Thursday, June 14, 2007

Brownie bribery

It was a hodgepodge day in academic library land as we close in on the finish line for the first four-week summer session. Students were frantically printing brochures for class, in color no less, and preparing final project power point presentations. As usual during end of term madness, most of my reference questions were technology related; can you help me download music (no) and why is my presentation burned on a CD-RW appearing as "read only" (it shouldn't).

During this time a friend of mine is conducting inventory on the juvenile books, she works in technical services and wants to finish this particular chore before the students return in a couple of months. Yesterday I mentioned needing to shelve the books on my new bookshelf. Today she shelved both bookcases of old "new" books, hence the brownies. Technically it was not a bribe when she volunteered for the task, but the time she saved me was priceless. Her well-earned reward was a gooey (her request) chocolate brownie with icing and nuts (ick).

Everyone has particular library talents, mine is NOT shelving, at least not if you want to find the books when I have finished. This same wonderful friend, and I'm not being snide or snarky, brought me a nice pile of book slips, purchasing information from B & T the cataloger gives us when books are added to the collection. My relief was palpable. I was concerned the last three entries on my resource center blog were going to be hour's updates. Wouldn't that look lovely for someone viewing the blog for a first time? I was able to add several entries this morning consisting of juvenile fiction, juvenile literature, juvenile biographies, and graphic novels. Sure I will still need to do an hour's update when leaving for ALA and my subsequent vacation, but viable posts will bookend the information.

I finished the web page/handout this afternoon, found a good buy on CD's (100 for $30) and laser printer labels during a lunch errand, and began burning the items on CD's while designing the label. In the midst of this undertaking my boss arrives and asks if I might happen to have a copy of an article I gave him several months ago from American Libraries; and if not, could I find it for him before I left for the day? He wants to give it to someone at a meeting. At this point I would like to brag and discuss how efficient I am at my job, but in all honesty I got lucky by using the ALA web site to browse issue covers (I'm very visual). I found the article(s) in question and printed them in color for, ahem, brownie points. Unfortunately that means I still have CD's to burn tomorrow morning and labels to apply as I check each and every CD for usability. But, the end is near and I vow not to procrastinate should I get sessions accepted next year.

Before I forget, the aforementioned book slips mean I will have new children's books to peruse at my leisure soon. At least I will be able to forage them for potential usage in an upcoming Mock Caldecott session this fall.

Plan ahead ... at least when I am not procrastinating

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