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Monday, June 29, 2015

Midsummer and fleamarket

Midsummer Eve was spent at the summer house with my mother and two of her friends. It was too cold and rainy to do anything else than sitting inside the entire weekend. We had the usual meal with herring and potatoes, with some boiled eggs.

Last week was very busy. My mother and I arrange a fleamarket at Furuboda every year (though last year we had too few items so it was cancelled). This year we had plenty. So many things were left unsold because people didn't see all of them. It was really crammed with stuff, both on the tables and on the floor. My mother and I were there five days in a row to sort things, put up signs, hang paintings, arrange books in rows and try to sell it at two occasions. We were 23 volunteers at the main salesday on Friday. We were all exhausted afterwards but at the same time it's a fun project. The proceeds go to Furuboda's summer camps for disabled children.

My sister and family arrived Sunday evening, just in time to help celebrate my mother's birthday today. Some friends were invited also for a delicious salmon meal and homemade birthday cake. Afterwards I got a ride to the train and arrived back home this evening. I will work at the library from tomorrow until mid August. Just as the weather forecast predicts sunny and warm weather (it has been very miserable so far with heavy rainshowers and cold winds)...

Monday, June 15, 2015

Fun workshops

Last week at work I arranged two workshops on biographical material. In essence, I forced my colleagues to do genealogical research! Not in their own families, though. I gave them basic info about famous 20th century Swedes and told them to find that person's parents and grandparents. I provided weblinks and booklists and showed them basic search techniques. In my opinion they did very well. Some were very ambitious and located more details than I asked for. Several of them thought it was fun! And so did I!

The other tasks at work were not so exciting. We have a project involving weeding the reference collection and we wanted to know what books are actually used. We asked the visitors to put the used books on carts instead of back on the shelf. I had the worst week so far, I wrote down the titles of over 100 books and then shelved them properly. It actually seems like the collection is more in demand than we initially thought, which is a good thing. The rest of the week was spent trying to do as much as possible before the summer. I will work for the most part, but several projects require the assistance of colleagues, so we have had many meetings recently.

Today was the first day of the summer pass, which enables you to travel everywhere in Skåne the entire summer. I did remember to buy a pass in time. Today was also the first day with summer routines at work. Honestly, it could have gone better. Somehow we forgot to retrieve books on the third floor of the stacks... Remarkable. And rather embarrassing. We were few staff members today, but that really is no excuse.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Mouldy books

I had to drive the storage round twice this week. At the same time I did a project. We are going to move many of the journals from the open collection to the stacks. Before we can do that we have to check if there is actually room for them at the different call numbers. It was a long list and I didn't have time to check all of them, but with the help of the other colleague involved in this project, we got a complete list by the end of the week. I would say we can move back 80% of them to the stacks.

We discovered some water-damaged books at the new storage this week. There was a leaking pipe two years ago and apparently we didn't notice back then that some books had been affected by the water. Now I had to remove about 15 books that looked awful - black mould was growing on them. There is no way we can save them, they will have to be thrown away. Touching mouldy books would really require a different type of gear, but I didn't know what to expect so I didn't have any gloves. I normally don't have to handle "bio-hazard" material...

Saturday was the national holiday but I only noticed that because the library was closed. I had to find something else to do and chose a visit to my favorite mall. It was crowded and not as nice as other times. I had lunch at Ikea and then bought a jar of cloudberry jam. Today I was at work like usual, but this time I did research for someone else. I got a request from a man who will give his wife her family history as a birthday gift. To 75% it was very easy because those ancestors lived in the same parish, but the remaining 25% will be difficult because they originated in Norway. There will be at least two empty boxes on the ancestor chart and that bothers me very much.

The weather here is a little out of the ordinary. It was the coldest May in over 50 years. It has changed now and it's around 16-18 centigrades in the daytime, but I wouldn't say it's warm. It's not a pleasant start of the summer season.