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There has been some correspondence in the Times recently following an Audit Commission report that said some unkind things about the state of public library services in the UK. The general gist of the letters has been that libraries would attract more customers if they were not quite so bureaucratic in the way they treat intending new members. The following appeared in Thursday's paper:
"Sir, When I retired recently I tried to join the library. I took my passport and my driving licence as identification, but these weren't enough.
I was allowed in only when I went back with a letter from the golf club saying they could do without me as a member.
Yours, ... "
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I've long had an interest in unusual names, and particularly in peoples' names that were appropriate for the jobs that they did. This probably started when, as a youngster travelling on the top deck of the number 2 bus, I regular spotted the premises of Mr Cramp the chiropodist! In my college librarian days, I remember talking about this interest with one of my regular customers, the college chaplain. I was saying something about the lack of appropriately named people in the college itself, when he suddenly looked at me as if I'd gone totally potty. I should have put my brain into gear earlier - seeing as I was talking to the Reverend Ernest Hope!
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A patron couldn't find a book on the shelf today, so we are doing a search for it. (Usually such books have been mis-shelved, and they're hard to see without an extensive search.)
The title of the book? "Hidden in Plain View."
(Not quite as good as the story about the book "How to Train Your Dog" which came back with its corner chewed off -- but close!)
[I can add another candidate for this category. When I worked in a large acquisitions department we had great difficulty in getting hold of one particular report. Chasers were sent at regular intervals, but it was months before the thing eventually turned up. The title? "Delays in the supply of books"]
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I'm going through microfilm of government documents ...
One document from the United States Institute of Peace was called "Mortality and Foreign Policy." Of course it's a typo, it's supposed to be "Morality and Foreign Policy." Sometimes the typo makes more sense ...
[The Times had a good typo this week. Somebody was quoting the old adage about revenge being best when cold, but one misprinted letter changed "revenge" to "revenue". The principle may still hold true, however!]
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Bruce and I were looking through the Yellowstone Institute catalog the other night (available online at http://www.yellowstoneassociation.org/institute/catalog/) and we ran into these actual course descriptions. Both reminded us of the story about Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence:
Lamar Valley Service Learning-Noxious Weeds
July 12-14 (#720) Limit: 12
Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Instructor: Paul Miller & NPS Resource Management Staff
$50 (Member's fee $40)
Yellowstone now has 197 species of exotic plants that are spreading through the park, displacing native species, and progressively chipping away at the park's ecological foundations. The situation is most dire on Yellowstone's northern range where infestations are severe and the implications for wildlife are potentially great. This course is an opportunity to not only learn about the ecology and management of noxious weeds but to make a difference by directly assisting the National Park Service in the control of weeds in and around Lamar Valley. This course will be 25% classroom time and 75% field experience and will explore the origins, identification, ecology, and effects of noxious weeds on Yellowstone's northern range. Control projects will involve manual weed removal and surveys to document the amount and types of noxious weeds in the vicinity of Lamar Valley.
We will meet in the Lamar Ranch area at 9:00 am on the first day and end at 4:00 pm on the last day.
--So, what this means is, you pay the institute to pull weeds for three days!! (A few years back I wrote an article about how the Park Service was handing out pamphlets with pictures of these weeds, trying to get the tourists to pull them out on their own. Apparently that hasn't worked.)
Here is another real course description in the catalog:
Yellowstone's Insect Vampires
July 15 (#724) Limit: 10
Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Instructor: John Burger, Ph.D.
$65 (Member's fee $55)
This course explores the biology, ecology, and behavior of some of the very few animals you are allowed to kill in Yellowstone: insects seeking your blood and the blood of other mammals. The course will include a slide-lecture introduction to the biology, ecology, life cycles, and behavior of blood-feeding insects and emphasize their role in park ecosystems to promote an appreciation, if not love, of these "pests." The course will include field observation of habitats for mosquitoes, black flies, and horse flies, host-seeking behavior of snipe flies, and possibly others on human and equine hosts. The course may include a trip to selected mosquito breeding sites located in the Canyon-Norris area.
We will meet in the Lamar Ranch area at 9:00 am and end in the early evening.
--So, you pay the Institute to look at stagnant puddles that serve as insect breeding grounds. Yeah, that's something you could never see outside of Yellowstone!!
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I was looking up some suggestions for our library to buy a new book about animal feeds.(Our library is used by both working ranchers and agriculture students who need this information.)
I found one possibility, published in 2002 by Prentice Hall, called "Animal Nutrition."
The author? Peter McDonald. (Is he "old McDonald" I wonder??)
This is the real title and author of a book I shelved today:
"The Complete Book of Dogs" by A.J. and H.A. Barker.
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I was surfing the Internet the other day looking at other libraries across the country, and made a bizarre discovery.
It turns out Rhode Island calls their library cards "CLAN cards" (http://www.clan.lib.ri.us/). The acronym stands for "Cooperating Libraries Automation Network."
Gee, d'ya suppose they have a lot of meetings wondering why minorities don't seem to use the library much?
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Upon returning from lunch, I encountered this sight: I walked into the library to see my assistant pop up from beneath the reference desk with a hammer raised above her head. Without missing a beat, I calmly asked, "Um Connie, are there some issues we need to discuss?" Turns out she had just taken it upon herself to install a key hook we had been talking about earlier in the day. Whew! No disgruntled employees that day!
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[This one did not start life as a funny, but as a perfectly straight answer to a straight question on sololib-l. However, the typo in the last line launches it into the world of funnies!]
If you are cataloging under LC, then think long and hard before choosing Sagebrush's Spectrum. There are a number of places where the software assumes that Dewey is in use - you'll never get an accurate shelf list, for example. We've also had serious security problems with the Union catalog web interface.
That said, if I was suing Dewey, I'd probably be happy with the product.
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[And finally, another dip into the world of the strange names that librarians assign to cats and other pets!]
My cat is called 'cooking fat'. Think about it.....we call her Cooks for short and when she first arrived she used to use the bathroom carpet as her toilet and really was a Cooking
Fat!
[If you don't understand this one, just bear in mind that Dr Spooner would have had no trouble!]
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My ex-husband and I rescued a tiny 3-legged kitten. Karl, being an inveterate punster, insisted on naming him Yard - because he had 3 feet.
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In my house reside two snakes, a dog and a cat.
The speckled king snake is called Heineken, after the beer. The second snake is a Drymarchon corais erebennus, or Texas Indigo, "first cousin" to the monarch of North American snakes the Eastern Indigo snake. We call him Shadrack, Meshack the Indigo.
My worshipful yellow-lab mix dog is named Dante, which is only of note if you know that my name is Beatrice. Most people don't make the connection.
My husband's cat is named Gato, but mostly we call him "Get down from there!"
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Just a reminder - you can see "back issues" at http://www.oocities.org/edwyuk/ .
Please send your offerings for Episode 12 offline to john@jwelford.fsnet.co.uk
Thanks.