Stress relief.

It's been that kind of week, even though it is truncated.

On Tuesday, I made the last-minute decision to apply for another job in the library -- not because I don't like the job I have, but the other position (at much higher payband) has a variety of duties and responsibilities that are a good fit with my skill-set. It was the first time I had to use the new online resume-builder that is built in to uHire (the University's job posting interface) and that proved to be a little bit of a challenge. Now I keep wondering if I proofread everything enough times. No word yet on when interviews will be scheduled.

Tuesday evening, I tried to take my mind off the resume by sorting more stuff for the yard sale this weekend. (If you are in Victoria, drop by! Head for Finlayson and Quadra and follow the signs.) We have a small mountain of boxes but I still feel like it isn't everything that should be going...

Yesterday work was a constant stream of interruptions -- largely Union-related issues -- so I left feeling like I hadn't accomplished much. Still, last night was a treat for us: one of our favourite restaurants, Eugene's recently relocated from downtown to Gordon Head and they quietly opened for business yesterday in the new location.

Then last night I crossed one BIG item off my to-do list. It's been on my list for well over a year and I started working on it earnestly last fall but the Drupal-ized version of my Unofficial Guide to Victoria is now live. It's far from ready for the big leagues; there's lots and lots of work left to do but the basic frame is there and I can stop being embarassed by how out-of-date the old site was. So go ahead, check it out, and let me know what you think. I can tell you that I plan to add more photos, longer reviews, and possibly a blog or similar section where I can add opinion pieces and local history articles but I also want to be more responsive to readers and those who use the site!

Today started out OK but quickly went to hell -- around noon, Kiddo's school phoned; she'd been sent to the office with an "angry looking eye infection" eww. A trip to the clinic and pharmacy preceded an hour long ordeal between the two of us trying to get eyedrops into our child's right eye. Not fun.

This evening we all needed to get out of the house so we checked out the new Lee Valley Tools in Colwood. Just the recipe; I feel much better now.

Holding History

Today, I got a rare treat. I got to hold this early 17th century hinged book. Inside, it holds two texts: commentaries on the books of Ruth and Judges from 1609 and another set of commentaries by the same author on Kings, Chronicles and Samuel printed in 1617. The book is part of a collection which is housed in our library but is owned by the Catholic Diocese of Victoria.

My inner bookgeek and inner historygeek both got very excited seeing the book hinges still both in tact and the binding still flexible enough that the hinges can be used.

More photos:

The full record can be found in our catalog. To give you an idea of the value, a volume by the same author bound in a similar manner in 1604 (but with only one hinge in tact) is listed on Abebooks for a little over four thousand dollars Canadian from a seller in Zurich.

So, yeah. Really our library is full of stuff like this -- most academic libraries are -- so when patrons used to come to the desk with a book published in 1898 insisting that it be placed in Special Collections we would tell them it wasn't old enough. This is old enough.

I miss my public library.

It's been more than a month since the brain trust at the Greater Victoria Library Board locked the doors on its staff due to an ongoing labour dispute (and it's a stupid dispute too -- the Board agreed to pay equity in 1992 but has never paid it!) through the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association (GVLRA) -- I phoned Chris Graham this morning and got a recording -- he sounded besieged (good!) and promised he was working on it, but I don't believe that for a minute. This lockout is not saving them much but it's going to earn them all a big black eye, come municipal elections this fall.

Worse, it's costing families --especially those who can't afford to buy books or find other access to research databases or the internet in general. CUPE 410 (the local representing members who are locked out) has this estimate on their website:

The loss of Library service is a direct cost to every Library user. In 2007, the Library loaned 4,069,026 unique items.

If users, instead of being able to borrow these items, had to pay for them at only $10.00 each (less than the cost of many paperbacks!), they would have had to come up with $40,690,260.00 instead of the less than twelve million dollars they actually spent to run the Library system.

The Library system, far from being a drain on the economy, is actually a powerful generator of real wealth - wealth that the Library Board has taken away.

A little arithmetic shows that every day of this lockout is costing Victorians at least $111,480.16, for a total loss of service value so far of $3,455,885.00 as a conservative estimate.

I've personally felt it, because Kiddo is a rampant reader. Luckily, I have access to the books at the UVic Libraries, which include a lot of kids' books (both in the McPherson and Curric libraries) -- but Kiddo just mows through them! I brought home 6 books last night and she read 5 of them before bedtime. I also felt it when we were working through the renos and I wanted to check the most recent building codes -- free at the library, but $95 if I wanted to view them online. Pshaw.

It sucks that the people feeling the most of the impact are the low-income families, the unemployed, and anyone on a fixed-income in the region -- it's not their dispute, but they have lost a critical connection within their community.

I can assure you that anyone who is currently sitting as a municipal politician and also on the GVLRA or the GVLB will not be getting my vote in November -- and that includes all current mayors.

Please, give your heads a collective shake and get back to bargaining. Figure this out and give us back our library!

Bittersweet day...

My first official job here at the University was in the Stack Maintenance Unit of the main library -- I shelved books. When I first started, all the books were sorted in one central room on the 3rd floor then trucked out to all other floors for shelving. It had been done that way for a very long time; I know, because my Mother used to work in the same department and I used to come up on weekends to help sort the kids' books and wander around the library.

In the 1990s, the sorting was decentralized and each floor got its own sorting area, but third floor still used the large room, which frequently filled to capacity during peak return times.

A few years ago, there was another change, as a new return/sorting area was added in the basement (soon to be "lower level") of the library. From here, books are trucked to the other sorting areas before being shelved. But, the third floor sorting area was still fairly full just a couple of weeks ago.

Now it is empty and much of its shelving will be dismantled in coming days in preparation for demolition of the last remaining "inside" (i.e. behind locked doors) study carrels in the library. Some of the existing area used for the sorting room plus all of the study carrel area will be replaced with shelving to hold the music monographs when the music collection relocates to the new Media Commons on the main floor in February.

So, while I was happy that I got to take some photos of this soon-to-be-gone part of my past, it's a bittersweet happiness, as the photos will be all that will remain by the time I come back from the break in January.

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Web 2.0 + Library 2.0 = Hot Air 2.0?

I had the opportunity today to take an audioconference about how libraries can use YouTube. I was the only non-librarian in the room, and the only one with videos of my own on YouTube... but all of us agreed that a conference about a video website might have been better delivered as a web-conference than audio plus a powerpoint presentation. On top of that, the content of the presentation seemed slim; while they did discuss equipment and software, the rest of the information was basic stuff that could be gleaned from spending 20 minutes (or less) on YouTube.

Aside from YouTube, libraries and librarians are popping up on Facebook, MySpace, SecondLife, and everywhere else. They are blogging, vlogging, podcasting, and providing virtual reference. Our electronic resource collection is growing at a pace that rivals (or maybe even outpaces) our print collection -- e-journals, e-books, and new digitization projects (one current project involves digitizing sound recordings) -- and soon we'll have shiny new software in place to organize it all.

What I wonder is, where is this all going? Is this really what library users want? Surveys seem to point that way and even I've been on the receiving end of, "You mean I have to look it up in a book? Isn't there a website or something?"

I see the use of networking with Facebook or Ning and I do understand the power that multimedia brings to any website. I've made my peace with wikis, creative commons, and collaborative media. I just don't understand the point of building avatars in Second Life, or posting cute/funny videos on YouTube. Sure, it might get the library some media exposure, but will it bring in more users? Will it educate the ones we have?

Somebody convince me that this is neither a waste of time, nor an insult to the social users of these sites, and I'll listen. Right now, I'm of the opinion that there are limits and boundaries to the use of social networking in an organizational setting and I'm not sure it would be wise to push them too far.

World keeps a-spinnin.

Well, the moral majority moved even closer to a minority this week with the loss of founder Jerry Fallwell. I probably can't sum it up any better than Tinky Winky.

Meanwhile, BookSwim.com is winding back library lending about 150 years by charging for book loans because (apparently) every library closes at 5:00. Really? Not the ones I've worked at. Anyway they want to be the Netflix of books. Good luck. I'll stick to BookCrossing or check out free groups like TitleTrader, FrugalReader, BookMooch .... or, heck, maybe my local library or thrift store.

At least we don't have zombie slaves though. We saw Fido last Friday night, and honestly the care and maintenance of zombies seemed like a lot of work. (No, really, it's amusing.)

At least the weather has been lovely. I've taken probably 400 photos this week.... here's one now:

MORONS!!!

So, the brain trust that hangs out in the big building on the Inner Harbour have decided to close the BC Legislative Library, allegedly for seismic upgrading, but the scuttle says "renos for more offices."

Rattenbury is no doubt spinning in his grave end over end; the space was designed as a Capital-L Library, housing books and records that are rare if not unique.

From the Vancouver Sun:

It has existed for 144 years as one of B.C.’s great democratic institutions: The library housed inside the capital’s legislative buildings devoted to tirelessly researching and cataloguing the political events, laws and history of British Columbia.

But B.C.’s Speaker of the House is about to close the legislative library down for up to two years, and perhaps move it for good from its historic site, claiming it is in a wing of the legislature that needs to be seismically upgraded to make it safe in an earthquake.

The shittiest thing though is that over half the staff is getting the boot and most of the books and records will be boxed up and shoved into some dark warehouse. Seriously, these people are MORONS who have no concept of history or the value of knowledge and no respect for research. They should all be slapped with rotting salmon.

grrrr.