library day in the life 7.4

Or, A Day for Details

Today was supposed to be a day to buckle down and focus on my Southeast Asian serials review. And I did do that. But I also didn't. I had a hard time getting started this morning. In my usual check of various email accounts and social networking sites, I was seeing so many great links to blogs and articles that I spent a little bit more time on it than I've been doing during the earlier part of this week. Then, I started really chugging on the serials, though there were some minor distractions here and there.

Here's the approximate breakdown of my day:

• 3 hours - emails / social networking / feeds (including during lunch & snacktime)
• 4.5 hours - serials review
  
• 1 hour - reference desk (brought circulars)
• .25 - stretching (am), looking for snack (pm)
• .25 hour - student consult

The Main Road

Serials review was the order of the day. It was extremely painstaking work; it involved:

• looking at last year's list and transferring notes for the titles to this year's list
  
• looking up all the titles on LC CAPSEA (Library of Congress - Cooperative Acquisitions Program for Southeast Asia) site, including those not on the list (just to be sure), to a) check if other institutions have cancelled and b) see if the publications are relatively current
  
• looking up our catalog records for titles we're supposed to have and see if a) we have a record for them and b) if our holdings match what LC has listed as sent to us, then writing notes for each title on my Excel spreadsheet
  
• looking up on OCLC for titles we don't have and check the holdings of other institutions, especially UC Berkeley, as well as to find out subject headings for titles that I don't already have notes for
• checking list sent by the University of Washington for titles that they are cancelling
• deciding whether to keep, add, or cancel, then writing notes on the spreadsheet
• adding totals to another spreadsheet that's keeping track of budget for both monographs and serials
  

I didn't get very far at all. It took me 2 hours to finish Brunei, and that's one of the easy countries to do. I worked on Burma for 2 1/2 but didn't quite finish. There has to be an easier or smarter way to do this. I do believe, though, that once I do all this heavy work for all countries, then it will be much, much simpler work in subsequent years.

Side Roads

Though I had a clear project, I needed to work on, I also had to do a couple of things, such as:

• reference desk - It actually was very quiet because a) it's summertime and b) our main floor is being renovated and the reference room is so hidden that you really have to be determined to get there (or, more often the case, you really want to borrow a laptop, which is in the same area as the reference desk). To get to the desk, you have to go down the stairs from the ground level and go down this hallway. (Follow the light...)
  
  When you reach the door, you see our fancy sign.
  
  This is what the inside of the temporary reference reading room looks like.
  
  This is the view from the reference desk.
  
  
• circulars - For some countries, LC CAPSEA sends out circulars, or lists of titles; these come monthly. Since I knew the desk was probably going to be quiet (and it was to hard to do my serials review over there), I brought along circulars for the Philippines and Vietnam. All I did today was to go through the list and cross out the ones I already know I don't want, based on title or brief description. (Afterwards, I give it to my assistant or student to search on our catalog and OCLC for UCLA and other UC holdings, as well as to get subject headings and/or descriptions (since most of these are in languages I can't read) before I then make my decisions.) A note about Vietnam circulars: They are especially challenging because they do not have diacritics, and the Vietnamese language is all about diacritics. So, searching for more info is very difficult and time-consuming. I am really missing my student assistant (as I'm sure my staff assistant is), who won't be back until the winter quarter.
  

Off-Road

In addition to the things mentioned above, I also ended up doing other things, because a) I needed a break and b) I needed to deal with it right then before I forgot. These activities included:

• reading social networking posts/feeds - I get so much info through FB and, now, Twitter, especially related to libraries and librarianship. Examples from today include:
• Shepard Fairey, street artists brighten West Hollywood library - on a local library
• Are You Reading YA Lit? You Should Be. - on my favorite kind of literature
• Bravery based librarianship is the (only) future - on the need for pattern disruption in librarianship
• What Librarians Do - an infographic on the myriads of things librarians do (I do almost everything on there, except for the very technical stuff, such as actual preservation, cataloging, and creation of systems.)


• sending an email to the Preservation Officer - I saw him in the office, which reminded me that I had a couple of old materials in my possession: a set of ledgers and letters from early 20th century Philippines and an old Indonesian book of unindentified script. I want to add these to our collections, but they are in pretty bad shape, so I want to see if they're salvageable. He had to rush off to a meeting, so I sent him an email instead.
  
  This is the cover of the Indonesian book. I think it's leather.
  
  These are letters of previous owner (?) trying to ascertain the script; there is also a reply from a some expert -- he didn't actually know the answer, but he thought it was some sort of bastardized Arabic.
  
  And here's the actual content of the book. Do you know what script that is?
  
  This is the packaging for the Philippine materials; they belonged to a Mauro Tayko of Dumaguete. Have you ever heard of him? I wonder if it was sent by Donn V. Hart, well-known anthropologist and Philippine specialist.
  
  These are some of the papers on top, including a telegram (remember those? I never did get a chance to receive a telegram) receipt and a letter, both written in Spanish.
  
  Also included are ledgers, like the one below. As you can see, it's in terrible shape.
  
  
• look up classrooms for an instruction session - I know I'm supposed to do an instruction session in a week, but I actually hadn't thought about the details (too many other things to think about!). An email from the instructor nudged me, and I started to see if our classroom is available. However, it will all depend on how many student there will be -- I might have to book a classroom that requires permission from other people, so I started looking at possibilities. As this is a summer course, I realized that this might be a session that's more than an hour -- that's going to require more thinking/prep work. I sent an email to the instructor; I can't really move forward until I get more info. (Just got an email from the instructor: one hour is fine--whew!-- and 25 students--have to book a bigger room.)


• impromptu student consult - Okay, I admit it. I don't like it when students show up and think that I automatically have time to meet with them. I usually don't. I have other deadlines, and I have a lot these next two weeks. I especially don't like it when they show up 10 minutes before I have to leave work. (I am on a vanpool, and I have to leave exactly on time, or there will be 10 ticked off people waiting for me.) I asked if it was something that can be answered in 10 minutes, and they said it was just a quick question. Of course, it wasn't.
  
  The quick question was: where is the section for Filipino materials? The answer: there is no one section; it would depend on what your specific topic is. They didn't really know, so I told them to do some exploring first. I quickly showed them the library website (which they've never been on), the library catalog, and a federated search tool for general databases. Then, I said to make an appointment for additional help. I have to say that they were quite appreciative, so I'm glad I saw them after all.
  

So, that was my day. It was tiring; my back was aching by mid-morning. By late afternoon, I needed a little something sweet to reward myself and to keep myself awake, but I went searching for it too late; the store next door was already closed. Fortunately, there was a little bit of leftover ice cream from last week's retirement party. Yay! I was winding down my day with some ice cream and reading of emails/feeds. Until the students interrupted me, that is.

But it's all good. I had a good evening. I'm going to bed late again, though, writing this post. Tomorrow, more serials review. Oh, joy.

library day in the life 7.3

Or, An Easy, Breezy Day (Somewhat)

Today was nothing like yesterday. I wasn't tearing my hair out over some tough decisions I had to make, though there was some frustration over some painstaking work I did in the morning. In fact, most of the day was actually quite relaxed. And I definitely needed this kind of day to offset the first two days this week.

Here's the approximate breakdown of my day:

• 2 hours -reading/responding to emails (throughout the day, including answering a couple of surveys)
  
• 3.5 hours - Southeast Asia serials review
• 1.5 hour - meeting with catalogers; chatted with other folks in cataloging; looked at show shelves & serials shelf
• 1 hour - getting to/from technical services building
  
• 1 hour - reading social media links/feeds

As is often the case, lunch was again at my desk while reading emails/feeds.

I'll Take It

Today, I had intended to focus on and make some headway on my annual Southeast Asia serials review, but a number of small but good tidings made today a much more relaxing day:

1. The field director for LC CAPSEA sent out an email late last night saying that we have a few days grace period from the deadline of July 28 to get out profiles and serials review done. Obviously, I still have to the work in the next few days, but it gave me a little bit more leeway for how quickly I needed to accomplish it.
2. Our monthly area studies meeting this morning was cancelled, so that's 2 hours I didn't have to spend in a meeting and around which I would have had to schedule my other work.
   
3. I have some interns coming for the month of August, and I have to do a lot of prep work before they come. I thought I would have to do that this week/weekend, but I checked the starting date this morning, and they're not starting until August 8. So, I can do that work next week and focus on the serials the rest of this week.

All these gave me some breathing room, and I took it!

It's in the Details

After emails/social media stuff during the first hour of the day, I began on the serials review. Like the profiles I was working on on Monday and Tuesday, I have to do a review for each country. Last year, I did a thorough review of 6 of the countries, choosing to do first the countries for which we already had a number of subscriptions since you can add new serials throughout the year, but you can only cancel during a set period.

I had intended to begin by looking at the countries that I didn't do last year, which I did initially. Since I didn't really have many or any subscriptions for these countries, this means going through the list of serials and deciding which ones I would like to add. Some titles I can easily cross out just by looking at the titles. But for most, I have to look up OCLC records and see what the subject headings are, as well as look at the CAPSEA website to see if the titles are being received regularly. (Many titles take a couple of years to be received, e.g., the latest issue received might be from 2008.) I also have to check if we have subscriptions through other vendors or if we have access through online databases. It's also helpful to know if any other other UCs have access. Too many things to look up, and there are hundreds of titles!

So, you might understand why I then got distracted and started looking at my Excel spreadsheet from last year and checking if the cancellations had indeed been cancelled and the additions added. I also wanted to add the new subscription prices so that I can do my budget more accurately, since serials are included in my country budgets. For Brunei, everything was fine. For Burma, I noticed that none of the cancellations had been recorded and two additions hadn't been included. So, I have to write to LC Jakarta but, then, I thought maybe this was a good time to think if I really wanted the new serials that hadn't been added after all. That way I only had to send one email. I didn't make any decisions yet, so email not sent.

I also noticed that, for Burma, the conversion rate seemed to be off -- annual subscription rates were in the thousands of dollars! Another thing to include in the email. For both countries, I could see in CAPSEA's records that issues had been sent but they don't show up on our catalog. Something I have to pursue with the acquisitions department and with my assistant.

Then, I started to look at the cancellation list sent to the West Coast Southeast Asian librarians. This is important because there are only so many institutions subscribing to each serial. The most subscribed serials probably has less than 10 subscriptions while most titles only have 2-4 subscriptions, including LC. LC doesn't really count because you can't ILL their stuff. So, when cancelling, it is important to look at whether there are remaining subscribers.

I then decided that I really needed to go back to the countries I hadn't done yet. I had started with one country when I first started this work, but I thought I should go with a more important country. But then time ran out. So, as you can see, I did a lot of work, but I was all over the place. I will just have to be more focused tomorrow.

Woman Around Town

I had a 1pm meeting with a couple of our original catalogers who have been dealing with the backlog of Southeast Asian materials. My library is located in the northeast side of campus, while our technical services building is on the opposite end, just a little bit outside of campus. I had a choice of either walking or taking the campus shuttle there; I decided to walk since a) it's the slightly downhill direction; b) it was a nice day; c) I could always use the exercise; and d) I wanted to take this opportunity to show you around.

It took me about 35 minutes on an easy pace to get there, and here are some of the places I passed by. (You'll have to forgive the quality of these pictures since I was mostly just walking and taking quick photos, without really trying to necessarily get the good shots. I probably have better shots elsewhere, but these are the ones I took today.)

This is the slightly hilly, grassy area between Janss Steps and Bruin Walk, where a few students were sitting in the shade of the big trees.

This is the Bruin statue, located in Bruin Plaza, between the student union and the Wooden Center (in the background).

This is the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, on the southwestern edge of campus. (On the lower right hand corner of the picture is the campus shuttle I could have taken.)

This is the Fox Theater in Westwood Village, the site for numerous movie premieres, including the Twilight movies.

On the same street, some vendors were setting up for the small weekly farmers' market.

And, here is my destination: Kinross Building South, a low-lying, ivy-covered, trailer-type building that I don't think was meant to be permanent. It is home to our acquisitions and cataloging/metadata departments.


Going, Going, (Almost) Gone

The reason the catalogers wanted to meet with me was to show me how much inroads they've made into the backlog of Southeast Asian materials and to come up with a plan to deal with what's left. See, here is the problem. Almost all of the 11 Southeast Asian countries have different languages, including major languages like: Bahasa (Indonesian and Malay), Tagalog, Thai, Burmese, Khmer, Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese. Some are Romanized (with and without diacritics), while others are not. And that's just the major ones. But each country has other languages -- e.g., the Philippines has Bisaya, Ilocano, etc. and Singapore has Chinese and Tamil. I can only read 2 Philippine languages: Tagalog and Bisaya. And there is no one in the cataloging department who has Southeast Asian language skills.

Part of the reason I rely so heavily on the CAPSEA program is that the materials come with LCCNs (Library of Congress control numbers), so that we can at least look these up in the LC catalog. The LC records are usually minimal-level cataloging, but it gives catalogers a starting point. For languages in a different script, they can at least get the transliterated version and use that to search in OCLC. However, way before I started here, there were a lot of materials that were not obtained through LC, and these were what constituted the backlogs. Also, the ones for which I wanted full cataloging ended up here since they had no way of really providing full cataloging if they couldn't read the content.

A couple of years ago or so, I had told them what I do to come up with subject headings. This basically meant looking at the records of institutions that I know have catalogers in these languages and comparing their records. If the choice is providing no access to the materials or this sort of copy cataloging (though often still not full records), I chose to go this route. The original and copy catalogers came up with workflows, and that is how they have managed to almost eliminate my backlog. Yay!

This is what the Southeast Asian shelves now look like:

Isn't that beautiful? I would have to dig up the pictures I took before so you can see the difference.

We also talked about what to do with the remaining materials. We have a couple of options, and we're starting to explore them.

After the meeting, I stopped by to talk with the serials cataloger (I actually didn't know where her office was), especially since I have new subscriptions from last year. I discovered a snag, so will have to deal with that first. I then visited another original cataloger and chitchatted with her. I rarely visit this building (due to the commute time and because I have other priorities), so I don't get to interact with these folks much. So, it was nice to be able to visit with some of them.

There And Back Again

I took the shuttle back to the library. Between the shuttle drop-off and the the Young Research Library (YRL) is the Murphy Sculpture Garden. Here are some of the sights:

fountain sculpture

ubiquitous tour groups

sculptures

film students doing their work

another sculpture

And, finally, here is my library.



Once I got back to the library, it was harder to focus, so I mostly did emails and looked up stuff. I'll have to buckle down tomorrow, though.

So, there you have it. That's how my day went. What a difference, huh?

library day in the life 7.2

Or, A Day of Frustration

Today wasn't as structured as yesterday, so my breakdown of how I spent my day isn't going to be as accurate. Having meetings most of the afternoon yesterday basically left me the morning to do other stuff, so it was easier to keep track. However, unstructured days is more often than not the rule for me. Here's how the day went:

• 2 hours - prepped for and participated in the ACRL (Dr. E. J.) Josey Spectrum Scholar Mentor Committee meeting
• .75 hour - emails (throughout the day)
• .75 hour - checked out the UCLA All-Staff Picnic (actual lunch was at my desk while reading -- see next bullet)
  
• .75 hour - checked/reading articles/links shared on FB, Twitter
• 4.75 hours - reviewed/modifed LC CAPSEA country profiles

The Good:

• Again, I didn't have that much emails today. This is really surprising. I'm glad, though, because I really have some deadlines to meet.
• A recurring meeting that was on my calendar didn't happen, so more time to do what I needed to do.
• I always like to check out articles/links shared on FB. I learn so much from them about library-related things, as well as current events. Now, that I'm sort of active on Twitter for this Library in the Day project, I'm also learning a lot more of what's going on out there in libraryland.
  
• I took time out to check out the all-staff picnic. This is an annual event, and this is the 4th time since I've been here. I never went before, though, because I heard that a) the free food wasn't anything interesting (which it wasn't) and there really isn't much to it (which is kind of true). But it did get me out of the office and gave me something to photograph, so I can finally put photos in my post.

This is what it looked like when I got to campus around 7:30am, and they were still setting up.

It looked quite different at lunchtime. Folks had their picnic blankets and were spread out on the grass and under the trees. There was a DJ and dancing, including dancing mascots, as shown in the picture below. They happened to be playing salsa around the time that I was there, and I was very tempted to dance. That's the Powell Library Building in the background, home of our undergraduate library.

Here is a close up of our mascots, Joe and Josephine Bruin:

The Bad:

• I like to come to meetings prepared. I had actually done a little prep work for my committee meeting, but I actually hadn't done the important part, which was to review the agenda and necessary documents. (I guess those emails came on a busy day, and I missed them somehow. Though, I think it was more that I thought that they were the same documents I had seen before.) So, I spent quite a bit of the meeting reading up and sometimes missing what was discussed. I was still an active participant, though, just not as ready as I should have been.
• Though, I learn from FB and Twitter feeds, they are still distractions. I tend to be more distracted when I'm doing something challenging and/or tired. Today, it was both.

The Ugly:

• Yesterday, I talked about LC CAPSEA and doing my annual review of my country profiles. Today, I had to finish reviewing and modifying the profiles for the rest of the countries. It was such difficult and depressing work. As I mentioned before, I have assigned budgets to each country based on what tier they belong (in the top tier are those countries which are of most interest to our researchers). Last year, I stayed as close as possible to those budgets when I did my profiles. Well, this year, I have the same budget, but the costs have gone up. For some countries, costs went up by 40%! What does one do?

Let me explain about approval plans, since most people don't know what is unless they're collection development librarians. (We were actually talking about this recently, and we all said that we really didn't learn about approval plans in library school and only learned about it once we started doing our jobs.) For approval plans, you set up a profile where you're telling the vendor to send you all books from certain subject categories. You might limit this by content (e.g., research-level), publishers, etc. And you give them a spending limit. This is intended to save librarians' time, by having certain books come automatically instead of ordering titles individually.

Many libraries have approval plans with YBP, as do we. The great thing about YBP is that they pre-catalog the books, and these books have call numbers (not localized, of course). So, when you do your profile, you can not only specify the subjects that you want, but you can also be as specific as you want in terms of call number ranges. That way, you can technically get only the books you want.

Well, with CAPSEA, that is not how it works. You can specify subjects, but these subjects are broad. And you can't limit it by specific aspects of the topic or the authoritativeness of the materials or even by publishers. Thus, a subject like religion might have useful books on religion in the life of Southeast Asians, but it is just as likely to have not as important books on specific temples or the lives and teachings of individual monks. This makes it very difficult when you are trying to tighten your profiles and stay within budget.

For example, take Indonesia, which I have given an assigned budget of 100%. Well, some categories cost almost 40%. That means I can only I have 2 1/2 to 3 major categories. Which areas I am supposed to cut: history, politics, economics, sociology, literature, or religion? These are all important areas. And when you cut, it's all or nothing. If I cut a topic, then it means I'm getting nothing for that topic. And, if I choose to only go with, say, 3 major categories, then I can't have the smaller (meaning, cheaper) categories, such as reference works, gender studies, education, public health, etc.

Thus, I had to decide which areas I can afford not to get books in, at least for the upcoming year. I had to decide which subjects are more important than others. The answers are different for each country, since it depends on the current research interests of faculty and students, as well as what I think will be the continuing or future areas of interest.

And, unlike here, where it is possible to get old publications from publishers or used bookstores, it is a lot more difficult to do retrospective collection development for Southeast Asian materials since most publications are printed in very limited quantities. Either you get it right way, or you lose your chance. With only about a dozen collecting libraries in the country, many also facing budget woes, there is a good chance that the other librarians are making the same cuts and the lesser the likelihood that these titles would be available through interlibrary loan.

This is the reality. Increasing costs vs. budgets. Subject areas pitted against each other. And I had to make those decisions. That's why today was a hard day.

But the day is done (not that tomorrow will be any easier, as I have serials review to do next). So, I will leave you with this fuzzy picture from my walk on the beach this evening. Good night!

library day in the life 7.1

I am the Librarian for Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the Librarian for Anthropology, Archaeology, and Religion, based in the Young Research Library at UCLA. This week, I'm participating in the Library Day in the Life Project because:

1. It seems like a fun thing to do.
2. I don't have enough things to do. (Not!)
3. I'm trying to be do more creative things, including blogging (even if it is about work).
4. People just have no idea what librarians do. (Sometimes, even I don't know what is I do, though whatever it is sure keeps me busy much more than 40 hours a week.)
   

Okay, that seems like a really boring way to start a post; I feel like I'm introducing myself at a meeting or conference. But the instructions say I should do that and, since this if my first time doing this, I should probably follow instructions. (Though, of course, nothing's really going to happen to me if I don't.)

Here's the approximate breakdown of my day:

• 2.5 hours - prepping for and participating in search committee meeting
• 3.5 hours - LC CAPSEA country profiles review
  
• 1.25 hours - monthly (though it happens more like quarterly--not that I'm complaining) meeting with supervisor
• .50 hour - sign up for libday7, set up new Twitter account for libday7 (@librariansdream), skim tweets
• .50 hour - APALA work: add wiki users and submit 2013 Program Committee budget
• 1.25 hours - check emails, FB (throughout the day); eat snack & lunch (both while working)

Some of this work requires explanation, or at least I want to provide more information:

• Search committees: Most librarians, especially in huge academic libraries like mine, participate in search committees, i.e., the committees in charge of selecting librarians, library staff, etc. (Search committee work includes: going through applications; narrowing down candidates; creating lists of questions for candidates and references; scheduling and conducting references; scheduling and conducting day-long interviews; writing recommendation of who to hire.)
  
  I'm in a search committee for a librarian position. This is the second time I've been on a search committee in the last year. This particular search is more complicated, time-consuming, and drawn out than the other.

• LC CAPSEA: The UCLA Library has excellent area studies collections. Many of the area studies librarians develop their collections with the help of the Library of Congress' cooperative acquisitions programs (CAPs). Basically, the Library of Congress, through its overseas offices, acquire publications for participating institutions on a cost-recovery basis.
  
  As the Southeast Asian Studies librarian, I work with CAP-Southeast Asia. The main office is in Jakarta, Indonesia, with satellite offices in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Bangkok, Thailand, and Manila, Philippines. They collect materials in various formats (e.g., monos, serials, A/V, ephemera) and languages (e.g., English, Southeast Asian languages, other Western languages, Chinese), according to your country profiles and/or your selections on monthly circulars. They collect for all 11 Southeast Asian countries (Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Vietnam).
  
  Every year, I have to review and modify my country profiles because costs keep going up while our budgets keep getting cut. Even though we self-select (through circulars) for a few of the countries, we still have to do country profiles for these countries, as this will determine how much LC will charge us, since we have to pay them upfront for the upcoming fiscal year. (Their fiscal year begins in October, which is why we're doing this now.) If we go over what's in our LC account, then they send us a supplemental bill.
  
  Since I started this job just over 3 years ago, I've been trying to do some kind of equitable distribution across the 11 countries (before, we weren't getting anything for some countries at all), based on a tier system that I devised (i.e., Tier 1 countries get more money, but all countries have a base amount). With the rising costs and budget cuts, it's inevitable that some topics get cut out of our profiles. I have to weigh things like this when I'm going through these profiles. Today, I was only able to go through 5 country profiles (guess you know what you'll be reading about tomorrow).
  

That's probably more information than you want, but maybe you'll be interested, especially the CAPSEA stuff. There are, after all, only about a dozen SEA librarians in the country (collection development librarians, that is), so this information is not necessarily out there.

Highlight:

The highlight of my day actually came at the very beginning. When I was signing up for Library Day in the Life, I skimmed through the list of participants, and there are two that are my friends (at least on FB). The first, Leo Lo, wasn't a surprise because he's pretty active in social networking and 2.0 kinds of stuff, and I knew that about him.

The second, however, was a big and pleasant surprise. Áine Lynch is a librarian at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown in Dublin, Ireland. I met her in May when I went on a photography holiday in the Andalucía region of Spain; she was my housemate for that entire week. The two of us shared a 3-bedroom, 2-bath apartment in Torrox Pueblo. I was really tickled by the fact that I ended up with another librarian for a housemate. (For the record, we were the only librarians in that group of about 20 photographers and painters.)

Anyway, when I was looking at the list of participants, I was shocked and excited to see her name. I guess I didn't really think of this project as being international in scope. But I was also thrilled to see that she has a library-related blog, Gutenberg's View, which I skimmed through this morning. I have to say that I was impressed by what little I read; her writing style is engaging -- informative, but fun and concise (unlike this post!). Even though we spent a whole week together, we were focusing on learning photography and taking pictures and didn't really talk as much about librarianship. So, I'm glad to see this side of her. So, thanks, Library Day in the Life!

Conclusion:

This post is really long, and it's almost midnight (it's taking me 2 1/2 hours to write this!). I just want to say that I'm glad that my email was surprisingly light today so that I was able to do a lot of what I set out to do today. Oftentimes, I feel like all I do is read emails and do associated work, so I'm glad today wasn't like that. I'm also glad that this project is happening this week because it actually gets to highlight what I do as an area studies librarian (and this isn't always the case). Since I think I may be the only area studies librarian participating in this project, it's good to represent in that way.

recipe book

Eudora Loh, a colleague of mine, retired after working for the library for 36 years. Last week, a week before her retirement party at our department, I somehow became in charge of creating a present for her. We had a joint retirement party (5 librarians retiring at the same time!) a few weeks back, and the organizers of that party were already giving her a memory book, which included contributions from people throughout the library. I figured we couldn't really do the same thing, especially since many people in our department already contributed to that one. I was too tired to come up with anything new and, since the idea of a recipe book was mentioned, I thought we'd go with that. But I couldn't quite let go of the memory book idea so I decided to make it a combination recipe/memory book.

I thought this was going to be simple--people would give me recipes, notes, pictures, and all I'd have to do is cut and paste. Not! Being the perfectionist that I am (well, when it comes to certain things), I had to have a template and, since I was making a book, I had to format it so there's room for the sides where it would be bound (basically making mirror templates). I also had to make the recipes look uniform. Then I had to categorize the recipes somehow and add pictures -- of the food and people.

It took me at least 25 hours to do it, but I'm really proud of how it turned out. I had really wanted to make it into an actual book with a thick cover, but I just didn't have the time (not that I really knew how to do it, either). I ended up using card stock for the covers & bound it together with ribbon. Here is the final product:


On the upper left corner of the picture is actually a binder that Dora can put the recipes in should the recipe book prove too flimsy or difficult to use as is. Here is what it looks like inside:


That's one of the recipes I contributed. I actually made that for one of our departmental parties and that's an actual photo of it.

We gave the recipe book to Dora at her dessert party on Wednesday, and I have to say that she really loved it. She said that a recipe book they had made for someone else is a staple in her kitchen, and she knows this one will be as well. Since it contains pictures of people in the department, she is sure to remember us every time she uses it.

No one else had really seen what I was doing with it, but they were all quite impressed. So I'd have to say it was time well-spent. And it really got my creative juices going...

We also went creative with our banner. Instead of buying a generic banner, we decided to use the same template that I used for the recipe book and printed one letter a page. Then, we strung them together with ribbon. I got this idea from something I had seen online, but it was my friend's idea to use the template. And she printed and strung it together. Here's a picture before they were fully strung together and hung up (since there is no other picture of it by itself).


Dora also really liked the banner. In fact, she loved everything about the dessert party. What's not to love, right, especially now that she has the luxury to truly appreciate every little thing?

Postscript: I saw Dora again yesterday, and she said that she read the entire recipe book, especially the notes that people wrote for her. She still loves it, of course. :)