Showing posts with label reference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reference. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

life get in the way


I’ve been neglecting my blog the last few days (bad Hawm) so I’m making a proper effort tonight/this morning. There is all sorts of stuff going on, of varying levels of importance. So this is, in no particular order, what’s been going on:

  • Caught up with my library girls last Wednesday. Always fun, even if the crowd wasn’t quite what we expected. Will go again next month and see if more people front. We made the most of it, and had our own little catch up.
  • Work, which is the one constant in most of our lives. The introduction of VOIP by council has been one long fuck up, though my boss was on fire Monday morning. The council IT guys were all hiding under their desks. Some branches still don't have any phones, which means the extra traffic is being forwards through to the branches with working phones. 30 phone calls in an hour. It's like being back in a call centre. Oh to win Powerball and shake of the financial chains. I could really do without the job hunting. It really is depressing.
  • Uni. I should spend this Friday on homework and stuffs, especially as I skipped the lecture to catch a movie at the film festival.
  • MQFF. All the film you can watch in a 10 day period, provided you have the time and the cash. Miss R and I have been to three sessions so far, and have two more to go. I really enjoy the diversity of films they show, both fiction and non-fiction.
  • Old book play-date. Miss A joined Miss R and myself on Saturday for some book loving. It was a close thing, with Miss R coming away not with the pirate book (which had been the original goal) but instead a signed first edition of Texts & Pretexts by Aldous Huxley. I was talked out of the very old leather bound dictionary by Miss R (mostly because it was $250). I may yet go back for it, though apparently I need to invest in a special display case for my growing collection of old books (mostly dictionaries and some poetry).
  • I had an interesting chat with a patron about the new series of Dr Who. He was telling me about a guy he follows on twitter, and how some “feminist nazi” was ranting about the series being sexist (it was supposed to be for Red Nose day or something). * So I watched the clip on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51JtuEa_OPc and followed the link the patron gave me to http://twitter.com/#!/TheUrbaneMan to see what all the fuss was about. You can imagine my surprise when I scrolled down and found that Ms L was involved. Truly my world is too small sometimes.
  • I had a call from Wendy (little old lady who likes to call and ask about obscure 1960s Australian models). It was a short phone call, under 20mins, but I still couldn’t get her to come into the library. She said she was going off to the state library as they had better resources. I’d be amazed if she’s actually gone into the city. Some of the other librarians and I have a theory that she doesn’t even belong to our library, she just calls each branch asking the same question until she get an answer she likes. She’s harmless, unless you are flat out and she refuses to take no for an answer.
  • My little sister wants the whole family home for her 16th birthday. She seems to have completely missed the fact that my Dad and stepmother don’t want anything to do with my brother and I. Not going to happen. Not a chance in hell. Ah, to be 15 and still think the world revolves around you. Hopefully reality will set in before July.
That’s pretty much it. Not really a terribly exciting update, but it is an update. And now bedtime. At least I can sleep in tomorrow. Love the afternoon shift.


*Now I have known some very nice feminists (and some rather freaky ones, but that’s another story). I have never understood what prevents a man as identifying as a feminist, though I suspect it comes from the (inaccurate) perception that all feminist hate men. If you ever want to chat about feminist theory I’m up for it. The three and a half years I spent studying gender/queer theory at uni have to be good for something  :)


Friday, January 28, 2011

Perils of the reference desk

Ok, so anyone who wasn't at Miss A's BBQ may not have heard of my marathon phone question late last week. Basically I spent 25 minutes on the phone with a little old lady (that I'm not certain is actually a member of my library) trying to find information on Robyn Fong (fashion, 1950s). NLA's digitisation of Australians Womens Weekly (May, 1972 edition) eventually gave me something useful. She decided to call NLA to see if she could get a copy. This was after I told her several times that I could print the information for her if she came into the library. But she got what she wanted, so that wasn't my issue.

That was the end of that ... until today. My branch team leader was on desk with me this morning. She answers the phone and then hands it to me. It's the little old lady again. Apparently she had tried calling for me the other day, but I'd gone home. She had another question for me: Bobo Faulkner (fashion/tv, 1950s). After 30mins on the phone, and much trawling through Trove I was again saved by NLA's digitisation of Australians Womens Weekly (June 1973). She did ask me when I'd be in again. I should have lied, I know, but by that point I just wanted to get off the phone.

So some time in the future she will call again. She'll ask for me, and the cycle will repeat. This is the danger of giving good customer service: they remember your name and then won't talk to anyone else. If you see a librarian walking around with an ice pack on his/her ear then the chances are they have a similiar patron of their own. If you work in information management you may even end up with one (or even more) of your own. Who knows? 

One thing I do know: this was not in the brochure.