A Flurry of Activity

I spent 4 days of the last couple of weeks working on catalog maintenance and also some cataloging. I was in two places that were in many ways the same: both were large spaces with plenty of room to work and with pleasant and helpful colleagues. However, they were different in one big way: one had windows and the other did not. The one without windows actually had windows (I could see them from the outside of the building) but they were solidly covered over, I guess because the room was "computer central" for a network of libraries. Once I get involved in a project, I don't really notice the lack of windows as long as the room is well-lit and ventilated.

It was good to get out into the working world, even for a few days. I got to wear clothes that spend more time hanging in my closet than on me. Since I completed those short projects, today I am home in my playclothes although I'll be putting on something a little more presentable to go out later today to run errands.

Tomorrow will be my first time teaching low-impact aerobics to a group of seniors. The exercises are designed to prevent (or slow down) osteoporosis. I had 4 hours of training a week ago Saturday and I've been practicing with the DVD that is given to participants. They each receive a booklet and DVD so they can practice at home. There is lots of material to read on exercise and nutrition as they relate to bone health. One of the best things about being a cataloger (or probably a librarian in general) is that just about everything in the world is useful to my job in some way. Now if I need to catalog any books (or DVDs) on osteoporosis, I'll have a lot of working knowledge.

Only 4 days till classes start at Simmons GSLIS west. I'm thinking of ways to incorporate more in-class projects and discussion and lessen my lecture time in LIS415. That's what was suggested in many of the evaluations I received from the last class - and the class before that. Now that I'm much more comfortable with the syllabus and the material, I can begin to deviate from them a little and include more of my own material.

Last night I finished Fire Sale, a V.I. Warshawsky detective novel. Today I will return it to the library and add 4 dots (1 for each hundred pages) to the 100,000 pages chart. The Hatfield Public Library has issued a town-wide reading challenge and I'm going to do my best to make it happen.

The Accidental [fill in the blank]

Much of what I've done in my life has been by accident. I set goals, begin to work on them, and then something happens to change the track. (I was going to say "throw me off the track", but that sounds too negative and the results are not usually negative.)

I know people who are very focused, have always known what they want to do, and become very successful by a variety of measurements. I've rarely been that way for more than a short period of time. I'm more of an organic person, going with the flow.That doesn't mean I don't take initiative. I inquire about options, apply for jobs, sit in on others' classes and generally expose myself looking for opportunities and inspiration. While this has usually worked for me, it's also sometimes left me wondering if this was a legitimate way to run my life.

Well, now I have some validation. I recently finished reading Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson. In the last chapter, she talks about how intently pursuing goals can be a restrictive way to lead one's life; that being willing to diverge, to follow an unexpected opportunity, leads to experiences one didn't know existed. Those experiences can be just as, if not more, fulfulling than the original goal.

So Thank You, Mary Catherine Bateson. I certainly consider you and the other women in your book extremely successful in your careers. And while mine hasn't reached quite the same heights, I found reading your stories (like Liz Gilbert's) reassuring. I know that, like me, you've had crises of confidence and sometimes doubt yourself, but through it all you continue to compose your life.

Terse

Some people are talkers. They have a story, an opinion, a comment on just about everything. I'm not one of them. I tend to be quiet and sometimes have to make an effort to participate in a conversation that involves several people. Even then, I generally don't elaborate unless asked.

I've noticed that people who are natural talkers are also expressive in other ways - like writing. Their letters, memos, emails, etc. tend to be longer than mine.

My communications, whether oral or written, are usually succinct. Some would say terse.

One of my goals with this blog was to practice more extensive writing. Not that I think a succinct (or terse) style is necessarily bad. It's just that sometimes a situation calls for more information or expression or elaboration and I want to have as many skills available to me as possible.

When I first began this post I thought it would be longer. Maybe I need more practice or maybe being succinct is what's needed in this case.

With Thanks to the Rolling Stones

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.

I don't often listen to rock music anymore, but I did back when this song was popular.

Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson has been on my mental "to read" list for a long time. I finally requested it via Interlibrary loan. And a few weeks ago, just browsing through the fiction section of my local public library, I picked up (and have sinced finished reading) Open House by Elizabeth Berg. Coming on the heels of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed that's a lot of introspection. (I did, however, take a fun romp in the middle of the above quartet with Original Sin by Beth McMullen.)

I'm still digesting all of the ideas that have been swarming through my mind as I identify with segments of all of these other womens' stories and feeling how their resolutions might fit into my life.

In Committed Elizabeth Gilbert is faced with having to marry her Brazilian born lover so that he can travel freely to and from the United States. Since both had been through difficult divorces, they were reluctant to marry again. While they wait for the beaurocracy to grind through the process, Liz researched marriage by reading vociferously and also interviewing women in the countries they visited. I, too, was resistant to getting married and am still ambivalent about legalizing my relationship with my partner of 20 years. We did so, like Liz, for practical reasons.

Open House is the story of Samantha whose husband has left her for a younger woman. During her 15-year marriage, she devoted herself totally to being a wife and mother and is now faced with learning who she really is underneath those other rolls. I see the similarities in how I viewed my job which ended before I was ready to leave. I'm now exploring other options, while often wishing - like Samantha does about her marriage - that I were still at that job.

And Composing a Life delves into the lives of 5 women who have had to make changes as their circumstances took unexpected paths.

I hadn't planned to read all of these books together; it just kind of happened. But the confluence, while not something I specifically want, may turn out to be something I need.

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.

Obsession - or is it Compulsion?

I've already begun waking up in the middle of the night thinking about how I'm going to make changes to LIS415 next semester. I understand that catalogers don't have OCD. They have CDO - that's OCD but in alphabetical order. :-)

The other news I have is that I am probably going to be the new fitness instructor at the Hatfield Senior Center. This is one of the volunteer jobs I called about yesterday. I was a volunteer fitness instructor at the Greenfield YMCA for 8 years and really loved it. I was even certified by ACE (American Council on Exercise) and the YMCA.

Being the instructor is the perfect way to insure you work out. Even if you pay for aerobics classes, it's still easy enough to skip a class. But when you're teaching the class, there's no way you can skip.

For a while I considered a career change. However, it's hard to be a full-time fitness instructor. Even energetic 20-year-olds can't teach enough classes to pay the rent without causing serious bodily injury. Fitness instructors are often also Personal Trainers to give their muscles a rest and I wasn't sure I wanted to go the Personal Trainer route. I'm not certain why, though I know it involves a lot more training than I had at the time. Somehow being a Personal Trainer seemed to mean I would have a lot more responsibility and I didn't feel confident enough then.

Anyway, after some training (after all, it's been about 12 years since I've taught fitness classes) you'll be able to find me on Wednesday mornings boogeying at the Hatfield Senior Center.

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.