Category: Amusement

If all else fails, call the Doctor!

“Knock knock?

Who’s there?
The Doctor?
Doctor who?
You just said it!”
Yup, that pretty much summed up the height of wit and humour in my early childhood…have you heard the one about the two fish in a tank?
Anyway, that minor flashback was triggered by reading this story, about a school library using a lifesize, working (well, apart from the kinda odd internal dimensions and time-travel aspects) replica of Dr Whos Tardis.
It certainly makes it a bit more fun than my school library was – it’s great when departments can work together to make the unexpected happen 🙂

I’m looking for a book on television. It’s a blue book.

You! yes, you! Do you want to be a librarian?

Well, if you love books, and people, and peopley-books, you too could work in one of those spiffing library places, where you can “bring books and people together”.

(Even law firm libraries get a mention, at 2.38)
And those kids with the Childrens Librarian don’t really look overly impressed. They will never reach the pinnacle of being…. A LIBRARIAN!
Via @carlychats

I PROMISE I’m not stalking her!

It just so happens that Woodsiegirl has been blogging lots of things recently that catch my attention, and interest! So, I’m copying her Q and A!

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?

Depends where I am when reading. Usually, it’s on the bus to / from work, or in bed, neither of which are snacking hot-spots for me. If I’m spending a few hours on the couch reading, then yup, usually crisps….but those crisp-smeared hands never touch the book until they’ve been cleaned!

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

No writing in books! I have enough trouble removing the underlined passages in books at work (which at least tend to be historic, and in pencil…current users know I’d gut them if they inked up the library books!). I didn’t write in books while studying either – I remember things better if I’ve written them myself, so I’d write notes on lined paper instead.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

Bookmark or laying it open carefully, without cracking the spine. Having bought a lot of old, charity shop books, I know pages tend to fall out at the points where the spine’s broken first…and I have a liking for smooth spines, if it’s a new book. If I’ve read a book, it can be hard to tell, as the spine’s usually still perfect.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?

Fiction. I have to read enough non-fiction information in daily life to not want to deal with it in my free time. Unless it’s about murders of course. Yes, I am morbid, and love forensic science.

Hard copy or audiobooks?

Hard copy. Not sure that I’ve ever listened to an audio book. I read really fast, so to have to sit and listen to someone reading out what I could read for myself in a quarter of the time would drive me mad.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

End of chapter if possible. If not, I’ll just put the book down where ever I feel like I can’t read any more for (evenings) or when my stop’s coming up (commute).

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it

up right away?

Nope. I can usually work it out from the context, and if I can’t, I’ll just ignore it. One word’s not usually critical to understanding things. If I remember, I may check it out later, but usually, I just forget!

What are you currently reading?

“Arthur and George”, “The Shadow of the Wind”, and “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters”

What is the last book you bought?

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, new. I tend to bulk buy from charity shops though, so often it’s hard to tell what I bought last as it’s just a bagful, but SSSM I really wanted to read, so pre-ordered from Amazon.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

As you can see from my current reading list above, I can have anything from 1 to 4 books on the go at once.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?

Afternoons, or evenings. If I have nothing else to do (cue hysterical laughter here) I love an autumn afternoon or evening on the sofa, lost in a book, with a cosy blanket.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?

I like stand alones. As my usual book sources are charity shops, finding the parts of a series is a rare event, so books that stand alone suit me better. Although, if I like a series, I’ll buy the books new, to ensure I can read the whole lot.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

I love the Time Travelers Wife, but haven’t read Audrey Niffenneger’s new book, so I don’t know if I can recommend the author. I’d recommend the book (I’m ignoring the misspelling of the title!), and tell anyone who’s seen the film to forget that pile of pants and read the book! I also have a weakness for David Eddings fantasy books – brings back my teenage years 🙂

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)

Organise? Books? Nah, that’s for work! My books go on the shelves according to…erm…no rules. See? It’s all higgledy piggledy – books I’ve bought, gift books, read books, unread books, toys, photographs, scrapbooks, craft stuff…my bookshelves are a glorious mess 🙂 And to be honest, there’s not even all that much room for books!

Why do I do this?

By “this”, I mean the whole librarian thaaaaang.

Woodsiegirl recently blogged on why she became a librarian, and after conversations in the comments section, I thought I’d join in with my own blog post on the topic.
As I said on Woodsiegirl’s blog, I am one of those odd people who always wanted to be a librarian. My Mum and careers adviser both said it was a daft idea as 1) there’d be no jobs as computers would be doing everything by then (careers advisor) and 2) there’s no money in it (Mums advice, herself a lifelong librarian). I actually was surrounded by librarians: Mum worked in libraries her whole career from the local branch library (when I say local, I mean local: 100 yards from my parents house) to the secondary school I went to (although years before I went there). My Aunt worked alongside my Mum for a while before emigrating, and has worked various shifts as cover in the local library since coming back home. So, I kinda grew up in libraries: I would go to the library after primary school and wait for Mum to finish work, while reading my way through the junior section, and into the adult. Cheaper than a baby sitter, and more educational! To me, libraries have always been friendly, fun places, where people come in not to just look for books, but to socialise and find out what’s going on in the community.
But…I’d been told by two reliable sources that chosing to be a librarian was silly. So I went with science, because it’s what I was best at. I ended up studying an Environmental Biology degree (a combination of Biology and Environmental Scince / Geography / Geology) and looking at my future with gloom. I can follow instructions to do an experiment, but not devise it myself. I’m too easily distracted to do the rigourous thinking and planning that’s needed in science, so really, I was looking at a future of working as a lab technician. Not a bad job, but not particularly well paid either…so why not go for a not-well-paid-job that I wanted to do…be a librarian! A year and a half into my course, I was busily trying to figure out how to escape…and found that to get onto a Masters in Information and Library Science at Strathclyde University, I only needed a General degree, not an Honours. Woo-hoo: a year of my life saved!
Cue me volunteering in a local secondary school to get experience. My time there was great, and being able to help point the kids in the right direction to find good sources for their projects and work made me think that I’d like to work in a school, or a public library when I got a job. After being accepted onto the course, it was a long slog of travelling over from Edinburgh to Glasgow for classes, and making flying visit to the Uni library to get articles on…libraries before running back to Edinburgh. A lot of my coursemates were re-training or changing careers, so were really focussed, soit wasn’t a very ‘fun’ or sociable group. Meanwhile, I’d just continued in the student vein…and I’m not a good student. I can do a lot better than I do, but I leave things to the last minute and throw stuff together! So, the Masters option was never going to work out for me…I got my Postgraduate Diploma and scampered back to Edinburgh to begin the job hunt. The first position that came up was a part time job at a legal library within the court complex on the Royal Mile. I knew absolutely nothing about law, but through that job, and the others that followed (and the knowledgable people I worked with who pretty much gave me an apprenticeship in law librarianing), I’ve learned a LOT about it! Luckily, I love law, and having a job that encompasses so much learning and development. I have a friend who refers to me (despite my threats of serious personal pain if he keeps it up) as The Oracle, because he knows that if I don’t know the answer to something already, I’ll make it my mission to find it out. Or it’ll really, really annoy me for aaaaaaaaages 🙂
So, in the end Mum was right, and the careers advisor was wrong (but the dot matrix career guidance printout I still have was right – it said librarian too) – there is no real money in librarianship, but there’s a satisfying career if, like me, you like answering questions and solving problems. Cos that’s what being a librarian is, really, regardless of what tools, techie or otherwise, you have at your disposal. And the computers still haven’t taken over the world!

And no, I don’t fit the “everything’s organised and sorted” stereotype either. My bookshelves and CD shelves are tidy, but not catalogued or in any order (other than books of a series go together). It’s pot luck finding things in my flat! I do read fast, which means I never buy books new, and once they’re read, they go back to the charity shop to be resold, so only unread books, or books I really like stay on my bookshelves.