Timesheets and Invoices

In order to get paid for all of my various and sundry jobs, I need to submit timesheets and invoices.

Springfield City Library gets a weekly timesheet and I'm paid weekly.

The Massachusetts Library System gets a timesheet every two weeks and I'm paid the following Thursday.

I submit a timesheet weekly to the Donohue Group, but I receive a check every 2 weeks.

There's no timesheet for Simmons College. I sign a contract at the beginning of the academic year and they trust me enough to deposit money every month in my checking account.

When I give a Continuing Education workshop, I need to submit an invoice in order to be paid.

Even jobs for which I don't get paid need timesheets. RSVP, the coordinator of the Senior exercise class, wants to know how many hours I spend leading the class. The Hatfield Senior Center also wants to know those hours, so they can include them in their annual report to the town.

I'm hardly the only one volunteering at the Hatfield Senior Center. There's an assistant who is paid for a few hours each week, but works many more hours which are included in the volunteer report. Then there are the people who help serve meals, deliver meals, distribute monthly "brown bags" (supplementary food for income-eligible seniors), and far more activities than I even know about.

For those people who volunteer a certain number of hours during the year, RSVP holds a grand volunteer appreciation lunch held at the Log Cabin in Holyoke. I've been to many recognition lunches and dinners, and I can say that this one is the BEST. The food is excellent and there are a ton of door prizes as well as fun and interesting people to talk with.

The Hatfield Senior Center also has its own recognition event with food and gifts. Among other things, I received a screwdriver - but not just any screwdriver. This one has a handle that looks like a small, rectangular box that opens, revealing several magnetic screwdriver heads. Each one fits into either end of the handle. It's cute and it works really well. I've used it several times. It's now my favorite tool.

So who needs to get paid dollars for everything?

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!

Tote Bags

The back seat of my car is full of canvas tote bags. I use them whenever I go shopping to avoid getting plastic bags. Many stores will give me 5 or 10 cents off my purchase for each tote bag I use. The only downside is that I also don't get large paper bags which I need for recycling, so I'm always on the lookout for those.

In the last 2 days, I've had the opportunity to look at tote bags from an entirely different perspective. I volunteered to work at the Clark Art Institute library for a variety of reasons. One is that I like to go there to see the current exhibit and during the winter months there is no admission charge. Also, the Library was one of the test sites for RDA, the controversial new cataloging code that the Library of Congress is intending to adopt as of January 1, 2013.

I've been dreading the coming of RDA because I'm going to have to teach it in Information Organization (I've been talking about it in class, but have avoided getting into too much detail) and likely be using it if I continue working as a cataloger. Since I'm no longer affiliated with a library, I'm on my own for getting any sort of training.

A couple of weeks ago, I contacted one of the librarians I know at the Clark and asked if I could spend some time at their library. Librarians there were not only trained, but have decided to continue using RDA instead of the "old rules" even though it's not yet the official code.

Well my friend was soooo happy and said she could easily put me to work on materials they acquired from the most recent Venice Biennale, an international arts festival that's been held every 2 years since 1895. The materials wanted cataloged? Tote bags!

Each nation has its own pavilion and produces a plethora of materials including books, press kits and tote bags. Someone on the staff had already cataloged the press kits so I had some metadata with which to work. Otherwise, I used whatever was printed on the tote bags.

The new rules are not drastically different, at least for this sort of material. Once I had cataloged a couple of bags and had the structure I wanted, I used that information as sort of a template and made appropriate modifications for the other bags. I left all the records in a save file to be reviewed before they are uploaded to OCLC, the database on which most libraries depend for metadata. All of them have the genre subject heading "Tote bags" which I learned is an official term within the Art and Architecture Thesaurus. Now I have some new "war stories" to tell my students next semester.

I loved my 2 days at the Clark. It felt good to be working even if it wasn't for pay. The librarian there was great about telling me and showing me some of the specifics of RDA and things that she learned. And she was so happy to have the tote bags (or most of them, anyway) cataloged. It was a good situation for everyone.

I also learned it is a long and slow trip to the Clark from where I live. I don't travel it often and I don't usually have a deadline for getting there, so I was much more aware of the routes. In fact, I tried 3 different routes for the 2 round trips. None is easy; each is slow and winding in its own way. They are all very scenic, though, so on a nice sunny day the trip is a pleasure.

Some (Maybe) New Adventures

The semester has ended and over the weekend I compiled grades and submitted them to the Simmons GSLIS administration. My students did very well and I'm proud of them. They are going to make great librarians and archivists. And even if they choose not to continue in this field, they've made contacts and learned all kinds of practical skills and information that will be useful in whatever they decide to do.

Things have been very slow in libraries lately - at least my getting part-time jobs and short-term projects. So I've finally branched out and applied to a local temp agency for part-time office work. I don't know if this will result in anything. And even if it does, it won't pay what I get for library work, but I want to expand my horizons, develop new skills and generally keep my brain occupied.

I had applied for a full-time (even though I'd prefer not to work full-time) para professional job in a library nearby. Not surprisingly, I wasn't even interviewed; I'm so over-qualified for that job. But it would have involved tasks somewhat different than I'm used to and I figured "Why not?"

There are two volunteer opportunites that I've begun to pursue. One is totally non-library. More on them if they become a reality. I'm fortunate that money is not a major issue at the moment and I can "expand my horizons, develop new skills and generally keep my brain occupied" without necessarily worrying that these pursuits don't pay.

I've just started the sequal to Liz Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It's called Committed and comes at a significant time in my life. I am a newly married person who resisted that state of affairs for a very long time. My "boyfriend" and I lived together for 20 years before finally deciding to make it legal. Every year on the anniversary of our moving in together, we'd go out to dinner, make a toast, and commit to one more year. Last June on our 20th anniversary, we got married then went out to dinner, made a toast, and committed to one more year.

So far it's working.