Staff day

The TV-series about Swedish celebrities searching for their ancestors was so popular that they have continued with more stories. In the program this Monday a comedian/musical artist wanted to know more about his own father, who was an opera singer and had died early. There was a rumor in the family saying that the opera singer had one more son, and it turned out to be true. He was finally located, and was rather surprised to learn that he had more siblings. It was a fascinating account and I look forward to the rest of the programs.

Today we had a staff day in the afternoon, meaning that we all were gathered in a auditorium to listen to a few different speakers. First there was information about the budget and other administrative issues, then there were two presentations of projects. One was a project I'm involved in. It's a service to the patrons where we scan articles and send the links directly to the patrons, instead of them coming to the library in person to make copies. It saves everybody time and effort. It's a very popular service and I think we don't get enough credit for all the work we do. Most of the journals are at remote storages and it's a heavy load every day. One of my colleagues gave the speech and ran the slide show, although the technical problems were large. The auditorium didn't have internet access, which was unbelievable. The other project was about a large manuscript archive, for which a historian has been hired to make a complete inventory of. Very interesting material, it includes personal letters and documents from royalties, noble families and other prominent persons from about 1500 until about 1800. The staff day ended with a retired professor of literature giving a speech about a Swedish author, Hjalmar Gullberg. The professor repeatedly praised our library for all the assistance he had been given over the years (47!). We have retrieved lots of books for him, and I remember getting the one he spoke about today.

On the way home I stopped by at the medical center and got a flu shot. They were really fast, it took about 45 seconds in total. It will be interesting to see what side effects I will get from the flu shot. Some of my colleagues got strange sickness sensations and headaches.