Shh! This is a library [office]

The oppressive quietness in our office has now created a situation which is sort of the opposite of that Kit-Kat advert:

We have to go outside the office (into the library!) if we want to have a conversation of any length.  Some people (like me) don’t even say goodbye anymore when they go home for the day if our manager’s in the office, because it would break the silence and seem too obtrusive. I have very little idea of how my colleagues at the other side of the room are, because I don’t talk to them anymore unless we happen to be on the desk together (and I suspect talking there would be frowned upon as well, if it was noticed). We work in almost-silence. A lot of the time, all you can hear is the noise of people typing.

I like peace and quiet, but this is getting ridiculous. And, as I said, it is oppressive – because it is forced upon us. In theory, we are allowed to talk quietly, but we were doing this, and then told (via our poor supervisors) that we needed to be quieter. So now, we mostly don’t speak to one another unless it’s necessary. There is very little social “chit-chat”, which I suppose is what our managers want. It seems sad, though, that what was once a friendly place to work has become so repressed and seemingly unfriendly. We have to tell new people that it’s not that we don’t like them – we’re just not allowed to chat!

I’m not sure what the point of making people work in near-silence is. I suppose we should be working harder if we’re not spending time talking, but I’m not sure this actually works in practice. Also, one wastes more time going outside to talk to people, or emailing them when they sit across the room, than it would have taken just to have a conversation!

A beginning of term post

I’m not entirely sure if it’s still the holidays, the beginning of term or exam time – or possibly all three of those at once, but the Shiny New Learning Centre has been awash with students and, more to the point in this case, books for the past week.

On Tuesday, we arrived to find the returns machine, which I think I’m going to start calling the Machine of Doom, had stopped working (probably due to being too full of books) shortly after all the library staff left for the long Easter weekend. Hence, we saw before us a room full of full bins*, which then became a room full of full trolleys and bins as we decanted all the books on to trolleys, but as fast as we could do this the bins filled up again with more people returning books…Then we also had to check that all the books that had been put through the returns chute (which security staff are supposed to open when the Machine of Doom stops working and their are no library staff around) – this meant checking them all by hand in case anyone had incurred fines due to the MoD (sorry) being out of order (although we forgot this at first and merrily put them into the MoD before we realised, but we had the receipts so we can check through if there are any queries) and then we completely ran out of trolleys and had to resort to dumping books in the bins until we could do enough shelving to free up some trolleys…and so on. It was a bit like a labour of Hercules. Well, not quite, but it felt like it at the time when we could see no end in sight and people just kept on returning books. It was not fun.

It calmed down a bit today and we now have some free trolleys. Hoorah! Sorry, this post is probably rather boring and meaningless to anyone who doesn’t work in a library. It may well also be  boring and meaningless to anyone who does!

The library has been full of people – to the grim, as my mum would say. This is good, but not when they leave lots of mess and books everywhere and we have to try to tidy it up when we don’t have enough time or people to do this properly. Also, the e-library (online resources) is a bit broken.**

Also, it is That Time of Year, when all the books people have ordered come in at once – or at least that’s how it seems. There are so many boxes of new books in our office we could build a very decent fort if we put our minds to it. I’ve been doing things with invoices and cataloguing books today. I hadn’t done much with invoices until yesterday, so I hope I’ve been doing it right! There are many DVDs to catalogue. They take quite a long time to do, although I’m getting faster at doing them. I just have to remember the ‘h’ sub-field and it will all be OK. Maybe.

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*Returned books go into the machine on a conveyor belt and are sorted into bins (which are the same as potato farmers use for putting potatoes in, or so I’ve heard) depending on which floor they belong on and then put on trolleys and taken up to the floors.

**It’s actually fine once you get into it, but to do this you have to click on a link that says it’s not secure, which no-one sensible would usually do, and did anyone tell students or non-library staff about this until this afternoon after it had been like this for several days? Erm…

Not shelving

The position of the pacemaker (on the left side of my chest, under my arm) means that doing anything that involves raising my left arm or having to use that muscle under the arm (no idea what it’s called, sorry) becomes rather uncomfortable after a while. Unfortunately, shelving library books involves such activity – replacing books on shelves and moving books back to make a gap to replace books, or just moving books so they are upright and nicely straight against the shelf end/divider all involve the repeated use of my arm/shoulder/chest muscles. By the time I’ve done an hour’s shelving the area around my pacemaker becomes somewhat painful. We are supposed to shelve for an hour every morning, unless we happen to be rota-ed [how do you spell that?] on the Library Point, and then I often also shelve journals in the afternoons, so I was doing quite a lot of shelving over the week.

I had hoped that it would become more comfortable as I got more used to it, but this hasn’t been the case, so, this week, I asked my nice supervisor if it would be OK if I no longer shelved in the mornings, and she said this was fine and told me I should have said something before, which of course I should. Bad Bookmouse. She had to tell our line manager, who was very nice about it, but also chastised me in a jokey kind of way (!). I will carry on shelving the journals in the afternoon, as these are normally a lot lighter and I’m usually just putting new issues in boxes, so the level of activity required is less than when shelving or tidying books.

I’m slightly annoyed that it has come to the point where I’ve had to stop doing something.  I feel like a skiver, even though I know it would be stupid to carry on doing something that’s causing me pain. Also, despite the fact that I know my colleagues will be their usual lovely understanding selves and not think badly of me, I still feel self-conscious about not being able to do what everyone else does – memories of school and sometimes having to sit out of P.E. and things spring to mind. I know this is silly, but I suppose it just comes back to me wanting to be ‘normal’ – which is also silly as  we all know there is no such thing!

The (an) irony is that I know a few people who would quite like to not have to shelve in the mornings, but I was quite enjoying it!  There’s something rather satisfying about putting books back in their proper places and making them nice and tidy. I’ll just have to find other ways of making myself useful in the mornings.

[Edited to add:] I should point out that I still love my pacemaker very much, or at least as much as it’s possible to love a very tiny computer, because it helps me do lots of things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. It really is an amazing piece of equipment and I’m very grateful to have it.

PhotoHunt: Letters

This isn’t a very good photo – the subject matter was a bit far away and it was a bit dark and I don’t really know how photography works, but this is the only really suitable I could find for this week’s theme. At a friend’s wedding, the bride and groom had postcards hanging up (see below). The idea was that the guests could take one and send it to them on the day of the year designated on the back of the postcard, so the couple would, hopefully, receive a postcard on every day of the first year of their married life. I chose a reproduction of an old postcard of the Berlin University Library.

Wedding postcards

Postcard of Berlin University Library in 1904

Other interpretations of this week’s theme can be found at the Photo Hunt site, where it’s nice to find out that some people still write real letters to one another.

Some things I learned

So, my time as an assistant librarian is over. I wonder whether I’ll ever be one again in another place and time. At the moment I’m not sure that I want to stay working in libraries for ever, but I’m not sure what it is that I really want to do. I’m hoping this time where I should have more mental space will help me to work that out. We shall see. Anyway, I thought now might be a good time to reflect  and make a list of some of the things I learned during my time as an assistant librarian, so here we are (the list is not exhaustive and is in no particular order):

Among other things I learned…

1. I’m not good at managing people
2. I really don’t like confrontation (actually, I knew this before)
3. How to use the Aleph library management system (circulation module)
4. Getting involved in office politics is to be avoided if at all possible
5. How to successfully pass the CILIP Chartership
6. Friendly and supportive colleagues are worth their weight in gold
7. It is very important to feel valued
8. On a related note, line managers need to say thank you more often
9. It is extremely difficult to do a job if you don’t believe in what you’re doing
10. Rotas are much more difficult than you might expect
11. In fact, rotas are Very Bad Things
12. Unhelpful line managers cause untold damage
13. As does poor communication
14. I’m not good at training people
15. I am good at being too sympathetic to people who have library fines
16. I quite like doing presentations, even if I’m not very good at them
17. A lot about Excel
18. A lot about Word
19. A lot about Outlook
20. A bit about computers in general
21. Sometimes putting things at the bottom of your in-tray really does make them go away
22. But sometimes it doesn’t
23. Not as much as I should have done about the Dewey Decimal System
24. To count a lot of money
25. To be responsible
26. I’m more subject to my emotions that I thought I was
27. To rely on God to get me through the day
28. The self-returns machine needs to be carefully nurtured otherwise it gets upset
29. To [try to] behave like an adult
30. Diaries are very useful
31. Outlook reminders are even more so because you don’t have to remember to look at them
32. The people who can most afford to pay their fines are often the people who most vigorously dispute them
33. It is impossible to keep everyone happy
34. Being the filling in a sandwich is not very nice
35. It’s always good to have an emergency supply of chocolate

From fox to teddy bear

When I first started at my current workplace, I did the Mouton-Blake Conflict Management Style Assessment, the animal version (but we used ostrich instead of turtle). I was a fox:

Foxes use a compromising conflict management style; concern is for goals and relationships

Foxes are willing to sacrifice some of their goals while persuading others to give up part of theirs

Compromise is assertive and cooperative-result is either win-lose or lose-lose

Advantage: relationships are maintained and conflicts are removed

Disadvantage: compromise may create less than ideal outcome and game playing can result

Appropriate times to use a Fox style

• When important/complex issues leave no clear or simple solutions
• When all conflicting people are equal in power and have strong interests in different solutions
• When their are no time restraints

I must admit, I was surpised at being a fox. Perhaps I was deluding myself. Then again, I had just started a new job which I was enjoying, so I was probably feeling quite confident in my own abilities at the time.

The other month [it was the other day when I originally drafted this post], I did the test again as part of the aforementioned management training course. This time I was a teddy bear:

Teddy bears use a smoothing or accommodating conflict management style with emphasis on human relationships

Teddy bears ignore their own goals and resolve conflict by giving into others; unassertive and cooperative creating a win-lose (bear is loser) situation

Advantage: Accommodating maintains relationships

Disadvantage: Giving in may not be productive, bear may be taken advantage of

Appropriate times to use a Teddy Bear style

• When maintaining the relationship outweighs other considerations
• When suggestions/changes are not important to the accommodator
• When minimizing losses in situations where outmatched or losing
• When time is limited or when harmony and stability are valued

So how did I change from a fox to a teddy bear (assuming I ever really was a fox in the first place)? My line manager has asked me to think about this, so I am. See, I do what I’m told, like a good, cooperative teddy bear.

Well, a lot has happened in four and a half years. There have been some very difficult times, both professionally and personally. People say that difficult things get better the more you do them. This may be the case for some people in some situations, but for me trying to do my job this hasn’t been the case. The difficult situations I have to deal with, the less confident and more unassertive I feel, and my behaviour reflects this. I’m sure all of this  has contributed to my current status as a teddy bear and it is not good.

If anyone knows of any jobs suitable for teddy bears please let  me know.

Systems, snow, singing and other things

Well, we’ve had three weeks back at work now and what interesting weeks they have been. Unfortunately, I am using the word ‘interesting’ as a  diplomatic substitute for other words I could have used. So far, we have had a system ‘upgrade’ (or as my colleague called it a downgrade) which knocked the system out for four days. We then had to deal with all the resulting problems, which was fun.

On top of this we had snow. This was lovely to look at but troublesome to deal with, especially if you were trying to commute to work. I got to stay at home for a couple of days – one working from home and one as leave – because of the lack of transportation available. I was glad I did this, as the University of Doom didn’t seem to know whether to stay open or not and changed its mind several times over the course of a weekend. My poor colleagues. Here are a few pictures of the snow taken from the comfort of my front doorstep:

Meanwhile, the Shiny New Learning Centre continues to supply us with unexpected challenges, such as weird and definitely not good vibrations and strange smells in the office (not necessarily both at the same time).

I am still looking for a new job. I’m sure there must be one for me out there somewhere, but it is doing a good job (sorry) of hiding from me so far. It’s not really a good time to look for jobs at the moment, as there is rather a dearth of them, although there seem to be more around now than there were before Christmas.

We have had two choir practices so far this term – one was cancelled because of the snow. We’ve started rehearsing Vivaldi’s Gloria, which has been quite challenging so far, especially for the poor men. They’re not used to dividing into two parts, so now they’re not going to – we’re going to have female tenors! I really want to be one, but I think they’re being provided by the other choir (a girls’ school choir) and I can’t really sing the tenor part on my own until we join up with them – no one would hear me, apart from anything else! I have sung tenor before – a long time ago, when I was offcially a soprano. Anyway, I’m enjoying the rehearsals so far, and it actually sounds OK when all the parts are put together, even without anyone singing the tenor line (which is being bashed out on the piano).

In other news, Mr C has started volunteering as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant.

Ow!

This morning I was trying to help my colleague sort out the newspapers, but all I really succeeded in doing was cutting my finger on a bit of Tattle-Tape™ and messing up the stapling. Yes, I messed up stapling, using a stapler to staple the newspapers together. In my defence, there is more of an art to this than I realised, but it’s doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to work out that you don’t need to use the large stapler on the thinner newspapers (actually, you’re right, there is nothing in my defence),  and that if you do use the large stapler you create a health and safety disaster of pointy, sharp staples sticking out ready to catch unsuspecting readers unawares. I then tried to remove said hazardous staples but unfortunately, I removed more chunks of newspaper than staple. My poor colleague wisely took over doing the papers, but not before I’d cut myself on the Tattle-Tape™ and bled on the Financial Times.

Sometimes I think someone is having  fun seeing how many times in a day/hour/minute I can show people how incompetent I am.

Things I’ve been doing

I’ve mainly been at work, or at least that’s what it feels like! Not only has it been the beginning of the new academic year, but we have also moved into the Shiny New Learning Centre. The SNLC (or SNeLC  (sorry)), is lovely, but comes with its own problems, like an over-sensitive self-returns machine that goes into a sulk and stops working if anyone should dare to return books through it at anything other than exactly the right frequency. I don’t even know what the right frequency is, and I work in the library, so I don’t how the students will get the hang of it. Practice, I suppose. We’re currently posting people to take turns at standing beside the machine to help people put their books through correctly, although, as I said, I don’t even know what the machine’s idea of ‘correctly’ is.

Anyway, enough of that. I’m not supposed to be thinking about work when I’m not there.

I’ve been home to visit my family on a couple of occasions – once for my uncle and aunt’s 40th wedding anniversary party and once to sing Handel’s Messiah. I enjoyed both of these occasions, but I’m afraid I probably enjoyed the singing more than the party, much as I love my aunt and uncle! We performed the Messiah in the church I grew up and got married in, with people I’ve known all my life, a historically accurate orchestra (if that makes sense) and a church full of an enthusiastic audience. Plus, of course, the music is great. I like Handel’s music, because it makes sense – you can sort of tell where he’s going with it and he repeats ideas quite a lot. This is quite helpful when you’re sight-reading a part you’ve never sung before! We had a practice on the day, but that was it for me, so I had to muddle through as best I could and listen carefully to the people around me. I don’t think I made any mistakes anyone could hear, so that was OK. When I was singing, I felt the happiest I have felt for a long time.

What else has happened? I passed my CILIP chartership, which was a nice surprise. I can now put letters after my name – MCLIP, which stand for Member: Chartered Library and Information Professional. I don’t know why it’s not MCILIP – Member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. This has long been a mystery to me, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

The pacemaker seems to be working. I was still experiencing some strange rhythms, but I went to the pacing clinic in September and had the pacemaker’s settings adjusted and I’ve felt better since then. I’m feeling quite tired at the moment (hence having the day off today) but I think this is due to too much work, rather than anything directly heart-related. I’ve got another appointment at the pacing clinic in November.

The invisible library

I went to an invisible library yesterday. It was very cool. We stumbled upon it as we were wondering around the Charing Cross Road area and went to look at the old-fashioned second hand bookshops in Cecil Court. The Invisible Library is (until the end of today) a “library filled with books that have been alluded to in novels but have never actually existed…until now.”

The idea for the Invisible Library started off as a blog/website and three artists, Chloe Regan, Rachel Gannon and Fumie Kamijo, who make up the INK  Illustration collective took up the idea and decided to bring the books into existence. You can see photos of them and some friends doing just that on their blog.

The illustrators have drawn the covers for the “hidden novels”, which include the detective stories by Harriet Vane (the only author whose name I recognised – shows you how many books I haven’t read) from the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L. Sayers. Real live authors and members of the public visiting the library were then invited to write the opening and closing pages of the books.

The library in Cecil Court closes today, but the ‘librarian’ on duty told us their hoping to take the exhibition into public libraries soon. I thought it was a really intriguing idea and a fascinating exhibition. I hope the Invisible Library appears again soon.