Archive Day

Last Saturday it was Archive Day. Many archives and libraries had open houses. This year my library participated in the exhibits at the Archive Center. The theme was "party and festivities". There were book sales, an entertaining film, short courses in genealogy, information booths and several lectures. Lots of people attended, the arrangement was a great success. I met a few colleagues there, both on duty and not. I came home with a few books also...

Sunday morning was spent at work. This was because I wanted to follow up on a clue I found in a database at Archive Day. There was a little progress, but I still can't find the origin of my soldier ancestor who is supposed to have come from Estonia (or possibly Russia). At noon I drove to my father's place to celebrate his birthday. It was a nice visit with great food; moose dinner and cake.

At work I got an introduction in cataloguing in the new and very complicated national system. My cataloguing colleagues are still very upset about the incredible work load they have now because the database system is so difficult. It takes such a long time to get one book processed that the activity level has decreased by 50-60%. This means that there are vast amounts of new books on shelves waiting to be catalogued and we have no idea if we have received a specific book or not the past six months. I needed to know how to add call number to the bibliographic item in the catalogue and this is thankfully not as complicated as regular cataloguing. It does take a long time, though. I have now added the books we got from the Economics library earlier and will continue with more backlogs.

At work the newly formed crisis team participated in a workshop, where we first soaked books in water and then tried to dry them again. It was training for something we hope will never happen in real life. We concluded that it is easier to wrap the book in plastic and freeze it, rather than spending time trying to get the water out by leafing in tissue paper.

Today I met a colleague and fellow book nerd in Lund. It was Amnesty's biannual second hand book sale. I didn't find anything for myself this time but I bought three books for the library. We also covered two thrift stores and enjoyed fika at a coffee place.