Christmas and New Year's

I am back at work after a long vacation over the holidays. The weekend just before Christmas I went to two different malls. The traffic was terrible but I was lucky and got what I came for and then managed to sneak out again thanks to a city bus which blocked the road very conveniently (for me, that is).

Christmas Eve I went by train to Göteborg. This time the celebration was at my sister's sister-in-law's place. Very nice evening with lots of good food, the traditional TV classics and presents. I got hand lotion, a Christmas tree ornament, a book, chocolate truffles and a DNA-test (which will arrive by mail later). I'm rather curious of the last thing.

Christmas Day we had a very unusual lunch at my sister's place - turkey! This is more an English/American tradition but we liked it and I hope there will be a repeat. It tasted very good. I hadn't visited my sister for a while, they had remodelled quite a lot. Most of the upstairs was renovated with new floor boards, wallpaper and ceiling. The furniture was also rearranged. It looked very stylish.

The shopping at the after-Christmas sales was limited. My mother found kitchen curtains for me and I bought a top and some underwear. A few days later I went with my mother and her boyfriend to the summerhouse. It was pretty cold inside.

The New Year's celebration was quiet, we invited one of mother's friends for the meal. We had a three course meal; salmon sandwich, chicken & bacon casserole and frozen elderflower cheesecake. I made the dessert, which was a great success. There was not many fireworks, so it was a rather calm celebration of the new year and decade.

We have no snow in sight here and the darkness is surrounding us all. I am not complaining, as others have a much more horrible situation. The fires in Australia worry me a lot. I have heard from some relatives there, they say the smoke haze is problematic. Right now, I don't think any of our relatives have had to evacuate. The fires are heading east towards their residences, so it might just be a matter of time.

Christmas goodies

There are many good things on offer at this time of year. At work we have bowls filled with candy, gingersnaps, saffron buns, chocolate and cookies of many kinds. This past Friday we had a glögg party with even more cookies. Very nice.

The amount of requests were reduced to a small number this week but the returns are causing problems. We are running out of carts because we have several projects in the stacks that mean many books have temporarily been placed on carts instead of the appropriate shelves. We were told that some of the extra workers will continue helping us also in January and February. For this we are very grateful.

I just sent out the annual Christmas letter by e-mail. If any one feels neglected, please let me know.

On Christmas Eve I intend on travelling by train to Göteborg, where we will have the main celebration that day. Then on to Borås for further visitation with family. There is no snow in sight this year, unfortunately. I hope you will have a nice Christmas and all the best for the new year! It may take a while before I can write here again.

Christmas party

Last Wednesday the fire alarm went off early in the morning at the library. It was a minor fire in the electrical central most likely caused by a rat. We had to wait for quite a while before we were allowed into the house. It left a strong smell in a large part of the building for several days afterwards.

The same day as the fire some people from another library came and borrowed the small truck we have. They used it to bring several hundred boxes with books to our storage. They shelved, thankfully. That library previously consisted of five units, so they had been forced to weed their collections. The books they couldn't keep were handed over to us instead. I think there will be more deliveries in the future.

Last week we found out that the boss of my department is leaving his job at the end of this year. This came as a huge surprise. It will be difficult to find a replacement.

Thursday I handed over the research to the vice chancellor, who was happy to receive it.

Friday it was time for the Christmas party at work. It was arranged by the special collections department. Remarkably, there was only vegetarian food. I managed to get some herring from a colleague who had smuggled a jar in to the party. There was a quiz, at which we did well and some singing, where the quality can be discussed. It was a nice party with a summer theme, so we had been asked to dress accordingly, I had a yellow blouse and sunglasses.

Over the weekend I put up my Christmas tree and decorated it. The branches can just about take the weight of the ornaments. It is overloaded, like every year. It looks great.

Shelving

Last week was Black Week, with lots of sale offers. Discounts were sometimes quite large, with 20-30% off the entire stock. Over the weekend even higher. It was a good deal if you needed anything. I got some new underwear and a top, so no excessive purchases. I got a pair of shoes also at an outlet store.

Saturday I covered two malls and Ikea in Malmö. The latter for the buffet. Again, very tasty. This time I spotted a colleague in the restaurant so I joined her and her family. They too had come for the food.

Over the weekend I got the Christmas decorations down from the attic and displayed some of them. The tree will have to wait for a while.

At work there has been lots to do. The extra workers have been very dedicated and used up all the cardboard boxes and labels for the projects we asked them to do. Friday and Monday afternoons I brought three of them to the storage for some shelving. They learned quickly.

Yesterday was the first time this season that the temperature went below zero. This morning it was somewhat icy on the roads but I didn't have any problems. One of my colleagues had a car accident and didn't get to work at all. He is not physically injured but shocked.

Ikea lunch

The RFID tagging in the open collection was finished earlier than expected. They were done this past Friday. They have the reference collection to do next. I have also taught the extra workers how to change call numbers in our database, so that they can help out weeding the books that should be moved to the closed stacks.

Saturday a week ago it was the biannual Amnesty book fleamarket so I went there to get books for the library. The selection was not as good as previous years but I managed to find seven books. I was there with a colleague, she bought books for herself.

The research for the university boss continues. I have had long hours at work because of this tagging project so I have done most of the research on weekends. I have too much overtime and needed to take leave for a few days so the other days I had to work even more. This past week I took Tuesday and Wednesday off because there were some work to be done in my apartment. I don't like to hand over the key to someone else so I was at home when they adjusted the radiators the first day and made changes to the internet connection the next day. The first guy came early in the morning so I drove to Ikea in Helsingborg afterwards. I had a marvellous lunch there - the Christmas buffet. The herring is really tasty. Småland style ostkaka for dessert, with strawberry jam and whipped cream. Incredible.

This past week I got one more research request. I have done research for him before, he is a brother of a former colleague. He treated me for lunch and handed over his research. He had done a very good job with it, there were source references to everything and it was clearly written. There were some gaps in it that he asked me to investigate.

RFID

Monday last week we started tagging the books in the open collection with RFID. It means Radio Frequency Identification. It's a sticker you apply to the inside of the book volume and then connect it to the catalog entry. This is called tagging. There are some 50 000 books in the open collection. We have engaged both temporary and regular staff in this work. Today we ran out of stickers. More have been ordered but might not get here until tomorrow. The tagging will be endless because we have to do all the books that circulate from stacks also. We resisted this project for many years because of the enormous amount of books here.

Last week I attended a workshop on collection building. It was surprisingly interesting. Two librarians from the Royal Library and Uppsala University were invited to speak. We all have huge collections that take up too much space. There are thoughts on cooperating more, so that for instance one journal title exists in one library and not in seven places. The owning library has to have a copying service in that case. The discussions have just started, it will be a long way getting there.

Saturday was Archive Day. I attended two different lectures at the Archive Center. One was about other sources for genealogy than church records. Nothing was really new to me but it was still nice to get an overview. The other lecture was rather sad. It was a doctor who told the heartbreaking story of a psychiatric patient in the 20th century. The lecturer included general history of psychiatric care and illustrated with clippings from medical records.

I got a research request from the university vice chancellor (the university boss). No pressure... He has some interesting ancestors. There was one emigrant and I have great difficulties finding out what happened to her. I spent Sunday at work to do this research but it will require more digging.

Book searching

The past two weeks have been very hectic at work. Because of other people's illness or absence I have driven the storage round several times and have had a lot of desk duty. There were several other challenges recently. One student asked for the history of our old card catalog. I suggested one book containing the general history of the library but felt this was not enough. I asked my colleagues and got some old work material like call number lists and old instructions for her. Another patron asked for two specific 17th century dissertations which the staff couldn't find. I heard about this just as I passed them in the corridor and offered to help. I was given the year, author and subject, and managed to locate both dissertations. It was very difficult. One other time both the patron and the staff had failed to find a book in the open collection. I got this message when they had given up. Of course I found the book. Another case regarded a book printed 1848 not in the old catalog. The question was could we have it anyway. Yes, we did. The problem was to figure out where but I managed because the Royal Library had it in their catalog with a shelf location code similar to ours. I am only telling about the successes here...

We have also been busy moving more high circulation books from storage to the main building, attended a workshop an entire day about the future plans for our department and made preparations for what is going to start on Monday. More details in the next blog entry.