The Money Group

It's not polite to talk about money. But for 18 years, that's what 3 other women and I have been doing - and talking about many other things, too, since money permeates every aspect of our lives.

In 1995, I attended a one-day conference at Smith College called Women & Money. There was a plenary session which included an exercise where we decided how we would spend $2 million. It's not that easy to do when you've never had anywhere near that much to spend. Then we broke out into different workshops which addressed money from a variety of perspectives from the very practical (like planning for retirement) to the more psychological (like writing about our feelings about money) to the more esoteric (like moving to the thought of money).

During the lunch break, different women shared what had occured in different workshops and everyone agreed that we wanted more of this sort of thing.

A few weeks later, I received a letter from a woman who lived in Greenfield (I was living in Greenfield at the time) that had also been sent to other women living in the area who had attended this same conference. The letter suggested we could meeting periodically and continue the discussions started at Smith College. After a few meetings, 4 of us agreed to meet monthy over a potluck supper and talk about money.

Those monthy meetings continued for over 2 years. During that time all of our lives changed dramatically and two of the women moved far away (one to Maine and the other to California). We continued our discussion via a Round Robin letter where one person writes a letter and sends it to the second person. Person #2 also writes and sends both letters to #3, who adds her letter and sends them to #4 who adds a letter to send back to Person #1. That person writes a new letter, removes her old letter and back around the 4 letters go.

In the meantime, we continued to meet once in a while when our California member returned to the east coast. The last time all 4 of us were together was about 12 years ago - until last week when we all met in York, Maine for an afternoon of catching up, walking, eating lunch, and talking about money: How financially secure we do or do not feel, how we are planning for the future, how our attitudes toward money have changed, and just about everything else we could think of.

It was a refreshing day, despite the long drive and I thank the women in my Money Group for being available to discuss so many important things that are not otherwise polite.

It Feels Like So Much More

I work 6 days a week - or at least parts of those 6 days. Sometimes it feels as if I get up, go to work, go home and go to bed, get up, go to work, ...

When I total the hours that I work each week, though, it's not 40 or even 35.

There are other factors, however, that make it seem as if I'm working all the time. One is that many of the work days are not "full" as in 7.5 or 8 hours. The remaining hours get absorbed by unmemorable things like food shopping or running other errands.

Also, prep time for the Information Organization class is several hours and then I arrive on campus early so that I can do some photocopy and get set up before the students arrive. I spend time on "background professional stuff" like reading AUTOCAT posts so that I can keep up with what's going on in the cataloging world.

And there are the senior exercise classes. Only 2 hours each week, but again I arrive early to set up the room and stay until it's put back together again. Even with exercisers always helping, I feel that it's my responsibility to make sure it's done well.

Other activities to remember include serving as Chair of the Hatfield Library Board of Trustees (monthly meetings) and serving on the Board of the Friends of UMass Amherst Libraries (meetings twice a year). Both of those offices involve more than just attending the meetings. As Trustee Chair, I spend some time preparing the agenda and making sure it is posted according to Massachusetts Open Meeting Laws.

All-in-all, it looks as if I easily work (including volunteer work) a full work week.

So that's where all the time goes!

What's in a Name?

This week in LIS415 we're tackling Authority Control - specifically Name Authority Control.

The topic is rather auspicious since the Pope stepped down on Thursday and there has been a flurry of email messages on the AUTOCAT discussion list about what's going to happen to the Pope's authority record at the Library of Congress.

Overall the class is going very well. This is the most vocal group of students I have had to date. They ask lots of thoughtful questions and have lots of thoughtful comments.

When I teach this section on Authority Control, I often think about names in general and how they ebb and flow. I sometimes compare the names of the people in the senior exercise class in Hatfield where everyone is older than 55 (and most are older than 65) with the names of the people in LIS415 where most are under 35. In the former, there are two Carols and two Virginias along with a Helen, an Edith, a Frances, an Irene, a Sandy and a Bernice. There are no Susans or Lindas although they were very popular names for the time period.

In the latter there's a Jenn, a Jackie, a Beth and a Leah. This semester there are no Saras or Sarahs, but there often are. Interestingly there's an Amanda in both Senior Exercise and LIS415. Also in LIS415 is an Emma which is another old-fashioned name making a comeback.

So now it's time for me to get ready to travel to So. Hadley and demonstrate LC's Name Authority File to my eager students. I'll leave the final disposition of Benedict XVI's authority record to LC.