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Sunday, March 25, 2018

Book sale

This Wednesday evening I went with two colleagues to listen to a lecture on DNA genealogy. I might have mentioned before that it's the latest in the world of genealogical research. The lecturer was the author of a book on the subject and he knew basically everything. It was a very interesting lecture and he mixed anecdotes and facts in a good way.

The most crazy day at work was suprisingly enough Friday. The madness started at 8 AM when it was clear that three people were off sick. I had desk duty and couldn't help much and in addition to this we hosted a study visit from a Croatian librarian. I basically gave her a pile of requests, pointed in the right direction and told her to find the books. There was no time for a lengthy introduction. Luckily, those call numbers are numbers, so it's relatively easy to give that job to a non-Swede.

Saturday there was a secondhand book sale arranged by Amnesty in Lund. I went with a colleague and also met one other colleague there. All three of us admit to being nerds in the field. We all look for books for ourselves but we also try to find books missing at our libraries. My purchase was the smallest, only four items (mainly relating to emigrants). We ended the visit in Lund by going out for a salad lunch.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Furniture

I continued to be a patron for a few hours last week and had another go at the hard-to read letters. Thanks to two other colleagues we cracked some of it. I especially wanted a letter mentioning an old  manuscript deciphered and we managed that.

The week at work was as busy as ever. I had desk duty two days. The usual meetings are unavoidable, of course.

This Saturday my father and his girlfriend came to visit with the motor home. This was because I wanted to buy some pieces of furniture. I got a head board for my bed at one place and then we drove towards Malmö. There was a long wait on the freeway because there had been an accident but we made it to Ikea after a while. It was very crowded. We started out by having a very nice lunch. Then we opted for the somewhat shorter round and picked up a few things. I got a bedding set, a large bouquet of tulips and a rectangular footstool in blue color. At my apartment my father helped me with some minor repairs also.

It's still pretty cold here, it was 6 below zero this morning. The wind has calmed down a bit and the sun is shining so it's not that bad.

Monday, March 12, 2018

Praised bookservice

The article I wrote for the local historical society publication gave no response whatsoever but I guess not everyone is as interested in old archive material as I am. I wrote about a newly scanned archive series available online at the Riksarkivet website. I found my great grandfather's farm listed there, it stated how many cows he owned in 1917 and what kind of crops he grew in the fields, among other things.

At work I spend a lot of time weeding the reference collection. The current subject is Geography.

We have received much praise for our bookservice. One patron was just ecstatic about the fact that we were able to locate a unique book for her at the storage. She travelled from Blekinge province for this book and she sent a long thank you-note afterwards. She even sent this note to the newspaper, asking to have it published somehow. It feels rather odd to get such a response for doing one's ordinary job.

Last week I took one afternoon off and became a patron instead. I asked to have a volume from a manuscript archive retrieved. It contained over 300 letters written in the early 19th century by the owner of the Strö manor house to his nephew. There was a valuable book collection placed at Strö manor house 1785-1845 and I want to research this. It turns out that both these people had a handwriting that is extremely challenging to read. The manuscript librarian told me the nephew (who was of noble family) was famous for his illegible handwriting. I have 30 years experience and have to say not much was understandable. The last 20 letters or so were not possible to understand at all, the author was 87 years old by then and the letters were written with bad ink. Still, it was interesting to see the material and I could conclude that they did not discuss book-related issues in these letters.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

More research

Another busy week at work. I had to attend five meetings. I'm trying to learn the new database system we will install in June. The problem is that it is not near finished. Three of the meetings had to do with this new system. It's a pretty big challenge to create a teaching module for a system which is still being developed. We don't really know what the end result will look like. Or even if it will function, for that matter.

This past week there was a big misunderstanding between me and a colleague. She was sick Monday and we decided to switch desk duties so she would take mine on Friday instead. She forgot about it. Incredibly enough, no one noticed until about 1 PM, when the books from the storage round were still on the desk. We both rushed to get the tasks done and I hope the patrons didn't notice any of this. This week there were terrible problems with the trains and roads due to heavy snowfall and very high winds, so the number of patrons was rather low. Personally, I was lucky with the trains but several of my colleagues have been snowed in the entire week. Some people were able to work from their computer at home but not all.

I must have been one of very few people who still had a land-line phone but that is now cancelled. It was my phone company that decided to quit offering this kind of service so I decided it was time to let go. Now I only have the cellphone. It is for work but the subscription means free calls so I'm allowed to use it for private phone calls also.

Recently, I have engaged in quite a lot of research of various kinds. One research request and one article for the local historical society publication were finished a few weeks ago. I'm now gathering material for another (longer) article, relating to a book collection. At the same time I'm working on the bibliography for Norra Strö and have extended the search area to include also the nearby parishes.  It's all incredibly interesting and I wish there was more time for these things.