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.

Seamonster time!

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters arrived on Thursday, so I shall be launching into that at some point soon. Have read the first few pages, and am already enjoying it: the final message of a man mauled by a tiger shark, written on a beach with a bit of driftwood while his face is held in place…that’s my sorta Regency romance! 🙂

Oh, and Quirk Books (the publisher) posted a comment on an earlier post, and say they’re announcing the third in this series of mashups at the end of the month…will be keen to see what they have in store next!

Mr Darcy, you disappoint me!

Well, I finished “Mr Darcy, Vampyre” a few days ago, and I have to say, my initial impressions of it didn’t improve much.

*Spoilers below*

I’m no writer myself, or book critic, but I really didn’t think much of this. It seemed a bit of an awkward attempt to shoehorn in phrases that would have suited at the time when Pride and Prejudice was written, but don’t quite sit properly in with the rest of the writing.

There are a LOT of sections where everything’s rushed through with very basic description, eg. they unexpectedly have to cross the Alps, by mule, after an escape from a mob, wearing only what they had on. This would take a fair chunk of time, and be difficult, but what you get is a page and a half of “we went past glaciers…in a valley..up steep slopes, oh, it’s really pretty’ etc, with no information on timescale or how they made it over.

When they get to the other side there’s a bit about Elizabeth looking so wild and dirty that if Darcy hadn’t been known there they’d have been driven away from the Inn as vagrants. So she didn’t wash? Were they months crossing these mountains? Weeks? Days? It’s frustrating that this bit (which in itself should have been a massive adventure)

is skipped merrily over.

Time is totally odd…they start their wedding tour, and seem to spend months either travelling to locations, or living there, but it’s an eternal summer…even in Italy in November things are flowering and the weather is lovely. I have no idea what timescale this book is supposed to cover: 6 months, 9 months a year? More? We get ‘time passed in a swirl of soirees’ etc sort of statements, but never anything more detailed.

I was also driven nuts by all the brooding expressions, flickers of ‘darkness’ and tortured moments Darcy seemed to go through. Look – your book says he’s a vampire / vampyre in the title…we KNOW what he is, only Elizabeth doesn’t, and I’m pretty sure that by the time Darcy’s 150 years old he’s well able to control his facial expressions.

Elizabeth acts strangely – she randomly decides on complete strangers to ‘confide’ in, at points where the author must have decided that she needed to have Elizabeth ‘reassured’, so she won’t blow the plot too early, before she can be taken through some more nice stereotypes – the isolated, scary castle, the attack of the baying mob…

There is of course a looming menace in the form of the Old One, who is apparently the oldest vampire, and nobody knows where he came from or anything more about him. As expected, Darcy must fight him to save Elizabeth…and guess what? He doesn’t win, but the Old One is injured, enough that they can escape. And what gave Darcy the strength to battle this hugely powerful fiend? Oh yes: love. *yawn*. And that’s the last we hear of the Old One – the threat that’s been following them around Europe, trying to steal Elizabeth, is bested in a small fight in the forest and they escaped easily. Oh. That was it then?

And ageing. Darcy and his sister (and, it would appear, most of the world) are vampires. Darcy was 14 when turned, his sister much younger. Yet they’re both now either adult or thereabouts. Did they just decide to age to a certain point that they liked the feel of, then stop. But they state that part of the vampire curse is that they don’t age, so they couldn’t do that.

And the finale? Oh. Dear. God. We’ve entered cliché-ville: a ruined monastery / hidden Roman temple at an unknown location, marked by a distinctive tree and view (of course unknown to the aged and fragile teller of this tale (on his own a whole special cliché), but it just so happens Darcy fell into it while playing there as a child…dear God, did Darcy live everywhere in the world as a child?!? And was this as a vampire child, or a human child? Cos as a human child he lived in London, not Italy…oh, I give in), the chance to lift the curse Darcy’s under, an ancient cave, a fight with unseen monsters (which Darcy and another do, off screen as it were, and arrive back dishevelled but won’t speak about it..so WHY even put that in!!), petrified forests, unearthly glows, earthquakes, separation from the faithful guide / helper, a split second choice to be made, and in the end, of course, love triumphing over all.

Yadda yadda.

A new recession indicator in law firms?

Missing books.

You know the Library bought them.
You know they were on the shelf.
Now they’re missing.
And they ain’t been signed out on the system.
But someone out there has them.
So…first, you do a shelf check in the areas surrounding where it should be. People have a tendancy to see a gap in the approximate area where the book they borrowed came from, and just shove it back in there. Apparently, an alphabetical system of spine letters, and shelf edge guides stating the topic books in that area cover is too taxing on the brain. Obviously employment law books are just as at home nestled in with planning law as they would be with their other employment law book friends.
Then…you do the desk check of the likely culprits, all of whom deny ever having seen any book at all, let alone that specific one, or god forbid, that they actually used it. Sometimes they’ll even deny knowledge of its existence, and demand that it be passed to them when it’s found, as I’ve let them down by not reading their mind that they wanted it, and personally placing it in their hands the moment it arrived. It would appear that my mission in life is merely to falsely accuse innocent people of using books, and hide the books that come in from them so they can never use them. I am a bad librarian.
Then…you do the office-wide email, putting the author and title in the email headline so peeps can skim and delete the email without opening if it’s not relevant to them, to save them time. Now you sit back and wait for the flood out out-of-office emails to calm down before you can get on with anything.
Then…you get the “hilarious” email responses. Top replies include: I’m using it as a doorstop; I’m using it as a pillow; I took it home cos it’s my favourite; I took it home cos I have insomnia and it’ll help me sleep; I sold it on eBay; My dog ate it.
All of these are new and fresh, every time.
Then…you trawl around the local area via email, seeing if any nearby, friendly librarians would let you borrow their copy for a short time. This involves making winsome faces and partial begging. The things we do for our users…
Then…you go to an institutional, membership library, and borrow their copy…if they have it in. You may have to go and collect it personally, or it may be posted out to you. Either way, it’s not going to be with the requester instantly.
As you can imagine, all of this eats up time. So…while I’m happy that things are picking up, judging by the volume of books constantly being asked for…I WISH THEY’D SIGN THEM OUT!
😉