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.

Article issues

Both weekends were spent at work to write on the article on the local libary in my hometown. By chance I came across a newspaper article from 1950 where a bookmobile service was reported to have started in that area. There was a photo from my town where six girls asked the librarian for adventure books. The librarian was also interviewed. It was a great addition to my article but it presents a big problem. The current bookmobile librarian told me this service started in 1972. This is also stated in the literature about the main county library. There is a gap of 22 years here. Most likely, the service in 1950 was discontinued shortly afterwards, but I can't find any information about that. This is typical of research - when you find more clues on the subject, it inevitably yields more questions.

At work I have given more guided tours of our catalogs. I had two desk duties and one storage round. The past week we also had quite a few meetings. We have started to have informal meetings every Monday morning, which is a good idea. The technicians hosted a national conference on the database system we use but I couldn't attend because of other tasks.

Movie

Last Thursday evening I actually went to see a movie. It was a documentary about a comedy duo, Hasse & Tage. They made several movies and revues together. The archive material from the productions is at my library. The people making this movie had been here to photograph some of it. The library name was also mentioned twice in the credits. It was a movie worth seeing.

Saturday I went on a fleamarket round in Malmö. I visited six stores, one of which was new to me. Got a fair amount of books for the library. Also groceries.

The week at work was hectic. I have almost caught up with the piles on my desk. I got a genealogy request from a library visitor, which was relatively easy to do. I have also started to do more catalog tours. I invited all my colleagues to this tour of the small but useful printed catalogs placed in the library. I have done that four times this week. Also had to go to the storage yesterday to remove a few meters of books. I am in the process of changing the call numbers on these books and will move them to the main library instead. There is high circulation numbers on those titles and it will be easier for everyone if they are closer at hand.

Back to work

Last week was mostly about research, flea markets and making preparations for work again. Friday morning, however, I drove north to Hässleholm. I met my mother and her boyfriend there, we visited an elderly lady who had invited us for lunch. A very tasty lunch, I must say; chicken casserole with cauliflower. After this I drove to the cemetery to plant some heather at the family graves. Then on to the summerhouse for the weekend.

Saturday I went to Färlöv to attend an event hosted by the local historical society there. Some people I know gave a speech about a book they are writing. I went through the archive material the historical society had brought. I also added to this material, giving them the bibliographies I had compiled and a few other things. Sunday I washed my car. We invited some relatives for afternoon coffee and waffles. After this I returned to my place. (My mother and her boyfriend have returned to Borås for the winter now).

Monday was the first day at work in a long time. During my absence the name of my department had changed. Two other departments also have new names. I will probably never learn to say the correct thing. There was a pile of books to attend to, and also several requests and e-mails to review. Tuesday I got desk duty and managed to remember most of the passwords needed. One of the recent employees wanted to learn more about this desk duty so I had an assistant for part of the day. Wednesday I still tried to catch up with the piles. I could tell people had noticed my presence because my phone rang quite a lot. In the afternoon I drove to the storage to search for missing books. At the archive center (where the storage is) I also attended a lecture by one of the people giving a speech this Saturday. This time the topic was different. She talked about three generations of women who were all baptists and how to find them in archive material. It was an interesting lecture.

Spa

The past week was rather relaxing. The biggest effort was undertaken Monday when I went to the Archive Center to do research. The staff wondered about my presence, they thought I was on duty, so I had to explain that I was on vacation. The research result was not that great but I got some more details about both current and old cases.

Tuesday morning I took the train north to Båstad, on the northwest coast of Skåne. I was there picked up by my mother and her boyfriend, who had driven across Skåne from the east side. After some driving we ended up (more or less by chance) at the right place - a spa in Torekov. It was really a great place. There were small pools both indoors and outdoors with 38 degree water, a cold pool, two different saunas and a room with a nice view of the ocean, where you could sit and just relax. In the afternoon we all got massage also. Lunch, afternoon coffee and cake plus snacks and fruit were all included. After this incredible day we drove down to my place. My mother and her boyfriend returned to the summerhouse the next morning, along the south and east coast.

The rest of the week nothing much happened. I did some chores, went for groceries and looked through some research cases. Today is Culture Night in Lund and the library will participate with exhibits, lectures and a stand-up comedy event (featuring one professional, one librarian and one technician).