Wednesday was the day of the annual outing for the library staff: we went to Enköping to look at the parks. The weather was brilliant so it was a very enjoyable experience; it would have been even more so if my back hadn’t started hurting badly rather early on, but there was plenty of opportunity for sitting down in the various parks so that was ok. After lunch we were taken out to a trial site for the seed developers Svalöf Weibull — well, we are an agricultural university library so this was in line with our work. Here we would have wished for slightly less brilliant weather, though; the sun was merciless as we stood in the field — at least one person suffered a mild sun-stroke. Such are the dangers of a librarian’s life.

In the bus transporting us to and from Enköping I started reading Perdido Street Station, but then I put it back on the “To Read”-shelf. It’s hard to define why I don’t feel like reading it now; I’ve not given up on it, far from it, but I wasn’t hooked even a little bit and Johan tells me it took him several hundred pages to get really involved in it. I don’t want to bring a book with me to France that I am not sure I’ll really want to read, I guess. Instead I’m taking Thief of Time (which I started on yesterday, after reading Tove Jansson’s Rent spel on the bus to work — it was a short book, lasting only one bus trip. Not my favourite Jansson to date but I liked it.) , The Years of Rice and Salt and A Song for Arbonne — the latter being one of the very few books we own that’s set in Provence. . .

I’m leaving tonight, on AF1063 to CDG. Packing might be a good idea actually, and perhaps I’ll switch on the TV also and have Sweden-Nigeria in the background.

Back at work. The library catalogue doesn’t work today because of a server overhaul, which means a lot of my normal work is impossible. Today’s quotation from my Edward Gorey desk calendar is

Forbear to taste

Library paste.

I’m not certain what library paste is, but I’m sure it is good advice all the same.

And in other news, I didn’t get the job I applied for at SIPRI. OK, I didn’t really expect I would, and I’m not at all sure commuting to Stockholm would have agreed with me. . . but I did hope I’d be called for an interview. Ah well.

Been in Stockholm all day to learn more about providing library services for students with disabilities. Really interesting, even though there won’t be anything about how to adapt web sites (which was the reason I was sent rather than anyone else. . . I’m not complaining though!) Tomorrow we are going to learn all about what we need to do in our local libraries; it had better not be anything that costs money!

Seriously, food for much thought has been had today, which may or may not result in further musings here. Right now I need to go fetch my bike from the station, though.

I mended the link below so it leads to Open Directory’s Parts Unknown links rather than straight to Cheapass. Wish I’d thought of it myself instead of having to have it pointed out to me by my resident Open Directory editor.

Am still here, just haven’t been very creative lately. Today I’m off to Stockholm to look at this…

I should expound on that latest, though; explain what librarianship means to me if you will. Of course I’m not claiming that mine is not a service profession. We are there to provide service for the library patrons, and being arrogant and presupposing the borrowers don’t know what they talk about or what they want is not conducive to that. However, accepting that the borrower is automatically right can be even worse, for a lot of the time they aren’t. They know what it is they want, and my job is to make sure they get it or the closest possible equivalent of it. This means I need to think for myself, and if I am certain of something I mustn’t be afraid to say so — otherwise the borrower won’t have a chance to check what it was he actually wanted!

Of course I must always keep my mind open to the possibility that I have very likely missed something, and check, double-check and ask around. . . but that’s the first thing they teach you at library school so I don’t need to point it out here.

I didn’t exactly expect to be the only librarian to take note of the archivist in Star Wars, but neither did I expect to find a whole discussion about it; probably just shows how little faith I have in the all-embracing inclusiveness of the www, or something. In any case, I disagree with the original statement, that the librarian/archivist should be used as a warning example — she was right in what she said, and she knew she was, so why should she adopt some kind of “the customer must be right” attitude? Once you get into that kind of thinking you’re less likely to realise that the references you receive and are supposed to find are very likely misspelt. Ahem.

Back at work so just the briefest note just now: Why is it that highly educated academics with PhDs can’t be bothered to double-check their references when they order copies of articles? Sinclair and Sinclaire are not the same thing, and though I will find the article eventually (I am, after all, Library Babe!) it just takes so much extra time…

I think I’ll just go off to lunch. That’ll show them.