Friday, May 12, 2006

Books Due

Today all books were due from students. In a perfect world they all would be! However this isn't a perfect world. I wish I had "Easy Button" like the commercial :)

Next week starts the beginning of the inventory for us. I wish all the Copy ID's were fixed so things would be more automated. I guess job security for the summer hours! It will take me all summer to change 2,000 some books. It doesn't help that the program is cumbersome in this regard. Once its done I'll be happy :)

End and Beginning

I've had a bit of repreive for the last two weeks. My masters classes wrapped up the last week of April with projects due at the end of the month. I've had a chance to work on some of the back office issues I've been wanting to get to. Items such as ordering and analysis of collection strengths coupled with work on non library related duties have taken the expanse of my time.

I had a good question posed to me the other day. "What is it you do all day long?" I laughed and thought..."you really have no idea". What I've come to really enjoy in my position is the variety. I work on different issues almost daily. What I do all day is more than checking books in and out or read the paper. In fact I wish I had to just sit and read the Tribune. There's a lot of background I must do when establishing decisions on purchasing. Similar to buying a car or large ticket item I take that approach when purchasing for the collection. From day one my goal has been to exhaust resources allocated to me. In this regard I'm still learning the paperwork. As I'm learning the landscape of my new position I'm trying to pick up on the things I want to improve upon for next year.

I'm looking forward to summer vacation, like everyone around here, however for me, for different reasons. I'm going to be working extended hours in the media center for summer school. I'm leaving my long time post as a summer school instructor. My hope is the time in the library will allow me the ability to tweak database issues that reared their ugly head with the switch to Infocentre. Hopefully these issues will all be ironed out by August.

As my classes ended it took me a couple days to adjust to "normal" life. More free time has boosted my morale at a point in the year where I needed a break from the Master's grind. However as one semester has ended another has begun. Starting today my Summer I session has started. I'm forced to take off three days of school to attend a day long class 9-4. My class is finished for the day...early no less. Before I logged off the laptop I took a couple minutes here to blog.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Barcodes Blues

New scanners arrived today. New problem...

Our new scanners read ALL the barcodes we have. Yippee! Not all books are cataloged in the system with the proper length (amount) of digits. Bummer!!!

Bottom line we're forced to re-catalog (number) thousands of titles to straighten out the problem. Once all titles are matched up correctly we should alleviate all problems with barcodes.

The time it will take to re-tool each record will be tremendous...bummer!!!