Lots of news today.
1) I'm about to pass three years at my current place of employment. They had a self-congratulatory moment on Saturday, aka, an "open house". But this place is far from being user-friendly. To wit:
A) The lighting in the stacks is truly awful. It's made for the warehouse it is and no visible attempt has been made to improve it.
B) The fiction stacks are, frankly, a jumbled mess. They have one person doing shelf reading, so he may be done by the time we move back to Powell Street. It's to the point where I'm going to refuse to pull fiction titles for ILL shipments until the management gaggle (I hesitate to call them a team) gets their collective shit together and comes up with a plan. Yes, we've been in this location for over two months, and it's nowhere close to being realized. My guess is that it'll be 2026 before that happens.
C) There's no map for patrons to find things, and directional signs and shelf signage are out of date and incomplete. More frustration.
I complain to my supervisor, but he offers no real solutions. No one does here. They all keep doing their own thing and pat themselves on the back when something works.
So they held their little open house, with representatives of state, county, and local government present (curiously no school board members). Being a "non-forward-facing department" employee, I was not expected to attend. Not sure I would have anyway. I had a previous commitment, and I did that--but more about that later.
This place obviously never heard of Ranganathan's fourth rule of libraries: "SAVE THE TIME OF THE READER"--or library worker--or researcher--or library professional.
2) Onto happier and more challenging news: I joined the teaching faculty for the PREP program at my wife's Catholic parish. I'll be teaching confirmation class. I'm guessing middle school age but I've never been involved in Catechetical teaching at this level. Probably another henhouse, and being a raw rookie at teaching this subject matter (although certainly a veteran in the teaching field), I know what I'm in for.
*--Rod Argent, for the Zombies (EMI/Abbey Road, 1966)
