I found this bit in an article about book burning entitled “Harry Potter and The Ministry Of Fire”

…outside the U.S., book burning is still in fashion. In May of this year, protesters in the Philippines and Italy burned copies of The Da Vinci Code to coincide with the release of the film version. In a tragicomic note, the Philippine Daily Inquirer pointed out that due to the high cost of the book, protesters likely only burned three copies of it, adding photocopies to make the pyre higher. In Ceccano, Italy, only one copy of the book was burned, even as protesters hurled tomatoes at the burners.

Standing for their beliefs AND mindful of the budget?

Going, going, gone

It’s my last day at my current library. So lets get this bit out of the way now.

 

Hooooooooooraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!

 

Hopefully in a month or so (whenever the position is offered), I’ll be working at the public library in my new town. But that is still to come. Hopefully, judging from the sporadic updates of this journal, I won’t be the blog maintainer!

 

 

 

More to come when I (a) have time to type and (b) more happens.

This is whats happening at my library at the moment. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNETPFbS3vg

More to come on the whole future of the Librarydude…..

Developments

I am not sure what to think. I am not sure what to say about this.

My library is going through a restructuring, a re-thinking if you will. All well and good. Any organisation that doesn’t reassess its structure and organisation is going to have troubles. However the two major proposed changes, (there are more, not counting possible staff razoring) that have been put forward are these.

1- Out of the eight remaining branches, designate half of them, the ones near major metropolitan areas, as “Tier 1″ libraries and continue offering fuller service. All others, in mostly outlying and/or residential zones., are now “Tier 2″ libraries. This is OK so far, apart from the fact that the tier 2 libraries, and these are PUBLIC LIBRARIES we are talking about, will now have no reference services at all anymore, only what the decision makers have called “leisure services”. After being questioned if this means no more Reader’s Advisory services (which, of course is a type of reference service), there was no answer.

2 – The collection will be redistributed according to the area. (I don’t know what this means either) . I think this means that if there is a demand for knitting books in the south, that all the knitting books will belong to that area’s library, (but won’t have patrons directed to them because there won’t be Reference services in the branch).

I’m sure they think this will work, but I don’t see how. I feel like it is more customer service out the window, we are no longer a library service, just becoming a bookstore that loans. Where is the information service of the library? I can’t answer that- that’s a reference question….

Been a little while hasn’t it? There are a few problems regarding work at the moment which I cannot go into at the moment, when the time is right there will be details.

Until then, here is one of the Ultimate Reader’s advisor tools. The Book-A-Minute!

I hope everybody had a great Christmas/New Year season. Mine was pretty good, aside from our town being hit by storms and flooding our backyard, and having problems with the electrics in the house, because the storm soaked though our roof. Electrician will be called ASAP but until he can check it out and give us the OK, we are relying on candlelight. This is kinda romantic for myself and my fiancee, but the kids get a little scared with the lack of light.

Work wise, things have been quiet.  I have had a break from library-work from the 24th December until tomorrow. Then its back in full swing to the grind of the public library. I’m thinking about moving on to something more stable though. Our library service has gone through a lot of upheaval in the last year, and it is no longer an enjoyable place to work. I was planning to hang in there until things improved, but I see it is currently on such a downward spiral that it is not going to happen soon, or at all.

Hence, I am looking for library work in another, ideally Fedrally funded agency. This will help me financially much more than the public library does.

It is just not worth struggling in a job I no longer enjoy. Hopefully I can grab something full time at a better place soon.

Dead Santa?

I logged on here to finally give an update about the new library, but I found this article on the WordPress.com site thats much more interesting.

How Google Earth Killed Santa Claus

ven though he apparantly has no concept of the phrase “The Library is CLOSED until tomorrow” (he snuck in while final preparations for the opening were being done) , the Loaded Dog has done some nice shots of the new library.

Here it is. And well worth an eight year wait.

Difficult people

I came across this book in my library today. Dealing With Difficult People In The Library by Mark Willis. Works like this are essential for those lucky ones who work in a library, especially a public library. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, I enjoy providing the service I do, and I get incredible amounts of satisfaction seeing a customer walk away happy that they have what they came for. What I do not like at all, however are the “difficult” people, (or as one of my previous collegues called them, “The Lunar affected” because the number of incidents increased around full moons. (Maybe there’s a study in that)), who are obnoxious, greedy, impolite, demanding and self-centred among other traits.

Willis’ work will help me with this…

Readers advisor links.

Our library service is trying to bring back the Reader’s Advisor aspect of public librarianship. Not a bad thing is it? So as an aid to me, here’s a couple of RA related links that may come in useful. I want to credit Rebecca Blood of What’s In Rebecca’s Pocket? for leading me to these links.

For locating books set in specific locations, try out Bibliotravel. Here you can enter the name of a  city, and you’ll retrieve a list of books set in that particular location. I tried it with my home city of Canberra (Australia) but only got one result

Debbie’s Idea (and a fine one it is), can assist with finding the first book of an author for a person to read.  It also lists the ones that are not recommended for the first time reader to the author.

What Should I Read Next is useful for finding, uh, what you should read next.

 Some of these may end up on my sidebar, some may not. I suppose it all depends on how useful I eventually find them, and whenever I get around to customising this blog some more.