Illness

I should never have written here that I seemed to have avoided the illness my sister's family had. Only a few hours later I got sick with stomach flu. Terrible. It was an awful week. I did very little. I tried to write some emails and tidy up around the apartment, but it was not very productive. I'm much better now and I have worked today. The movers have managed without me, luckily. There weren't too many items for me to attend to here. This is Easter week and many people are away on holiday. My mother has invited me to the summer house, where she is staying right now. I'm going there on Wednesday.

Still pretty cold here, although quite sunny. Someone said it hasn't been this cold in March since 1978.

Musical in Göteborg

Tuesday last week I made the tallest mover (he is close to two meters) help me rearrange the misplaced journal collection. We didn't need the ladder because he could reach the top shelf anyway. It took the entire afternoon to shuffle all the boxes into a correct order. They aren't so heavy (the journals are printed on newspaper paper), but there are a lot of them. In late afternoon, when the workday was really over, we had about 30 meters left. To get it finished, all the others helped out. We were seven people standing in a row, passing the boxes from hand to hand. I'm amazed about their commitment to help out. I didn't even ask.

I took last Monday off and went to my favorite mall outside Helsingborg. It was a nice visit, but I got to pay for it the next day. The tasks had mysteriously piled up and I had to stay at work for longer than I thought. Some researchers had complicated questions that took a while to answer.

Friday I went by train to Göteborg in the afternoon. I met my mother there, and we went out to explore the city. There were some nice stores and we had dinner at a cozy restaurant. In the evening we saw the musical Chess at the Opera House. We had given each other tickets for it at Christmas. It was a fairly impressive musical with strong voices. My mother was more excited about it than I (probably because I have seen quite a few and can compare). But it was worth seeing it. We took the bus to Borås late evening.

Saturday we were very tired. Still, we visited the charity shop where my mother volunteers some days a week. They have moved to a new location, where there is more space for the fabric and sewing materials. Then we went on to the large shopping area, but didn't get much. Sunday we just did a short trip to a village outside Borås, to a second hand store. I had taken Monday off also, so I spent some time at my mother's place. Most of the others got an unpleasant illness overnight, so I left in the morning (it seems like I didn't catch it). I arrived back home by train Monday evening.

The weather is bitterly cold. High winds and below zero. Not nice at all. Where is spring?

Rearranging

We still haven't rearranged those 300 meters of journals. There have been so many other things to do this past week. I have been at the storages a large part of my working time. Even last Saturday, sadly enough. I don't work on weekends normally, but it was necessary to get the books already placed on carts into a correct order, otherwise the move would have been delayed. The move is at its last stage now. There aren't many collections left at the old storages. At the largest storage we are now clearing out most things belonging to us; we have disconnected the phone, thrown out the computer, moved the boxes and office supplies to the new storage and the guys are removing the book-ends from the shelves. I think the move will be done by May, probably. That's way ahead of schedule. Before we started, I thought it would take a year and a half. There is the ephemera collection to be moved also, but that's not my department. There will be a lot to do also after the guys have moved everything. We have to rearrange several misplaced parts of the collection and put up new signs. I have to write a new instruction manual and there are lots of items in the database that have to be changed. Two of my colleagues are already working on the last thing. It's a big project, one of them recently got a print-out with 4000 items to be changed and that was just one callnumber (out of 20). It's going to take a while.

There have been parties at work this week, one birthday and one retirement. Both yielded cakes and cookies. Nice!

It's still a pretty cold climate here, but much lighter. The sun is really blinding us. The spring flowers have already turned up in the park in front of the library.

Many mistakes

Another busy week gone by. I have spent a lot of time at the new storage to go through some of the material placed there. I have noticed several mistakes in shelving, so I have rearranged some collections. I have discovered some books to be in the wrong place altogether, and moved them. A very large mapbook was placed among the oversize journals, which is completely wrong. Most of these mistakes were made years ago. This material has been moved a few times already, so every move has added to the mess. I have also caused some pretty amazing mistakes this week. They moved 300 meters of large journals according to my instructions. When the journals were in place at the new storage, I noticed that it was all in the wrong order. The movers had done exactly as I told them, so the fault is mine. I didn't look at the collection closely enough, before pointing out the moving order. That storage has very bad lighting, and I think many of the (current and previous) mistakes have been made because of that.

The movers started on a large collection of dissertations yesterday, and that was not fun at all. It's dark, damp and lots of spiders in that area of the storage. The collection turned out to be a very difficult one to move, because almost nothing was placed in correct order. Also, the shelves fell down when they started loading the books.

Next week will be busy, because we have to rearrange those 300 meters of journals. Getting the dissertations in the right order will also be a challenge.

Oversize journals

Last Monday morning we had no internet access at work. This was terrible. We were unable to perform any of the tasks we do first thing we get to work. We couldn't see what requests we had and we couldn't print the call slips. Nothing functioned. We just stood there and tried to figure out what we could do that didn't require a computer. Very little, it turns out. We couldn't even send an e-mail to the support service, to complain.... It's incredible how dependent we are on the internet. It took an hour before the problem was fixed (and that's a long time in this context).

Last week was busy. Some people were on leave (it was a school vacation week) and some people were sick (flu still rages here). The movers had problems with staffing, so there were several new faces. They are now moving the oversize material. There are extra large shelves at the new storage for this. It's difficult to manage these journals, mainly because of the size and because the material has a tendency to fall out of the boxes when handled.

The mover's truck gave up its last breath Tuesday, and was exchanged the same day. The new one works very well, and I hope they will get to keep it.

Speaking of mistakes and such, I was at the new storage to assist the movers, and in this process I managed to tip a cart over. I got two meters of folio format books on my feet and also broke a nail. Annoying.

 

Weatherwise it's still winter, but we don't live in complete darkness anymore. It's rather light out in the mornings now.

Another 10 000 meters moved

Incredible week. Great variation in events, not always fun ones. The lenten bun we got Tuesday was tasty, of course. The rest of that day I would really like to forget as soon as possible. The madness began when the moving truck refused to start when they were going to deliver the first load of books in the morning. The battery was dead. After a long and complicated chain of events (where we tried to help, but failed), they called a company that came out and replaced the battery. Most of the working day passed by, with very little book moving done. It was frustrating.

The social club event Wednesday evening was interesting. We attended an exhibit in Malmö about Tutankhamun. All the artifacts were copies, but very well done. It was exact replicas of all the things found in his tomb. Lots of history to learn there. There were incredible valuables, large objects of gold and magnificient pieces of art and also practical objects he was thought to need in the next life.

This week I also attended a lecture about the Swedish Dictionary, a very large dictionary describing the Swedish language from 1521 until present times. Their staff uses our library very much, they even have access to most of the stacks, so we see them quite a lot. The work writing the dictionary started in the 1880s, and they are now on the letter U, so they have been working on it for some time.

Thursday it was time again for a lunch with the movers. We celebrated the fact that they have moved an additional 10 000 shelfmeters of books. They have actually done about 75% of it now. Very impressive. The largest storage is rather empty, we don't have to retrieve books there that often anymore.

Chocolate cake

Busy days at work. This is flu season and some of my colleagues are sick.We'll see if I get it too. We have had a tough time at the library, just getting the ordinary work done. This week we were told we had to remove the dumpster container we have at the largest storage immediately. We had just had it emptied, so I spent two days there, throwing away as much junk as possible, in order to fill it so that it can be picked up. I got help from a mover, and I'm glad, because that was a really boring job. The movers are at the main library now, loading a long series of periodicals in folio format. They are working fast and it means that I have hurry making plans for the next sections. I usually mark the beginning, where the gaps should be and the ending. I also measure a lot. Usually book shelves. To see what sections might fit where. I have been surprised a few times, when the number of shelf meters have turned out to be other than on my list of the book collection.

It is obvious that I have too many things on my mind, because I forgot to bring the cake I had baked for the Friday coffee. I realized this when I had already arrived at work, so I borrowed the storage round car and drove home to get it. It was a delicious chocolate cake with peanuts. I couldn't let that go to waste. Yesterday afternoon one of my old school friends came to visit. I think it's three years ago I saw her last. I showed her the library and we had a good time talking.

It seems like my bosses trust me. This past week I asked for the company credit card and they gave it to me without asking why. Too bad that I'm so honest... I needed it to buy tickets for a social club event next week. I did tell them about it.