The Joy of Cataloguing

by Scott Smid

With my time in the Belle Époque Library coming to an end, I will be leaving LAS with a profound respect for the library and all of the operations within it. We have accomplished a lot in the library from sorting through boxes of old books to reorganizing the fiction section. But the task that I have come to know very well is the daunting task of cataloguing. I will thoroughly miss it.

The joy of cataloguing is a mysterious, but rewarding art. It is hard to explain the sense of euphoria you receive when you are searching for that Dewey decimal number, and it is sitting right there on the copyright page; or when you search for a book without an ISBN, and it turns up in record fetch. You feel like you have won the lottery when you are able to catalogue that twelve-volume set of Shakespeare’s plays and criticisms. Although these are just some of the small battles to be won in the big game of cataloguing, nothing compares to the joy of completing one of those coveted sheets of 98 spine labels. When I completed my first sheet I was overwhelmed with emotions of accomplishment. I was peeling off the spine labels to give those once lonely books a name and a home in the library stacks. The biggest reward comes at the end of the cataloguing process when you get the privilege of starting a new sheet. Ninety-eight books to go!

Working in the LAS Libraries has been a great and beneficial experience. I will honestly miss LAS, and everything it has to offer.

Do Libraries Make Us Happy?

Check out this article . . . .
Visiting libraries makes us as happy as a £1,359 pay rise

Swimming Around Savoy Library -- A Fish's Tale

by Samantha St Amour-Gomes

Finley – that’s what those strange creatures staring at me from the other side of the glass wall call me. They are rather large creatures with huge eyes and walk around on two long limbs that don’t look like fins. I think I overheard someone call them humans once, but I’m not sure. All I know is that my fish friends and I live in some tiny ocean in a town called “Savoy Library” – at least that’s what the sign on the door says. I can’t reach the door, however, because I am surrounded by see-through glass walls that protect me. Sometimes when there’s a bunch of strange humans peering at me I poke the glass with my fin, just to ensure it’s not going to break on me.

Life inside these glass walls isn’t so bad though. One of the human creatures feeds me twice a day. I think she lives part-time in Savoy Library. I see her blurry image through the glass almost every day. Sometimes she sits behind a desk rapidly typing at a big square machine. Other times, she’s doing peculiar things to a bunch of big books. She scans them, re-labels them, and places them back on the shelves. There are a lot of these books in Savoy Library – it must be a reading town. Anyways, I like this strange human creature. Every morning she passes by the glass with her mouth showing lots of teeth. She whispers good morning to me and calls us her little friends. I like having a friend, especially one with food.

Uh-oh! It must be 10 o’clock! The most dreaded time of the day. A bunch of smaller human creatures enter Savoy Library, wearing matching white shirts and black bottoms. I don’t know why they all want to look the same – my friends and I are all different colours: yellow, orange, pink, and purple! Anyhow, these smaller humans are horrid – they bulge their eyes right against the glass and then… wait for it… they smash their fingers against it! TAP TAP TAP! Can you believe it? The water rapidly ripples and my friends and I scramble for cover. I flap my fin back and forth as fast as I can, but keep running into the glass wall. Finally I seek some coverage in a patch of seaweed. I think I’ll wait in here until the coast is clear. Catch you later!

Library Media Studies Department Meeting Minutes

April 14, 2014

Present: Jan Lowman, Rebecca Leonhard, Wes Goldsberry

1. Library fines--Will and Rebecca agreed to roll out this initiative at the beginning of next school year.

2. Cowbell Awards--find info on each of the nominated books.

3. Inventory--Rebecca will be giving Jan the tricoder so that Scott and Jan can get to work on the Belle Époque collection. Thus far, there are 1100 items missing, and we have not yet done any Fiction or Nonfiction.

4. OVERDRIVE. Rebecca has been working on starting up our ebook system. We need to add an extra feature to Mandarin for ebooks. It’s moving forward slowly.

5. Jan explained the serendipitous addition of Michelle Helfenstein to the BEC library staff. She’ll be doing the “late hours” until 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

6. We discussed the issue of library coops being used by other departments. We don’t want them to be overloaded and/or taken advantage of.

7. The library will now have a regular slot for announcements in assembly.

8. Math teacher access (to Mathematics Teacher within JSTOR) is currently being restored. There was some trouble with the bills still being sent to Glenn.

9. Jan will talk to Kim Oppenheim again about her friend’s donated books.

10. Wes congratulated the department for our successful TGIF last Friday afternoon.