When something important happens in my library service, the first thing I want to do is tell people about it. I have my own intranet site, and extensive mailing lists of regular customers - these channels have proved to be highly effective in the past. The news that the library was to close came via a phone call from America late last Friday, but it was only on Monday that a chap from HR came down to the library to talk about the practical implications. We agreed that the library could be shut down by the end of May. I asked if I could announce the closure. "Oh no", I was told. "We have to make sure that everything is properly planned for disposing of the stock. We'll need to set up a meeting with management ... etc ...etc. In the meantime, just carry on normally as though nothing has changed". Carrying on normally means, as far as I am concerned, issuing books for a 4-week period, with no limits on the number of items that people can hold.
Somebody must have overheard our conversation, and mentioned it to one or two other people, because shortly afterwards people started arriving in the library and borrowing books by the armfull. The queue soon reached right to the end of the room, and the two of us spent the rest of the day doing nothing but issue books. The same applied to the next two days, until the shelves were virtually empty. Our average daily bookloans in recent months have been around the 25 to 30 mark. For the past three days we have issued 865, 945 and 713 items respectively.
Our people, not being particularly slow on the uptake, have worked out that it is not possible to return books to a library that closed two weeks previously, and that their best bet is to set up their own local collections. All power to their elbow, says me!
And the HR guy has yet to make contact about setting up a meeting relating to the orderly disposal of the stock!
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A customer of ours told the following joke just now. Please stop me if you've heard it before.
A doctor, a prostitute and a librarian were debating which was the oldest profession. The doctor claimed this distinction, on the grounds that as long as there have been people there has been illness. The prostitute reckoned that as long there have been men they have required the sexual services of women. The librarian turned to both of them and pointed out that before there were any people, male or female, there was chaos, and that his profession had been dealing with it ever since!
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[This item was not sent as a "funny", but I reckon that it qualifies in the "odd titles" section!]
Can anyone tell me where to get an article by Griffith RM: Don't eat that: the erotics of abstinence in American Christianity.
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Another public library story.
I was working in a public library with a large Spanish-speaking population. We often had high students come into the library looking for materials to help them understand the English literature they were reading in school (Shakespeare being difficult enough for many native-English speaking students).
Since English was not their primary language, the reference librarians learned to recognize what they were looking for when they asked for "old English books" or "English letters" instead of literature. One day a young man asked me for "old English letters", I asked a few questions to make sure which author he was looking for and if he wanted a video or book.
No, he wasn't looking for Shakespeare or Chaucer. No, he didn't want a video. He wasn't looking for literature or a book for school. He wanted "Old English letters" like this - and pulled up his t-shirt to show me the tattoo on his stomach of a name written in gothic script.
I helped him find a history of typefonts book with what he wanted.
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I work as a solo librarian in a company and a little while ago our post room started passing on to me envelopes which contained invoices (not mine), I used to look at them and pass them on to the accounts department. Well I get lots of mail that the post room doesn't know who to direct it to. But an explanation just struck me today, they are addressed to the "Book keeper", well I know I am the Librarian but...
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[Guess what, chaps and chapesses? It's cat name time again!]
A colleague had two large marmalade cats - Mr Marx and Mr Engels. A few years back at the local vet we met two large marmalade cats and told accompanying humans of Mr M and Mr E. Oh, ours are Pushkin and Trotsky (Windows word check rejects Pushkin but accepts Trotsky).
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My first cat was called Guinness, since he was black with a white patch and came from an off-licence. Second cat is called Rush, because his form of activity is mad dashing about
interspersed with near-coma.
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I used to have two cats. They were both grey males. (Actually I had a grey male kitten when I was a child, named Smoky. My next door neighbor (age about 4) threw him in the sewer to see if he could swim. He could, but got pneumonia and died. I went over and beat up the kid. I got punished since he was younger than I was. To this day I say that it was not fair--I was justified in beating him up.)
[Note from editor - it was a supposedly mild-mannered lady librarian who wrote this!]
One was named Shadow, after the little poem......
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me.
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He used to follow me everywhere and I stepped on him more than once. One time I couldn't find him anywhere. I lived in a one room apartment. When I was on the phone to my folks crying, he started to mew. He was *inside* the sofa bed and had to be dragged out. He kept doing this until he got stuck because he was too big. Shadow loved to ride in the car. In fact, he sat in the car so he wouldn't miss out in case we went somewhere.
The other was named Chiquito. Actually, his real name was Solomon and he belonged to our neighbor in the trailer park (this was *ages* ago). When our neighbor went to jail (he sold marijuana to a narcotics cop) we rescued the kitten. He was about 6 months old, but looked like a 2 month-old kitten. Since he was the "little one" and my then-husband was Cuban, we kept calling him "El Chiquito." But, once he started eating he started to grow. He wound up standing about a foot tall and weighed 14 pounds. He was big, but was still called Chiquito. Chiquito hated the car--he got carsick. And he thought Shadow's tail was a wonderful toy.
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A few years ago, I was staying with some friends who had a grey and white cat called Sasha. I asked them if he was called Sasha because he was a Russian Blue. They laughed, and said, "No, we're hoping to show him in pet cat shows, so we wanted a really distinguished name; we got so fed up with all these pet cats called Socks or something that we called him Sacheverell Simpkin!"
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First, the story about my friend with whom I exchange cat-sitting duties. She acquired 2 kittens from the animal shelter, one yellow tabby and one black DSH with a small speck of white, and named them Bert and Ernie for the Sesame Street characters. Unfortunately (or not), on their first visit to the vet, Ernie's name was changed to Nelly. On their second visit to the vet, my friend was holding both cats in their carrier when the receptionist called for 'Bert and Nelly' -- hearing 'Bertinelli' she did not respond and only after the third or forth call did she realize it was her turn to see the doctor.
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I adopted 2 kittens in June of 1991, litter-mates, a yellow tabby and a predominantly gray tortoiseshell. They were 8 weeks old and I could hold both of them in one hand. The yellow tabby became Bull Winkle, or B.W., and the other kitty, Rockie, from the cartoon series, Rocky & Bull Winkle. As if their names predestined them, B.W. became a 20+ pound (U.S.) 'moose' and Rockie is a petite, 12 pounder. Unfortunately, I lost B.W. to liver failure in 1996. To keep Rockie company I adopted Oliver (known as Ollie), a 4 year old gray tabby. Luckily, they have adjusted to each other beautifully and they have even accepted my new husband.
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[And here's a cat name "tail" of my own]
When I first met my wife, she had a tabby cat named Benson. A year or two after we moved to our current house, Sue's mother discovered, in her own home, some half-page newspaper advertisements that had amused her at the time, and which she had put to one side. This was a series of three ads relating to a company in Liverpool called Bensons which was about to move to new premises. Each ad showed a cat that was "part of the firm", with the captions "The Benson cat is a worried cat", "The Benson cat is a moving cat" and "The Benson cat is a settled cat". The cat in question was the spitting image of our own Benson cat, who had been born many years after the ads had appeared, and had been named in total ignorance of the newspaper ads. We framed the ads, and they still adorn the wall of our stairs long after our Benson has gone to the great litter-tray in the sky.
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Just a reminder - you can see "back issues" at http://www.oocities.org/edwyuk/ .
Please send your offerings for Episode 11 offline to john.welford@marconi.com
Thanks.
John Welford
Marconi, Coventry UK
john.welford@marconi.com
02476 562236