I've slept a little later than usual this morning. I looked at the clock and it was 3:30, and then I dozed and looked again and it was 4:30, and then suddenly it was 6:30! Fortunately, I can be a little more leisurely about getting to work today, since the kids aren't in school and the teachers are all having parent conferences.
I spent yesterday shelf-reading. Dave asked me last night what that means, so I'll tell you too, just in case you're not sure. It means running a report in our library system that lists all the books in the order in which they should be shelved, and then going down each shelf -- carrying an iPad displaying the list -- making sure they're all in order and none are misplaced. It may sound tedious, but I think it's fun.
I did find a few books that were nowhere near where they were supposed to be, and identified two that seem to be missing -- so I feel like I'm achieving something. As I told Dave last night, one needs a certain kind of personality to enjoy a task like that, and fortunately for me, I have it.
I also weeded some books that seem old or out of date. To wit:
"The Present Day," in this case, means 1979, when this book was published.
It's full of these strangely awkward drawings. I meant to capture the woman with the turned-up hat brim, but I decided I had to show you the other woman too. Did people really wear pith helmets with head scarves in 1970? Maybe in Rhodesia.
Every time I find a book like this, I wonder how it escaped all our previous weeding. Last spring, when we packed up and reorganized the entire library and moved all the books, we got rid of hundreds and hundreds of old volumes. How did we miss this one? It's a mystery. Anyway, it's in the charity box now.
When I came home, I cleaned up some stuff in the garden. We finally took out the lavender bush that I found several years ago -- half of it had died and it had flopped over so that it was lying on some other plants, and although we staked it up nothing seemed to work very well. Dave's been wanting to get rid of it for ages and I resisted but I finally gave in. We got five years out of it, and now I can use that space for foxgloves.
(Top photo: A fallen leaf on Abbey Road, a few days ago.)
1970 does sound a bit late for pith (snigger) helmets.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't the non fiction be filed using the Dewey Decimal System and fiction by the first three letters of the author's last name? Or am I terribly out of touch with libraries.
Yes, non-fiction is organized by Dewey and fiction alphabetically by author's last name. But a list makes the organizing go much faster!
DeleteLooks more 1920s to me!
ReplyDeleteYes, aren't you using Dewey? Or the book list on the iPad organised by Dewey.
I have worked in a few bookshops and books got stuffed back on shelves in all sorts of places!
It is satisfying to be asked for a book and be able to go straight for it!
Yeah, the book list is organized by Dewey (and then alphabetically within Dewey numbers).
DeleteI have done a fair bit of checking bookshelves to make sure they are in the correct order, but never with an ipad. Just alphabetical author names for fiction, and dewey for non as Andrew says. I used to do an afternoon at my sons' school library for several years ,and of course worked in the Oxfam bookshop too.
ReplyDeleteThe iPad (or a printed list if you prefer, but I avoid that because it wastes paper) simply makes the job faster. You could shelf-read without it but it's harder.
DeleteI want to pan out on that fallen leaf and see the other three spanned across the zebra crossing. That hat illustration is embarrassing. Also, can’t say I ever saw pith helmets with scarves on the streets of New York at that time. I thought the second “look” was a pirate hat.
ReplyDeleteI wish I'd photographed the barefoot leaf, but oh well.
DeleteYou think that shelf-reading is "fun"? I guess you also think that sliced white bread is "delicious" and that cleaning a toilet bowl is "far out" as hippies used to say. You must be taking the pith.
ReplyDeleteIt IS fun, I'm telling you. I am not a fan of white bread, but there is a certain sense of satisfaction in a clean toilet bowl.
DeleteI wish they would do a bit of 'shelf reading' in our Library, the books are never where they should be.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the title of this post I thought you had found a Pith Helmet, lol. Well you never know what you are going to find next on your rambles.
Briony
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Shelf-reading is probably the kind of luxury that cash-strapped public libraries just don't have time for. We wouldn't have time for it either under normal circumstances -- we just happened to have a couple of days with no students!
DeleteMy very first thought was that I have never seen a woman wearing a pith helmet around here before or after the 70s. The hat with the turned up brim? Well...the takeaway lesson from all of this is that the people here are not a stylish people.
ReplyDeleteI do remember seeing floppy hats with brims in the '70s, maybe mainly in magazines. My stepmother got married in a hat with a wide brim in 1976!
DeleteI had my own share of floppy brimmed hats, but the illustration looked more like this: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F133187193231&psig=AOvVaw2HQHyXBAyRlfMeF-lzOk1H&ust=1635082365698000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCKCX3c_S4PMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAL
DeleteI'm not sure I consider this period to be olden times.
ReplyDeleteI bet you hate the student trick of misplacing a book on the shelves so that they, and no one else, knows where to find it the next time they're in.
Well, everything is relative, but to say something is "present day" and have it be 42 years old is a bit of a stretch. We just had an incident of a kid hiding a book. Argh!
DeleteI need that book! We're having 70s day in HR next Friday (for Halloween). I THINK my outfit will work, but it would be nice to see some other samples (yes, I can google. Ha!).
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of shelf reading sounds heavenly. I love tasks like that too!
Ha! I should mail it to you! LOL
DeleteThat sounds like a library task that I would go crazy insane doing. But as you say- you are suited to it and thus, are in the perfect job for you!
ReplyDeleteThat book looks like it was illustrated by the same artists that do the pictures for patterns like Simplicity and McCalls. I love that woman's stance! "Look at me! In my yellow pantsuit!"
She's really showing it off, isn't she?!
DeleteThat is quite a task you fulfilled at the library. When I was reading the details of what you were doing I imagined books with ID sensors (like barcodes in stores) that would ping when your iPad identified them. It's the library of the future.
ReplyDeleteWe DO have barcodes on all the books, and when I check them out I scan those. Also when I do inventory at the end of the school year, making sure none of the books have gone walking. But with shelf-reading it's just a matter of matching to the list, rather than scanning. :)
DeleteI loved all of those detailed library jobs back in the day when I worked in libraries. When I volunteered in the high school library, I would find that students would put a book in the wrong spot and then when I would move it to its proper place, I would find another book out of order and would move that one only to find another book out of order and so on and so on...like a trail for me to follow...making work for the poor Mom volunteer (me!) Crazy!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, we see that too -- it's like a chain of mis-shelved materials. Kids just look for an opening and stick the book into it, regardless of the spine label!
DeleteI've only seen a pith helmet and scarf like that in the movies....old movies mostly.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's like Katharine Hepburn in "The African Queen."
DeleteIt's a good thing that there is somebody to keep order. Interesting how computers help you keep order.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine this job without a computer, but I remember my own school librarians doing everything on paper.
DeleteI think I'm one of those people who would like organizing the shelves and putting things where they need to be,
ReplyDeleteIt's a great job for people who are organizationally inclined!
DeleteSad to say, I never did have the fun of wearing either of these hats. I love hats, but these are a it too much. I agree, it takes a certain sort of person to enjoy organizing all those books. Have fun with it and enjoy your day, hugs, Edna B.
ReplyDeleteHa! I used to have a couple of floppy hats like Gilligan wore on "Gilligan's Island." But that was about it for me and hats.
DeleteI look at the cover of that magazine and think NO ONE in the 70s dressed like that. Being old, I clearly remember that period but I don't remember people wearing canary yellow pant suits.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't remember that either! Maybe it was a look in London. :)
DeleteI remember finding books in our school library that my parents had checked out and pondered at the time if my kids would also check them out. Alas, it wasn't to be as the school closed and was razed before I ever had children.
ReplyDeleteWe do have some books that have been on the shelf for decades and decades, but they're still fine so we just leave them. My old elementary school was torn down as well!
DeleteSome of my memories during the 70s might be (ahem) "foggy", but I don't recall ever seeing anyone wearing a pith helmet! (or that other hat) As for the clothes... we were more into bell-bottomed jeans than pantsuits like that.
ReplyDeleteI suppose there was "high fashion" and then "real fashion," like you'd see on the street. I remember bell-bottoms! And pants with wide vertical stripes.
DeleteI'd love to look through that book. Although you can mostly find the same kind of thing on the internet. The internet has EVERYTHING.
ReplyDeleteBack when I volunteered at my kids' school library, if we weren't busy we'd shelf-read using the numbers on the spines. It required quite a bit of concentration and wasn't a whole lot of fun. Using a list would be better, I think.
Yeah, the list makes a HUGE difference. The book isn't as interesting as it seems from the cover. :)
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