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Aug. 4th, 2008 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI think I'll be able to finish the inventory tomorrow. I'm almost done with the straightforward slog with about another three hundred titles (out of sixteen hundred) left to go through. Then I have to deal with the AV stuff and the oversized books. Both of those are relatively small collections, but they're annoying and either awkward or fidgety.
When I call the big books 'oversized,' I mean that some of them are bigger than Cordelia. They're all paperbacks and thin, so they're not heavy. They flop and slip and bend. I loathe them. I understand that they're great for reading to classes of kids, but they're a pain to store and to handle.
The AV stuff frustrates me because it's not stackable. I'll have to alphabetize two racks of hanging bags and then count the contents of each bag, making notes about what doesn't match up. The racks are too heavy for me to move much, and the bags don't stack well because the contents are uneven (and the slippery plastic doesn't help at all). This is the part of the collection where I'm likely to find that some parts of our holdings for a title are there and some aren't. That is, with a single copy of a book, it's either there or it isn't. Each AV item has several components, either a cassette tape or a CD and several books. An AV set becomes a lot less useful if there are fewer than four copies of the book, and the tapes often wander away because they're small.
I've recognized two 'missing' books as things Cordelia brought home during the school year, so I have to spend some time tonight searching to find them. One, I had thought we'd returned. The other, I was pretty sure we hadn't but didn't feel much urgency over given that I'd be going back to do the inventory.
I've also found twenty or thirty uncataloged books. I think I'm going to stick them in a bag and put them by the teacher's desk with a note asking her which of them are hers and which are meant to be added to the general collection. The new librarians can catalog the ones that are actually going to be added. A few of the supposedly uncataloged volumes are things I remember cataloging and suspect that I just managed to miss as I scrolled through the LibraryThing listings. I'll go back and check those to see if I can locate the records.
Scott got his laptop's CD/DVD drive working again. The problem was purely mechanical, damage to the case that had warped things so that disks coming out of the drive hit the case and bounced back into the drive. Having that fixed meant that Cordelia could watch DVDs while I worked today. She also ran around and played. She seemed to enjoy herself. That was a great relief.
Tomorrow is going to be miserable. It's supposed to be hot, and the room is in the part of the church that isn't air conditioned (most of the building isn't, just some of the offices are), and I can't open the windows because I can't close them again without help. Pity the wireless signal is only reliable in that half of that room. I really, really hope that I can persuade Cordelia to drink something while we're there tomorrow. She drank very little today and worried me a lot.
This is one time when I really regret not being able to drive. If I had the option, I'd bring a chair so that I don't have to sit on the floor and keep getting up and down. I'd also bring a fan. Sadly, by the time I carry two laptops, my purse, snacks for Cordelia and the rest of her stuff, I'm overburdened. I've been sticking everything but my purse and her doll in the wire cart my SIL gave me. There's no room for anything else.
I suppose I should just remember that things could be worse. Scott works 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow, and the heat and humidity at the plant are always terrible. I could have to do what he does.
Anyway, don't expect thought from me until Wednesday at the earliest.
When I call the big books 'oversized,' I mean that some of them are bigger than Cordelia. They're all paperbacks and thin, so they're not heavy. They flop and slip and bend. I loathe them. I understand that they're great for reading to classes of kids, but they're a pain to store and to handle.
The AV stuff frustrates me because it's not stackable. I'll have to alphabetize two racks of hanging bags and then count the contents of each bag, making notes about what doesn't match up. The racks are too heavy for me to move much, and the bags don't stack well because the contents are uneven (and the slippery plastic doesn't help at all). This is the part of the collection where I'm likely to find that some parts of our holdings for a title are there and some aren't. That is, with a single copy of a book, it's either there or it isn't. Each AV item has several components, either a cassette tape or a CD and several books. An AV set becomes a lot less useful if there are fewer than four copies of the book, and the tapes often wander away because they're small.
I've recognized two 'missing' books as things Cordelia brought home during the school year, so I have to spend some time tonight searching to find them. One, I had thought we'd returned. The other, I was pretty sure we hadn't but didn't feel much urgency over given that I'd be going back to do the inventory.
I've also found twenty or thirty uncataloged books. I think I'm going to stick them in a bag and put them by the teacher's desk with a note asking her which of them are hers and which are meant to be added to the general collection. The new librarians can catalog the ones that are actually going to be added. A few of the supposedly uncataloged volumes are things I remember cataloging and suspect that I just managed to miss as I scrolled through the LibraryThing listings. I'll go back and check those to see if I can locate the records.
Scott got his laptop's CD/DVD drive working again. The problem was purely mechanical, damage to the case that had warped things so that disks coming out of the drive hit the case and bounced back into the drive. Having that fixed meant that Cordelia could watch DVDs while I worked today. She also ran around and played. She seemed to enjoy herself. That was a great relief.
Tomorrow is going to be miserable. It's supposed to be hot, and the room is in the part of the church that isn't air conditioned (most of the building isn't, just some of the offices are), and I can't open the windows because I can't close them again without help. Pity the wireless signal is only reliable in that half of that room. I really, really hope that I can persuade Cordelia to drink something while we're there tomorrow. She drank very little today and worried me a lot.
This is one time when I really regret not being able to drive. If I had the option, I'd bring a chair so that I don't have to sit on the floor and keep getting up and down. I'd also bring a fan. Sadly, by the time I carry two laptops, my purse, snacks for Cordelia and the rest of her stuff, I'm overburdened. I've been sticking everything but my purse and her doll in the wire cart my SIL gave me. There's no room for anything else.
I suppose I should just remember that things could be worse. Scott works 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow, and the heat and humidity at the plant are always terrible. I could have to do what he does.
Anyway, don't expect thought from me until Wednesday at the earliest.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 11:22 am (UTC)I probably won't take you up on it, however, because I expect to finish the project today. We'll make it through.