Five-Pound Hand Weights

Nearly two years ago I injured my left shoulder in a fall. It wasn't my fault. The skylight over the stairs had leaked and when I went down, I slipped in the puddle and wrenched my shoulder.

I immediately switched using 5-pound weights in exercise class to using 3-pound weights.

That shoulder injury had a lot of repercussions. I use a left-handed mouse on my computer at work because I have arthritis in my right shoulder and mouse work irritates it. But my newly injured shoulder couldn't deal with the computer mouse. My only alternative was to irritate my right shoulder and try to use keystrokes as much as possible.

Finally, after a lot of thought, gentle exercise, and some adjustments to my workstation, I switched back to the left-handed mouse.

And I've also finally built up the strength in my shoulders to use five-pound weights again. The Hatfield Senior Center also has six-pound weights which several very strong people (mostly men) use during class. In the past when I was using the five-pounders regularly, I thought of trying to "graduate", but never quite managed it. That's now a goal (maybe) for the future.

On the more intellectual side of the work front, I've begun merging duplicates of titles that begin with the letter P. It took only a little over a month to get through the letter O.

I've been working on titles that begin with the words "paint", "painter", and "painting". I'm finding fewer and fewer duplicates as I scan the lists of titles. I've merged many of them while working on an earlier letter. I am still finding plenty of skimpy, hand-typed records (though fewer than I used to), plenty of weird characters that should be accent marks, and plenty of bib records for a particular format (say e-book, downloadable video, vinyl LP) when the library's holding says it's something else (a print book, DVD, or CD)

For so many years many of the MassCat libraries had self-contained collections and if the library had a copy of Farenheit 451, no one cared if it was paperback or large print or which company published it or when. In a sharing world when people are dependent on information in the catalog for requesting the appropriate version via InterLibrary Loan, details like format or the size of the font are VERY IMPORTANT.

It's my job to make sure those details are accurate. It's my personal mission to have the MassCat catalog be PERFECT.