Which one's William S. Hart?

Lippy's driven every Library Service vehicle this morning. She's the only one who hasn't had her petrol coupons lost by Mary, who put them somewhere safe and then got distracted.

Nobody's sweetheart now

I've sent a note to library managers asking them to remind staff that we do not currently have self-repairing computers. If a problem's not reported it ain't going to be fixed.

Minimising the carbon footprint

T.Aldous is irritated, quite rightly, by the latest bill he has to pay. The council has entered into a contract with a well-known energy company having negotiated a discount based on a high usage threshold. Those departments that have successfully implemented energy conservation measures, like us, are now being hit with a surcharge going back five years because we haven't hit the threshold target.

This is how local government addresses Kyoto.

I shall drink from your gumboots some invalid wine

A bit upbeat for me, it must be all this sunny weather and ladies in thin frocks. Three o'clock alliteration, but no apologies from me.

The Process Change Ball (after the Brothers Sherman)

We were pootling along unhappily
When some really odd things we began to see:
Our bosses sang a new song.
The same old things still went wrong.
And then things started to get a little strange
When they said: "now listen up, we've got to change.
"Let's re-engineer
"Make it nice and clear
"Refocus and transform it all!"

Come on and crawl
From the wreckage and all.
And a happy time we'll have there,
One and all
At the Process Change Ball.

So we got enthused and set about the task
Of identifying key goals, a big ask.
"Why get ourselves in a tizz?
It kind of works as it is,"
Some soi-disant professionals so said.
While the leaders looked on, lost and looking lead.
What a lark it is,
Straight from the ark it is
Gosh what a buy-in and all!

Come on and crawl
From the wreckage and all.
And a happy time we'll have there,
One and all
At the Process Change Ball.

Avoidance

T.Aldous is in High Dudgeon:

"Has anybody seen Jim?"

"He clocked out just now."

"He knew I wanted to have a meeting with him at five."

This was at ten-past. Tee hee.

More a metaphor than a being

Policy Team have decided to grease the wheels of our change process with an afternoon-long change workshop to look at things like business priorities and resource-mapping.

"We need to build a more flexible library service," says T.Aldous, "and make better use of our staffing resources."

So it's been decided to hold it on Wednesday afternoon when nearly all the staff involved have the day off. The thinking is that most libraries are closed on Wednesday afternoon so the workshop won't disrupt the service. This disruption will happen on the other days when staff will have to take the time back.

Unlike a Thursday afternoon, then, when staff aplenty cover the enquiry desks of the main libraries, half of the branches being closed that afternoon.

Taking the biscuit

We booked a meeting room in the Town Hall for a presentation this morning. The presentation went quite well. The hospitality was interesting...

Lukewarm tea and coffee was provided. We'd bought our own biscuits and were just about to dive into them when one of the lady attendants came in.

"You can't have biscuits."

"They're our own."

"You can't bring in biscuits. It's the rules."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"You should do."

Customer care Helminthdale-style. It turns out that the biscuit ban's a response to last year's scandal; the local rag dubbed it 'Biscuitgate,' in a fit of originality, when it found out that the money spent on the councillor's biscuit allowance was the same as the cut in the funding for the pensioners' day centre at Umpty. Even our councillors were embarassed by this so they cut the biscuit allowance, but in a fit of pique they have decreed that if they can't have biscuits neither can anybody else.

Salome spent most of the meeting waving biscuits and doing the V's at anything likely to be a CCTV camera.

Perplexing the minds of the fair sex

Frog sent out all the gear for the Summer Reading Challenge to the branches, including notes on who, what, where, when and, most importantly, how. Dagmar rings him up:

"Those stickers, do I give them to the kids every time they visit the library or just every time they borrow a book."

"It's like I said in the notes: you only give the stickers out when they borrow a book. It's part of the reward system."

"Well, what it is like, I've been giving them out every time they visit. At this rate I'll soon be running out of them. When are you sending out some more?"

"I won't, you've had them."

"Well, that's no good, is it?"

I suggest to him that he sends the pile of stickers from last year's Reading Challenge which Dagmar swore blind she didn't have when Frog was trying to address a late flurry of interest from children at Spadespit Library.

Why don't you come here on Sundays? We're closed on Sundays.

Last year Dagmar complained that there wasn't any point in having the children's performer come to Raccoonville Library in August because it was too late in the summer holiday and none of the kids would be coming in.

Frog's booked Raccoonville's entertainer for July. Dagmar has complained that it's too early because the local private school will still be in term.

Erehwon

We've had a lot of talk about working more flexibly and making smarter use of limited resources lately.

Which will be why this week's priorities have been light bulbs, bunting and a summer holiday event at a library we closed five years ago.

Still on 78

Thelma toddles over with a question.

"You know how I'm getting two more PCs at Epiphany..."

"Let's pretend that I do."

"When we re-open Epiphany could I rename the PCs?"

"Yes, if you want. One to eight is good."

"I thought I could name them after musicians."

"Henry Hall, Geraldo, Joe Loss, Monte Rey... ?"

"..."

"When's your next birthday?"

"Next week. It's a big one."

"Which one?"

"Three o."

"You might want to go away now."

Every day is a picnic

Policy Team have decamped to who knows where for a strategy meeting.

"Who's in charge?"

asks Seth, just as Mary wanders in to do something or other to make herself almost but not quite as late for the meeting as T.Aldous.

"Is it you?"

"No, I'm going out now."

"It must be Maisie then," he says, winking at Maisie.

"Certainly not. Frog is in charge."

This comes as a surprise, again, to Frog. Luckily he's empowered and informed to take the helm should an emergency occur. Mid-afternoon he has to go out to Senebene Library for an after-school club so he has to pass the helm to me. The power immediately goes to my head and I decide to exercise the old-school librarian's right to droit de seigneur.

"Send me a virgin for to deflower!"

I tell the staff.

It turns out that I'm the only one in the building.

If it doesn't freak you out you're already wierd

Noreen's having a couple of days off to watch the tennis so it's Betty's turn to chip away at the month-long backlog of incoming stock and get the orders through for the pre-summer holiday reading panic. Imagine, then, her delight when Mary toddles over and asks:

"Do you think you could go on the Mobile Library today?"

Betty had the sense to say no.

Hierarchy

We're trying to pre-plan a partnership meeting with a couple of local community groups when Wendy Muffplaster pipes up:

"Well it all depends on what pay scale they're on. If they're on a higher scale than us we'll just have to do what they say."

"No," I respond, "it depends on what we're talking about and what we agree is the best option for delivering something useful."

"Not really. If they're on Principal Officer grade they'll always have the last say."

"It doesn't matter what scale you're on. If you're on scale 5 and everyone agrees that you've a better idea than the person on PO6 then you'll be going along with your plan."

"What makes you say that?"

"I've done it."

I have this awful mental picture of a group of people getting together for a meeting and starting of with: "OK then, what pay scale is everybody on, just so's we know who gets to make the decisions."

Slideshows in the circus of human suffering

Milkbeck Library has its centenary this week, something that has been bruited loud and hard across the whole service in accordance with our new communications strategy. Which is to say that a couple of people know about it and the party that's to be held there.

It has been decided that the two slide projectors that were unearthed when the meeting room was almost cleared for the creation of the management suite will be employed in some strange capacity. T.Aldous is surprised to find that they don't work because the bulbs are broken. Salome is running about covering two-and-a-half posts (Bronwyn having been translated into Three-jobs-rolled-into-one-and-not-just-the-Booksale-Co-ordinator and Lola being on maternity leave). So T.Aldous gives her the job of sourcing replacement light bulbs.

The first quote provided by Procurement is £200. All hell breaks loose, but the slide projectors must go on so this is given the nod by T.Aldous. Raised eyebrows in the lower ranks. Salome contacted the company that sells the bulbs and is told they'll be £6 each. Being an honest sort she doesn't try to pocket the difference.

"While you're out, could you pick up some bunting?"

Good to know we're working smarter, not harder.

Is it on the trolley?

For a while now Bronwyn and Frog have been playing a game when they're covering on the enquiry desk in Lending. I've noticed them scoring points but hadn't sussed the game until Bronwyn explained it to me. The aim of the game is to see how often you can legitimately say to customers:

"Is it on the trolley? Can you point to it?"

à la Julie Waters in the old "Victoria Wood on TV" sketch.

Given how often kids go to the desk saying: "I want the book my friend just brought in" the score lines can get into cricket match proportions.

Ritorno dell'inutile

Bronwyn felt quite chuffed that she'd managed to quietly disappear the Italian children's books that have been languishing in boxes for the past decade. Right up to the point when Dutch Bend Library puts in a request for some "children's books written in Italian language."

"Bugger," says Bronwyn, "I could have off-loaded all that old stuff onto them and saved myself all that cloak and dagger stuff."

Stealth

The management suite is still in some disarray. When Seth opened the building up this morning he found that T.Aldous had left a huge lump of metal in the middle of the floor with a note:

Seth
What is this from? Where should it go?

Seth picked it up, the bottom fell off and smacked him on the toe. So it's gone the way of many things on the quiet.

Jim and Milton are seriously considering putting up a notice on the office door saying: "Do not leave this office empty-handed. Take something extra away with you."

Your television is being controlled by the Woodcraft Folk

If one of our Reference Librarians doesn't stop bleating that she's "not been trained in the use of online encyclopedias" and hasn't "had time to look at anything on the internet" in the decade that she's had access to the web on her works PC I'm going to ask her where she went on her "how to peel an orange" course so that I can send somebody on it as part of their annual Performance Review.

Mister Stretch

Following the Webrarian's comment the other day, Frog introduces me to Mr. Stretch, one of the fun things to win in this year's Summer Reading Challenge. Thanks to Gora Gray for this picture of the creature.

If we were going to have bulk buys from the Harper's Bizarre catalogue I'd have preferred the prolapsing sheep or The Incredible Growing Rabbit. Which is probably why I'm not the one providing children's library services.