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Friday, November 23, 2012

Butter

Lots to do at work at this time of year. We are one staff member short, as he and his wife just had their second baby. The movers are dealing with complicated call numbers at the moment. It's the type of material we have housed at two different locations, so there's a lot of driving included. I have spent two days going through a large part of the collection. This is a collection that will be moved only in part. I have tried to mark the books that should stay on the shelves. I have never looked at those books that closely before and it was not nice to realize that many of them were placed in an incorrect order. It was hard work to get everything right again.

There was a technician at the new storage this week to update the programming. We are wondering a little if he really did that the way he should have, because the compact-system is not working better. We have had several staff meetings and workshops lately, for various reasons. There are many things going on; planning for the Christmas party, a new intranet, organizational changes and then the regular meetings.

My sister, who often enters consumer comptetions to win all sorts of things, wrote my name on an entry recently. I ended up winning 12 packages of butter! I need to get some baking done for Christmas, that's for sure.

The cold I had lasted for a very long time, almost three weeks. I never get that sick usually. I am still affected by it, but it's much better.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Book lecture

Last week I gave a short lecture at work. The subject was Biographical works that include "ordinary people". There are many biographical reference works with celebrities and people who had a high status in the society, but there are also quite a few containing information about more normal people. These books were commonly produced during the first half of the 20th century. I have seen many of these books in the stacks, and wondered why no one seemed to be interested in reading them. I have found several of my relatives listed in those books. Most of my colleagues didn't know they existed, so I showed some of them at this lecture. It wasn't that advanced, I just read out loud from the books, quoting the topic (often different trade categories like janitors, waitresses, farmworkers and automobile drivers) and gave some general hints on family history research. I have given this lecture before, but we have many new employees here, so it was worth doing again.

Saturday I went with my friend Eva to the archive center to attend Archive Day. There were lots of visitors, mostly older people. This is rather typical, as the younger ones tend to do their research in front of a computer at home instead. I had sent out a message to all my colleagues about this, because there were tours to the stacks and people had asked me what they look like. I saw three colleagues there, and all wondered why I was there (it's the same place we have our new storage, so I'm there for work often). I even went on one of the tours to the stacks, and they opened the doors to our storage and of course I couldn't help myself, so I explained about the shelving system and how it works (or not).

Sunday I was at work (the library this time) to do some genealogical research for someone else. A fairly big case but not so complicated. I got stuck when one ancestor had the same birthplace in all the household records, but he is not in the birthbook for that parish. Slightly annoying and I haven't been able to find the right place yet.

I have been sick for more than a week now, it's a cold that just goes on and on. Now I have problems speaking, so I e-mail my closest colleagues, even if they are sitting in the same room. I had big difficulties talking to the movers (I can only whisper), but I think they got the message anyway. The call number consists of digits this time, so it's fairly easy to understand.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Moving-mistakes again

Again, nothing written here in a while. I need my life to include more hours.

Two weeks ago we had the traditional dinner and bowling in Malmö with some colleagues. Very nice, many people turned up for it.

I have to take nine days off before the end of the year, because I can't save all of my vacation days. It's nearly impossible to do, since my job is so crazy right now. I did take one Monday off, but I ended up going shopping for the Christmas party we are planning, so that was really work. Last week was a memorable one. The movers have never made so many mistakes in such a short time before. It was a complicated call number system right there, and I really can't blame them. It meant that I had to help them re-shelve 50 plus 40 meters. It was a tough job (we had to move it twice) and we kept a pretty high pace. I haven't done something like that in years, so I was sore for days afterwards. I could really feel where my back problems are located. I'm glad I don't have their job, I would never survive it.

It is amazing, but despite the mistakes last week, the movers have relocated 20 000 shelfmeters of books in total. They have come halfway now. We celebrated this by giving them lunch.

Last weekend was spent at the summer house, where I met the rest of the family. It was a short visit, since I arrived very late due to the shelving mistakes. We went to the cemetery Saturday to place candles at the family graves for All Saint's. We also got a cookie overdose at mother's friend's house that afternoon.