a fucking horrible year. Still, there is one thing..."

"What's that?"

"We're not having a pie supper this year so we're spared the usual nonsense."

A fistful of fun

I bump into Bronwyn, who is armed with a thick wodge of paperwork.

"See this?"

she asks, flourishing, amongst other things, a memo I wrote to Management Group last spring saying: "This is scheduled to happen in the autumn. We really should talk about what we need to do to make sure we're not shafted in the process."

"I've just been given this lot as the background notes for a meeting I'm going to at lunchtime. I've no idea what's been going on and I've no idea what I'm supposed to be doing about it."

"My God, they've made you a library manager without giving you the pay rise!"

Just for the record: I never did get any response from Management Group about that memo.

Playing for no stakes

Great God, this is an awful place!

An afternoon's worth of reminders of why we are where we are, with an object demonstration of the Public Library Manager Negotiation Model. In brief, the Model works like this:

1. Months, or even years, before the event you find out that Something Is Going To Happen. "Plenty of time for that," you say.
2. Do nothing.
3. If underlings ask, say that nothing is happening.
4. If underlings suggest that perhaps "we should decide what we're going to do about this," don't deign to even reply.
5. Your first meeting with your adversary is arranged. Do nothing.
6. Go to the negotiating table armed with a blank piece of paper. It is important that you have no idea of your desired outcomes of the negotiation.
7. Be black aggrieved that your adversary has prepared a negotiating position.
8. Be sore affronted that their negotiating position proposes that any advantages go to them.
9. On leaving the meeting complain that it's all been stitched up and that there's nothing you can do about it.
10. Repeat ad absurdum.

I'd insisted on a pre-meeting meeting (I know, but I'm covering my back). Luckily these days the lead officer on this one is Milton so I only had to be a little insistent (for some people I have to be downright offensive before they'll budge). Even so it was somewhat dispiriting:

"Does the Library Service have a counter-proposal for this?"

"There's no point: they've decided what they want and that's what's going to happen."

Till the end of time

Coming back in after a couple of days off with my turn at the office virus I find things haven't changed a bit (I was wishing for the best during a delirious phase)...

T.Aldous on The Nation's Biggest Whiteboard:

"We must do something with this."

...answers on a postcard.

Up the poll

The League of Nations has decided: in answer to the question "In the scheme of things, what is your chief's highest service priority?" the results were:

1. Keeping staff in their place (45%)
2. Hobnobbing with The Profession (30%)
3. The book sale (15%)
4. The colour of the carpet (10%)
5. A nice cup of tea (0%)

This is an entirely unscientific sample but the subject of library managers demands a certain lack of intellectual rigour anyway, so we'll accept the results nem. con.

It's really unnerving to find that so many people from round the globe find parallels between Helminthdale and their own working environments. Ah dear... the awfulness of the public library environment when public library managers have their head.

Evil from beyond the veil

Three-quarters of the network traffic locally is either IT testing the network to try and work out why all the connections are dropping; IT testing the mail servers to try and work out why everybody's Outlook keeps crashing; or emails from IT telling us there's something wrong with the network and Outlook keeps crashing.

Just for a change we've all just received the IT Section's e-newsletter. It tells us that the new upgrades to the network make it work more intelligently. It is obviously a malign intelligence intent on doing us grave harm. There'll be some smart traffic on the buy-and-sell pages of the intranet as people upgrade their crucifixes and Joan-the-wads.

Storage

Our friends in IT have decreed that we shall no longer have access to the hard drives of our PCs.

Amongst other things this means that if I want everyone at a library to have a particular shortcut on their desktop, instead of my creating the shortcut and dropping it into the desktop folder for "All users" I now have to submit a request for IT to do the job. What was a two minute job can now take weeks.

Better still, we have now all received emails from IT complaining about the number of files that are being held on the servers that host the networked folders. "In the event of a disaster it would take three days to restore all the data that had been backed up," they bleat. I've mentioned before that Helminthdale Council isn't big on cause and effect.

I'm old and set enough in my ways to think that networked drives are for zipped backups and for shared folders and hard disks are for day-to-day working gubbins. From a corporate risk management point of view I can't help thinking that the possibility of two thousand PCs having their hard disks crash spontaneously within three days of each other is vanishingly remote.

Oopsie...

The current list-chatter about CILIP adds a certain poignancy to this one. Overheard at the staff room table, Nancy asked Frog:

"Is there still a Library Association these days?"

Every little movementhas a meaning all its own

Milton pops in, says "how do," then goes into the store room where he spends ten minutes rummaging round and moving equipment round on the racking. He then leaves, nodding as he goes.

I have no idea what he was doing or why.

I'm reminded of the running shoplifting gag in Laurel and Hardy's "Tit For Tat."

Milton's a very nice bloke and a very interesting colleague but as a manager he can be bloody hard work at times.

Too marvelous for words

Corporate Customer Care Focus Group Meeting. Surprising unanimity about the council's commitment to customer care, typified by the comment

"We're trying our best to provide services to the public but we never know when we're going to hit a brick wall and find out that we're not allowed to do something for no apparent reason. I feel like I'm lost in a maze."

I agree entirely but I'm surprised to hear that coming from somewhere else in the organisation.

Sentimental journey

The bus journey between Helminthdale and Dutch Bend is like a cold shower to one's democratic principles. Overheard conversation between two people who have the vote come the next election:

"Do you like frottage?"

"I'm not struck on cheese."

The cat's got the measles

Back from a compulsory corporate audit workshop on sickness monitoring, imposed because the Library Service is now the sick man of Helminthdale.

Front-line services like social services, one-stop-shops and libraries tend to have worse records than do corporate support services because they're subject to whatever human pathogens the customers bring along with them, which then get shared around the building.

Our toxic management regime and long-standing policy of leaving vacancies to mature a few years before filling them doesn't help any as far as stress-related illness is concerned.

It turns out that another factor is our disproportionately high number of part-time and job-share workers. If somebody who works two days (15 hours) a week is off sick for both days the council takes that as being a full week (37½ hours) lost. Better still, if two people jobshare 37½ hours between them and both are off sick at the same time it is taken that we have lost 75 hours' work.

Hidey holes

It's not just us...

Lupin's popped in to do some sorting out of a few PCs that aren't playing nice on the network. Once he'd finished we got chatting, which eventually turned into his giving me a travelogue of his time in the forces and we got to chatting about European languages (I can just about speak English and I can read three others with considerable difficulty; Lupin can manage to speak three and is learning the Gaelic for to better read whisky labels). After a while he said to me:

"I'm here because I like talking to you, but I'm also here because I'm hiding."

"Don't worry, I know the symptoms. We all have to do it sometimes."

"If I wasn't here I'd be taking a pile of boxes down to the tip. That's what we're doing this week. We're not allowed to leave the boxes and packing behind when we install new hardware and it's just occured to our director that half the floor's piled up in cardboard."

I bet if they took all the cardboard boxes out of Helminthdale the place would turn out to be a hamlet made up of three houses and a telephone box.

Shelves

Apparently Tommy, the caretaker at Catty Library, had a difficult week getting the place cleared out for the building works. Every day he asked Julia if he should get on with taking down the shelving she told him no. Finally, on the Thursday he said: "I'll get on with the shelves now."

"No, don't do that."

"They'll need taking down before tomorrow."

"Leave them be. The company that's going to be installing the new shelves will take them down."

"If the shelves are still up how will the builders replace the floor?"

"Oh yes..."

The world of Draylon

I'm puzzled. I've just popped into Carbootsale to install a printer and I'm confronted by a sofa which I'm sure I last saw in the lift lobby at Helminthdale. Verity assures me that this has been here all the past couple of weeks.

My God, they're breeding!

Big wooden spoon

Jim and I have been looking at some of the issue statistics, which throw up some interesting trends. For instance, Catty's issue figures have been bleeding over to Carbootsale for most of the year and Crime Fiction issues at Gypsy Lane have increased four-fold over the past twelve months.

"I don't know why Doreen and Julia don't look at these statistics," says Jim.

"What?" I reply, "library managers looking at management information? Isn't that an infringement on their professional know-how or something? Next thing we know they'll be using the figures to demonstrate an increase in throughput and the need for more staffing for the more customer-focussed activities that we need to do to meet our learning and visitor targets."

"I don't understand them at all. I circulated some information about a funding stream that could be used to pay for the staff needed to do more learning activities over the next couple of years. None of them wanted to know."

"Why don't you get it onto the agenda for a Management Group meeting?"

"I take it you've heard about the last one then. My God..."

Quite so. It's better to have your whole management team sitting on the enquiry desk rather than fill existing vacancies and take the opportunity to get external funding for extra staff.

Sigh...

Irrestistible

Milton and I touch base. "What was the last Management Group meeting like?" I ask.

"I would have greeted Death like a long-lost uncle," replies Milton.

Collection management

I pick up a 'phone call from upstairs.

"Can you check the reserve stock stacks for me?"

"Yes, what am I looking for."

"Well, we've been looking all over for them for the past half hour but it turns out that Doreen's put the Writing Group Support Collection into reserve stock."

"Oh, that's news to me, too. Never mind, what am I looking for?"

"It's 'How To Write and Publish Local History' but I might be sending you on a wild goose chase because although the system says that it should be in somebody's just said that it's been issued to another writing group."

Needless to say...

Doorways to the unknown

There's an interesting email on lis-pub-libs letting us know about a Yahoo Group for UK public library workers.

Needless to say this group's blocked by the IT Section.

Taxonomy

I get a 'phone call from Roadkill Library.

"Daisy Dormouse has re-classified the non-fiction stock here into new subject categories. Can these go onto the Catalogue?"

"No, sorry."

I'm always a bit bemused by librarians who say that "Dewey's too difficult, we should have non-fiction classified by subject." As a layman I always understood that Dewey was a subject-based taxonomy. What it generally means is that rather than having all the organic chemistry books in one place, the inorganic chemistry in another, nearby place and the books on physics in another place slightly further away you get a bay of "science" books bunched together somehow or other. (Actually, this is what really happens anyway but we're not supposed to admit this.)

I look forward to us having a myriad different classification schemes in the Catalogue, one for each library and a few to spare for people with plenty of time on their hands.

I'm more irritated than bemused by the thought that we're always being told that the librarians at Dutch Bend don't have the time to do this, that or another but they do have the time for this type of nonsense.

Keep it real and shove as much in your trolley as you possibly can

Oh how splendid. The corporate network has been down all afternoon. Four times we got back onto the network, each time dropping back off within two minutes. It finally came back up half an hour ago.

Imagine everybody's delight on opening their emails to find their inboxes full of emails from the IT section saying that the network is down.

As worn as the palms of a bored monkey

Tittle-tattle from the latest Management Group meeting...

It should have been about our cultural change programme (somebody's given us public money to stop being feckless and indecisive) (actually they gave it us a few years ago and you can guess the rest). Instead, what little time that wasn't devoted to saying that they really should do something about discussing the staffing structure was spent dealing with a complaint from Julia and Doreen that "it wasn't fair that they covered for vacancies on the enquiry desk and Jim and Milton should do their share."

This is wrong on so many levels:

• "It's not fair" !?! What sort of puerile argument is that at this sort of management level? No wonder we're treated with scorn by other parts of the council.
• It's a gross waste of taxpayer's money to be paying a high-level manager to do the same job as someone who's paid in buttons to staff the enquiry desk.
• If it isn't a gross waste of taxpayer's money then perhaps the person who's paid in buttons should have salary parity with the high-level manager sitting next to them.
• We say we don't have enough staff to properly serve the number of service points we have in our authority. The Audit Commission says we don't. Government inspectors say we don't. But we must do: we open the doors every day and we keep vacancies open for years on end.
• Perhaps the time spent fatally masking staffing problems could be better spent putting together evidence-based business cases for more staff.

Still, what do I know about these things?

WTF?

Milton's left a message on the little whiteboard (the one we're allowed to use; we're working on the assumption that The Nation's Biggest Whiteboard is an early assay on next year's Turner Prize).

WFH Monday

Working from home? Whaling from Hokkaido? What flaming Hell? Who knows.

At least the message accords with our Communication Strategy.

Heard it on the grapevine

'Phone call from Hedi at Pottersbury Road.

"Nobody told you that we're closed on the 29th did they?"

"Err.. no. No, they didn't."

We have a three-week loan period and so items issued on Saturday have a 29th December due date.

"I changed the due dates as I was going along but I think I missed one or two."

I set the 29th as a closed day on the system at this library so at least nobody will be paying overdue fines for that day. It's generally a good idea to do this a we bit earlier than this but why conform to boring norms?

Customer care

I am invited to one of next week's Corporate Customer Care Focus Group meetings.

It's easy to be cynical about these things...



...so I may as well go with the flow.

Sickness monitoring

Betty Comstock was off sick yesterday with an eye infection. On her return today she's spent half an hour with Doreen having her Sickness Monitoring Return Interview, as required by Corporate Helminthdale. Two-thirds of this interview has to be involved in addressing ways of improving the individual employee's sickness record.

Betty retires from work next week.

Reflection

I'm asked how the trip to the Online Information thing at Olympia went. I can't sound enthusiastic: it was pretty depressing really. All those things that we're not going to be doing. Very often it isn't because we can't afford to do something, it's because it would be a waste of time. The Library Service wouldn't do anything with it, even if I would. We haven't even got to the point of using email as a means of communication so I can't see the buggers working with knowledge management and shared workspace tools.

Like a whiteboard. Ha ha ha ha.

The Vanished

Wondering whether or not I had time to start doing some work on the subject indexing on the catalogue before I was likely to be taken to one side for a chat with Milton I find that the whole of Management Group has decamped en bloc to the Technical College at Dutch Bend for a Strategic Meeting. Leaving me as senior member of staff for the service and utterly ignorant of what to do in the case of an emergency.

If Acq. and Admin. don't co-ordinate things so that somebody's always available to answer T.Aldous' telephone for him there's hell to pay (particularly tricky seeing as there are just the five people in these two teams and one is deaf). But it's OK for the whole of Management Group to swan off unannounced for the afternoon.

Frog's reappearance takes some of the pressure off. Unlike me, he works most Saturdays so he knows what to do in the event of an emergency in the absence of Management Group. It turns out to be exactly the same as my plan: we don't know what to do so we'll just have to busk it.

I know my place

I get an email from Milton telling me the results of discussions he's just had with the IT contractors about the People's Network and the new library management system.

At one time I might have felt put out not to have known about this beforehand so that even if I weren't to be invited I could have some idea of what Milton's suggesting the systems will need to do and when by. (I am only the Systems Librarian after all.) These days I'm more-or-less reconciled to leaving him to his fun.

More or less.

Walking wounded

Seth's officially knackered: he's done his arm in doing all the shit-shifting over the past few weeks. The doctor's told him that he needs to make sure that he isn't constricting the forearm and that he should keep his wrist and arm moving to make sure that the muscles don't stiffen. I've suggested banjo lessons.

Norma at Windscape has broken her arm Christmas shopping. The good news is that it ought to mend so long as she's sensible about not carrying stuff or banging the arm. She's currently on her third cast in as many days.

Frog's had a car crash. That is to say, a drunk ran a red light, crashed into a van, which crashed into Frog's car. He's mostly OK, though "a little shaken," but the car's not looking healthy. He came into work anyway but after a while he decided that he should go up to Accident & Emergency to be on the safe side ("a little shaken" turned out to be quite shaken indeed). Sitting in the queue waiting to be seen by the doctor he got a text message from Mary:

"You will need to claim the time off from your insurance."

Sybil, the Regional Librarian, is walking with a pronounced limp these days. It's due to a medical condition she's more than happy to talk about now the weather's turned to wet and windy so we're putting it about that it's the result of a botched Brazilian.

The maniacal merriment of a madman

Catty Library is a derelict shed with a nice Grade II listed facade, bits of pigeon falling from the ceiling and puddles on the floor. It's now closed for six months for a complete refurb to try and sort out problems like the fact the front wall's falling off.

Rather than shut the library leaving nothing we've moved a pile of the stock (too much, in fact) to Carbootsale Library, a mile down the road, and extended that library's opening hours to match those of Catty Library.

So the council's finally doing some much-needed building work to bring Catty Library up to scratch and we're trying our best to meet local needs by boosting the service at the nearest alternative library. Good news, no?

No.

Local politician:

"It's a long way for people from Catty to have to go to Carbootsale. They wouldn't have to do that if it was Helminthdale Library that was closed."

Well actually they did. But we're still having to investigate the possibility of providing services by proxy in the local housing office.

Question time

Interviews are always tricky. It's all too possible to seem a bit too keen or say something devastatingly naive and we shouldn't mock because we've all been there.

But every so often things get just plain daft. One of the blokes being interviewed for the spare caretaker's job at Helminthdale asked a cracker:

"Will I have control of the book-buying budget?"

The power of advertising

Salome is pissed off. Helminthdale Library re-opened on time last week but we haven't told anybody. Staff on site know (because the doors are opened every morning), and the rest of our staff have found out by Chinese whispers. There have been no announcements of such to staff or public. The consequences are inevitable.

"I am sick to death of people telling me that they didn't know the library was open again and they don't see why they should have to pay overdue fines in the interim. Why can't we announce that we've re-opened?!?"

Ripe

"Online Information" is on at Olympia this week, following hard on the heels of "Erotica 2007."

I do hope there aren't any unfortunate mix-ups.

Rummage

"Reassure me," says Frog, surveying the boxes and desks and chairs and bits and paper and general disarray. "We are a library service, aren't we?"

"Despite it all, we are," I reply. I hope I sound more convinced than I am.