A funny thing happened and I’m in a different world!

My position was recently re-evaluated, because it was realized that I didn’t really fit under any current policies. I went from a 12 month appointment where I worked 940 hours per year, with full benefits except vacation, personal days and sick leave…to a 10 month appointment where I work 930 hours per year, with full benefits. Since I have two months off in the summer, no vacation or personal days. This is all at the same pay rate, so I don’t lose anything.

This happened two days before before I left for “vacation.” I had asked for a week and a half, it was actually comp time, but was told to take 2 and a half weeks, to use all of the comp time. The new contract will start July 1st, so I’ll work the month of June, then be off from July 1st until August 15th.

Now anyone in their right mind would say whoopee!! But not being in my right mind, I was thrown completely off balance. I haven’t had this much time off since around 1978, and I’m not that all that great at using time off well. I’ve been keeping busy and using my time fairly well, but still spend a lot of time thinking about work. Perhaps if I write down what I need to do when I get back, I’ll be able stop running it over in my mind constantly.

• Get the Vail photos up on CONTENTdm.
• Figure out how to set up a new finding aid style sheet in Archivist’s Toolkit.
• Inventory the vault.
• Work on a BI for Primary Resources using ideas I’ve been picking up from the book “Made to Stick”.
• Get a list going of projects for student workers in the fall.
• Set up staff training for care of rare books an archives in the event of water or other damage due to an emergency.

I’ll probably be adding to this when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, because I’m thinking about work. That may be more than I can do in the month of June anyway. I’ll start working on my August list.

Farewell good and faithful Seniors

We had a party to recognize our graduation seniors yesterday. We have started a tradition of having each seniors choose a book to add to our collection, to which we add a book plate with their name.

I will greatly miss

Hayley Mason,

Oliver Meeker,

Deana Stuart,

and Dale Watkins.

Student worker work assignments

I mentioned a while back that I was trying writing work assignments on a white board.  I want to report that it works great!!

• The students like knowing what jobs are coming up.
• They can ask if they can work on a project that looks interesting.
• It also seems like a bonus to wipe something off the board.

I feel like I’ve already jobs this semester than usual.  It makes it easier to make sure the small jobs get done before I forget about them.

Student workers are back, yay!

I’m always getting stuck when a worker walks in the door and says, what do you want me to do, just when my mind in deep into some other project.  I’ve put up a white board where I’m going to try listing jobs to be done when I think of them.  Then the worker can erase the job when it’s done.  We’ll see how it works.

They are all to good though, they’ve only been back 2 hours and almost have the list is gone.

Archives Survey

We were part of the RRLC Conservation/Preservation Project and last week we had a visit from John F. Dean, former director of the Department of Preservation at Cornell.  He spent about four hours with me, asking and answering questions, looking at the collections and environment and making suggestions.  He was so helpful, I felt like I got a great class in archives in a few hours.

That was Thursday and he had a report to us on Monday!  He praised the colleges’ support of the archives, the enthusiasm of our student workers, and the value of some of our rare books.  He also had recommendations we will be able to use to convince the administration of our need for equipment to log the temperature and relative humidity, a HEPA filter vacuum cleaner, and water alarms.

We also need to shelve the rare books by size and he gave suggestions.  He got me interested in learning more about rare book librarianship, so I’ve started scoping out resources.

I’m also rethinking the amount of time and materials we are putting into some collections that have been sitting here forever.  More thoughts on that soon.

The return of the Bopsie Twins

I just had a great visit with two alumni student workers who I used to call the Bopsie Twins.  Nick Cream and Brian Schubmehl, Hobart Class of 2007 started working for me in their sophomore year and stuck with me until graduation.  We always had great fun together, due to similar tastes in music and humor.  They put together the Benjamin Hale Resource Guide for me.

It was great to hear of their adventures since they left!  Nick is in Japan, and Brian in Boston. I really miss having them around.

Graduating Seniors

I wish we didn’t have to let them go!

The library is having a reception this afternoon for our graduating student workers.  We had each of them choose a title to be added to the collection in their honor.  I just finished setting up the display cases with their choices.

I’d like to give my special thanks to Jessica Julius, Sarah Rosemarino, Tiffany Bennett, Betsy Dingman and Kate Schuster for their great work in Archives.  Jess and Sarah started as freshmen and it’s exciting to think how far we’ve gotten with digitization and preservation of rare books in those four years.

PS Kate may graduate in December.

Cleaning up

The push for spring in the whole library is to clean out anything that is just taking up space.  It looks like Archives is the only thing that isn’t going to be moved this summer for the construction of the Learning Center on the 1st floor.

My bit has been to clean out the “vault”, which you couldn’t work through.  Since, in the fall the Rare Book Room is going to become part of Archives, we’ve moved some of the visually interesting items to the locked, glass cabinets in there.

There were also two shelves full of framed items.  I think most were in the vault only because there was no other place to put them.  I’ve divided them into those that would go well hung in the Rare Book Room and  those that can be “deframed”, foldered, and stored in the flat file.  Student worker Hayley Mason, has taken on the “deframing” project and is doing a great job with it.

The big clean up for me is to go through the “piles” that have built up again.  Once I get them in accessions in Archivist’s Toolkit, and they have a number on them, I can stick them in cold storage and know they won’t be lost.  Any yet, they are out of my way.

I’m still working on how to make my PDFs created from email, valid PDF/A’s.  Always looking for ideas.

Student workers on Archivist Toolkit

I now have ten student workers trained and inputting data on Archivists Toolkit.  We are flying through the Half-Dime Novels that our donor started sending with the beginning of the new tax year.  Viva AT, Viva Student Workers.

My beloved minions return.

My student workers are back and I am so happy. They add so much life to the archives!

I’ve come up with some special projects for a few of my seniors.  Jessica Julius, primo scanner, it reviewing everything yet to be scanned to determine if there are some things in the files that can be cataloged by not scanned, e.g. library party circa 1975.  I had a question yesterday asking if there are photos I wouldn’t bother to catalog.  I figure, if you don’t intend to catalog them, you might as well toss them now.  No one will be able to find them, and whoever follows you in the job will come upon them and have to decide what to do with them.

I’m asking Sarah Rosemarino, primo phase box maker, to check to old library accessions books to see what books we can find in the S.C.C. (special closed collection) that were originally given by Benjamin Hale.  We are thinking of setting up a Hale Collection.

I’m still working on ideas for Kate Schuster, Tiffany Bennett and Betsy Dingman.  I’m losing half my staff to graduation.