Affording the Rock N Roll Lifestyle

When workers ruin your week by not showing up or not working I like to take revenge by ruining their weekend. Joy.

Yesterday was a big day. We were interviewing a candidate for the director position. I finally got to my desk around 11:30am just in time to witness the destruction of the firewall. First the local network collapse tramping and pinning 3 dwarves. Shortly thereafter the firewall exploded, tragically killed the dwarves. I don't know what they were doing hanging around there, but services will be held on Monday.

The entire campus was without network for 7 hours. 7! When a quicky patch job was done I hurried about to recatalog some of the books that had backed up. I managed to clear one of the 7 that are full. ARG!

Hopefully the new firewall will be installed today–in place of the old one. This time it's bigger, better, and more American.

Being on a hiring committee hurts the head. Arguing over resumes is certainly interesting; especially when there is a dearth of resumes. Tomorrow I'll have to put together some questions to ask. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Life in Library Land is getting interesting. I am officially in charge of the student workers. This means that I sign the time cards and everything. Woot. Time to be hardcore manager. No you may not take a break! I don't care if you have to pee. Hold it in. Do not pee in the library. No you may not go get a drink. If you do it'll be deducted from your timecard!

I've been running around all day. This is the first time I've had a minute and what do I do? Freaking blog. Oh well.

Been going through applications (resumes & coverletters) for the open positions here. Man, this is eye-opening. Going through this process will definitely make my own coverletters and resumes better. Most of the people applying aren't even remotely qualified. However, I want to interview someone on the basis of there email address alone: rockwillliveforever. Come on…that's cool.

I am disappointed in my fellow SILSers for not applying. Does this mean they hate me? If so, fuck them. Fuck them right in the ass. If not, well disregard the previous two statements.

Been going through Waste of Space's desk. I've found a bunch of crap. Literally crap. I've thrown away over half of what was there. I don't need P.O.s from 2002. I just don't. It's absolutely amazing. The Interim Manager wants to know when I'll get a chance to go through the other huge bookcase full of uncataloged books in his office, well as soon as I have a book truck. Which means Full-Time Part-Timer will have to learn to catalog first. Which means Library Worker T must train FTPT first. So whenever that happens. Jesus.

Well it’s finally official. Library Worker K, the one who stole my air and invaded my sense of place and generally annoyed me turned in her resignation today. Her last day will be on Friday. This makes me jump for joy and curse her name at the same time. I have this horrible feeling that there is no documentation on what she actually does. Apparently she’s the only one in the library who knows how to import records from OCLC. WTF!

This means I have to get her to write it all down and share the information before she leaves, as well as finish cataloging all the books behind her desk. Pipe dream? Of course, but it’s my pipe dream you can’t have it. No you can’t even hold the pipe.

Last night while talking with Poopsie she asked me when I was going to fix the OPACs of the world. Well that's a good question isn't it?

Most librarians, even those of us more interested in doing tequila shots during work hours agree that the OPACs available today fucking suck. But don't blame your vendors people. Well, blame the vendors, but part of it is your own damn fault. Fucking librarians. I shall explain.

Cataloging. Oh cataloging. Those of you who cream just thinking about it–well you're a little sick. My main concern when studying this particular facet of librarianship was, well why wouldn't I make every field searchable? I believe I got a mumbled response as it isn't practical. Oh, but including the height of a book is? Why do people care how big a book is? And if they do care show me all the books at 29cm damn it. Even the Naked Librarians are concerned about the nature of cataloging.

There is a bunch of talk about going RDF with the cataloging….or was that a pipe dream I had? The triple looking something like: item, location, status. Wait, don't we already do that? & even changing to that…who cares? Will it make the OPAC any better–fucks no.

Hands down best catalog around today is NCSU's. I say that, but really it pisses me off too. I live in a fantasy-land where there is a beer volcano and stripper factory and where in one single interface I can search the OPAC and for articles. That's right when I put in "drunk hippies" I get not only The hippie dictionary : a cultural encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s but also On space invaders, drunk hippies and the Spanish inquisition. By: Janowiak, John. Downbeat, Feb2000, Vol. 67 Issue 2, p18.

However this is at least 5 if not more years away. Dave Pattern is doing some great things with the OPAC though. At least I think he is. Bonus he's using AJAX, which you'alls know I've been jonezen to try out. We all know that usability is really the new black. People love Amazon for a reason–freaking usability and free shipping for purchases over $25.

I suppose the ultimate point of this rant is that it will take a whole fuck of a lot more than me to completely change OPACs. I think that librarians who give a shit should start their own ILS company. We would definitely need Dave Pattern and some guys from Endeca but if you build a better OPAC universities will switch. Money in the bank. Cha-ching…and I didn't even have to whoop a trick.

So the director has resigned. Yes I'll probably apply for his job. The IT department has been disbanded and IT has been outsourced. So now we are hiring two librarians. A director and an information literacy librarian. Where these people will sit I have no clue or what exactly they'll be doing–seeing how the last director didn't do much and I've been the acting information literacy librarian, well I suppose they could just take care of all the shit that I don't feel like doing. Or even better help me with running the freaking library.