Up to the lawyers now

[altivo]

Both boards, our own library and the Big Suburban library district voted last night to withdraw from the Big Messed-Up Consortium and sent letters to that effect. I believe that is the largest hurdle passed. One other largish library is already guaranteed to join our rebel shared catalog (their board already approved it) and two smaller libraries' directors at least have indicated their wishes to join but still need board approval. Two more libraries, both immediate neighbors to my own, are still in the balance and would have to convince their boards and perhaps come up with some hard-to-find money, but both are likely to join. That's more than enough to make a go of it.

Now the lawyers will have to duke it out about broken contracts and ownership of various assets. I am pretty confident that some sort of compromise will be reached that leaves no obstacle to our secession from the Big Messed-Up Consortium. So now we have to redo a lot of planning and redesign policies to fit our new, smaller shared catalog group. There were about a dozen active members before we were gobbled up by BMUC and now we will be about six.

I understand that one of our board members remarked, "This has been like a big corporate take over. Big does not always mean better."

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! Here's to a return to what makes sense for your libraries.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Do I get to take off the Che Guevara costume now? ;p

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Well, there ARE still other monoliths to bring down. But maybe you can take the costume off long enough to wash it. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh good. I got hay down my neck yesterday and it's driving me crazy.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

I should have continued with my Masters and got
my MLS! Who knew being a librarian had such
intrique!

Hope it all works out well for you and the
patrons.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Your intrigue is my pain in the horsebutt.

I just wanna buy books and catalog them.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the perfect life;

Acquisitions Librarian.

;.;

Apparently not though. Obviously
the money has to come from somewhere,
and while most people like having
libraries, few understand how the
funding works.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Back in the icy winter of 1996, I had a broken ankle and had to stay home from work for five weeks or so. Fortunately, I was able to do a lot of work from home, including acquisitions. The library AA mailed stacks of books slips and catalogs to me, and I went through them and selected titles to buy, sending my choices back either online or through the mail. I wrote reports and procedure documents, including coding up some stuff to generate custom reports we needed. I participated in some group decisions and even wrote pathfinders by using e-mail, fax, and the internet. All this using a notebook computer over dialup because I was not allowed to climb the stairs to my home office. It was nice, but a bit on the lonely side. I didn't have to do reference desk duty or deal with the students and faculty. But I didn't get to catalog and I didn't get to see much of anyone except my mate when he was home from work. When I was allowed to have a walking cast and could go to work again, I was glad to do it.

In the winter of 1999, after we had moved out here to the farm, we had several heavy snowstorms that put my 60 mile commute out of the question. Fortunately, at that time I was cataloging a lot of audio recordings, which is a specialty field that few are prepared for. I kept a stack on my desk at home, and when a snow day arrived, I used my internet connection to process them just as I would have done from my desk at the library. Then I'd bring home another stack to hold in reserve in case a new storm hit. There was enough work involved in cataloging a music CD to academic standards that getting 20 done in a day was a full day's work. It's easy to carry 20 CDs back and forth, even on a commuter train. Since I had about a thousand of them to get through, in no particular order, it didn't matter that some were sitting at home waiting for a snowstorm. Now THAT was ideal. Work from home when you need to, or go in if it's more convenient. ;p

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd not be very averse to doing
desk work. I like looking things up
and helping people find stuff. I do
that ad hoc as it is. And being able
to sit home, dial up or not, seems
not to shabby a way to pay the electric
bill.

I envy you.

*turns green*

It ain't ea - okay you know
that one.

XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, unfortunately, I can't do that any more. On the other hand, it's much easier to get to work these days. And unlike the College, which was in downtown Chicago and didn't believe in closing down for bad weather, where I work now we do close for heavy snow.

YAY

[(Anonymous)]

Your boards rock! What I would give to be able to get back to just cataloging and other 'boring' things like inventorying the collection...

...sigh.


And the best news for your new smaller group: No dodos who can't tell the difference between 300s and 260s and never notice "p. cm." in a record.

I'm so jealous my stomach hurts. ;-)

--Cat.

Re: YAY

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Would that it were so simple. There is a good chance that some of the less able institutions will ask to join, and if they ask, they will surely be accepted. However, in a start up from scratch, we may be able to impose some tighter regulation on them.

And as the Chinese proverb about "interesting times" goes, we are just entering them, not leaving them. I fully expect to end up with more non-cataloging duties, rather than fewer. We will be too small to have dedicated support staff, and I'm second in line there, so at the very least I'll have to be on call for the system and network when Big Suburban Library's main tech person is on vacation, ill, or otherwise unavailable.

We will need someone to train new staff, and I'll probably be asked to do that too. There will be procedure manuals to be written, in more detail. I can probably get out of doing more than proofread the one for circulation, but you can bet I'll have to at least help with the one for cataloging.

However, as was already said this afternoon, it will be worth it to be out from under the thumbs of Voldemort and Wormtail. I hope the attorneys for our side have their wands well polished...

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

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