Monday, June 12, 2006

Multi-skilled

You can never tell what you'll be doing next in this job. I seem to have agreed to do a mind-map ice-breaker session on an Open Day for visiting Further Education college librarians. When exactly did I become qualified to do that? It certainly wasn't at library school! Or while employed by City banks. It's working here that's given me such a variety of unexpected new skills.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Weeding the books

What do university librarians do in the summer time? Dust the books? Go and explore strange and exotic foreign libraries?

One thing we do that I enjoy a lot is we weed the books - and that's not typo, or a lisp. I already said we don't get time to read books. What we do is we weed out and dispose of old books, books that have been replaced by new editions, books that are starting to fall apart from sheer constant use, books that people don't like the look of and so haven't used, books in subject areas that are no longer relevant. I like doing this. I like it so much it probably reveals some personal trait best left unanalysed. I find it very satisfying. Even more so the last couple of years, as our better quality weedings are being dispatched to Rwanda, which makes it a worthwhile job in more than one way.