Decluttering – CHE continuation thread

[mamselle]

Oui, je compends. (Yes, I understand).

Je suis rat de bibliotheque, aussi....

(The French term "library rat" doesn't quite have the same sense as "bookworm," you know?)

A library or bookstore is a kind of sanctuary.

M.

[smallcleanrat]

Yea, Dewey decimal!

Mine are (mostly) organized that way, too.

M.

A few years ago I switched to Library of Congress classification, because I like the extra layers of detail within categories. But I still appreciate Dewey decimal and it will always evoke the nostalgia of childhood library visits.

Does anyone recall their reaction the first time they visited an exceptionally large/well-stocked library? I did a summer program at a large university as a high school student; when I entered the main library it was a transcendent experience. My knees got weak, my pulse pounded, and I think there may have been tears in my eyes. I got very little sun that summer.

[mamselle]

Yes, every library does that for me a little bit, but the first time I entered the Manuscript Reading Room at the Bibliotheque Nationale I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. (NB: the British Library isn't half-bad, either...)

Big green leather-seated wooden chairs with rounded feet so worn that they glide, silent, on the parquet floor, and old wooden book cradles and velvet cushions for supporting the books...it was cathedral-like.

After many years, that hasn't worn off, either.

And although they've wrecked redesigned most of the rest of the building, someone else must feel the same way: I hope it never goes the way of Tolbiac (yucky modern main library on the Seine).

M.

[apl68]

I grew up with a very small public library and the little library collections in the K-12 schools (Which is where I originally found most of those books I've been collecting as an adult).  Then my mother took summer courses while working on an MA at one of the two colleges in the county seat.  When my brother and I were in our early teens she started taking us to their library and letting us each check out a book or two on her account.  It was only a small college, but its library was still an order of magnitude beyond what we'd seen before.  It was amazing.

After Mom finished her work there, she was able to retain a community library card.  I eventually started driving there on weekends and checking out books on her card (They were pretty informal there).  I ended up going to the other college across the street, but thanks to reciprocal borrowing privileges I was able to use both collections.

Then I went to grad school and found out what a serious research library looked look!  And eventually discovered the city's metropolitan public system.  When I washed out of grad school I went to work at that R1 library and ended up making a career of it.  Now I'm at a small public far from any libraries of any size.  The nearest academic library is at a little four-year college about an hour away.  About twice a year I go there just to remind myself of what an academic library is like.  And to take notes for occasional ILL borrowings.

To get back on the original topic, ILL helps to save on clutter a bit, by making it unnecessary to buy every book you're interested in and can't find at the local library.  Plus it helps to avoid the temptation to use the public library collection budget you're in charge of for personal gain.  I know of at least one librarian in the region who failed to resist that temptation.  Her abuse of the collection development budget came out after she retired, when her successor learned that many books purchases on the library account had never made it into the collection....

[polly_mer]

I know of at least one librarian in the region who failed to resist that temptation.  Her abuse of the collection development budget came out after she retired, when her successor learned that many books purchases on the library account had never made it into the collection....

Whoa!  When I was a teenager, my mother decluttered many of her personal books by donating them to the public library, which meant that tiny public library then had a science fiction section.  I think of librarians as trustworthy, helpful people who can be counted on to step up to the plate and do the right thing.

I've seldom had access to an enormous library, which is why I do buy books I'm likely to want to revisit at a future date.  However, even the tiny library that was still on the "if no one is around, write your name in the notebook with how many books you're borrowing" system was good enough to get me one-and-done books to feed my craving for novelty.  As my husband puts it, if we had to buy all the books I read, then we'd be short even on my current six-figure salary.

One advantage of moving as much as we have is I've never run through an entire library.  It was close for the public library where I grew up, but we haven't stayed anywhere else long enough to have that problem.

Today's decluttering project is unpacking more boxes from the last move and being strong about how likely it is I will need the travel detail notes from trips taken more than 10 years ago.  I'm filing the notebooks with the research notes, but I am unlikely to ever consult the hotel bill that was already reimbursed at the time.

[apl68]

I know of at least one librarian in the region who failed to resist that temptation.  Her abuse of the collection development budget came out after she retired, when her successor learned that many books purchases on the library account had never made it into the collection....

Whoa!  When I was a teenager, my mother decluttered many of her personal books by donating them to the public library, which meant that tiny public library then had a science fiction section.  I think of librarians as trustworthy, helpful people who can be counted on to step up to the plate and do the right thing.

Librarians are people too.  I've never heard of any serious graft in libraries (Apart from stories coming from our Neighboring State to the South, where it has always notoriously been standard practice at any and all levels of government).  But petty graft has been known to happen.  We had a former staff member several years ago that I've long suspected had her hand in the cash drawer, before we tightened our cash handling procedures. 

The librarian who bought books for herself on the library's account had been in charge of the place for decades.  That plus decades of isolation from professional colleagues and norms seems to have given her the impression that she was a proprietor, rather than an employee, of the library.  Her petty abuse of privilege was less of a problem long-term than her decision to freeze the library's procedures in amber during her whole tenure.  Her successor had an awful lot of lost time to make up for, starting with persuading her Board of Trustees to give her money to barcode the books so that she could automate the circulation system.  Welcome to 1990!

A major urban library in the state had a go-getter director who won praise for his achievements in opening a new branch, bringing in great programs and exhibits, etc.  Only after he died of cancer did it come out that he had done it all by borrowing money that the library couldn't pay back.  No theft, just terribly unsustainable management.  They were forced to lay off staff and reduce services to service the debt.  A search for a replacement director failed when nobody in-state would touch the job.  They eventually found a very good new director who stepped up to sort out the mare's nest.  I once asked her what had led her to take on such a challenging position.  She said that it was still a much better position than where she had once worked.  Turns out she had left Neighboring State to the South.  Enough said.

[mamselle]

My sister is the chief librarian of her small town's library due to the malfeasance of the previous director.

After deciding to leave a position that involved traveling an hour or more each day to reach the library where she'd been chief librarian for 10 years, she realized she missed the work and applied to do very part-time work at her local library.

The change in position came the day she arrived at work to find the Library Board members all swarming around, and the up-to-then current chief nowhere to be seen.

She was told there were serious shortfalls in several categories of the budget, and that the previous chief had just been let go.

Since she was the only one in town with an MLS, and the experience, they asked if she'd at least cover for the next week while they tried to figure out what had happened.

As they opened the library and the trustees began going through things, she heard one go into the main librarian's office and start checking the files.

She thought she might be able to help, since she knew a bit of the system, and asked one of the volunteer workers to cover the front desk for a bit.

As they went through the files, she saw one and flagged it to the board president's attention. "Here's the Library credit account paperwork file," she said.

"Credit card? We don't have a library credit card," the president replied.

Turned out they did...with a home refrigeration unit, clothes, travel agency items, and the like, all charged to the library and delivered to the former chief's home....hence the budgetary shortfalls...

My sister was made the new library director the next day.

M.

[apl68]

Right person, right place, right time!  Glad for her sake and the community's that she was able to step up to the plate.

Note how even a dishonest librarian carefully documented and organized everything.  It's a compulsion!

The librarian I mentioned above had a company credit card that she occasionally seems to have confused with her personal card.  Again, only very petty stuff in her case.  I was still kind of shocked to hear about it.  I'd always thought that she was guilty of nothing more than retiring on the job some years before she actually left.

[mamselle]

Different issue, but speaking of library resources...

This seems very short-sighted and punitive. Maybe one university was a bad actor, but to punish the whole state system?

   https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/06/30/desantis-kills-online-learning-program-amid-virus-resurgence-1296178

M.

[apl68]

Meanwhile our state library found a way to provide additional online resources for this summer.  Which are much appreciated.

[polly_mer]

Different issue, but speaking of library resources...

This seems very short-sighted and punitive. Maybe one university was a bad actor, but to punish the whole state system?

   https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/06/30/desantis-kills-online-learning-program-amid-virus-resurgence-1296178

M.

I'm with the people who said this must be a misunderstanding because that's just absurd.  However, I can believe someone who wasn't paying attention didn't make the distinction between making a separate line item and lining out the item.

[Ancient Fellow]

I have two thoughts on decluttering and recluttering.

Decluttering: I recently gave away the gigantic desk in an uncomfortably executive style that I was given by misguided but well-meaning people when we moved here not long ago. Replaced it with a lap desk from Barnes and Noble, which turned an "office" into a roomy and comfortable library/study usable by everyone in the family.

Recluttering: I had reason to go to upstate New York, and chanced across the Lyrical Ballad bookstore in Saratoga Springs. Marvellous! I thought I would never find anything to compare with Barter Books, Alnwick or St. Philip's Books, Oxford. I came away with two entirely non-work-related volumes and am feeling more relaxed already, albeit with slightly less room on the shelves.

[Vkw10]

Different issue, but speaking of library resources...

This seems very short-sighted and punitive. Maybe one university was a bad actor, but to punish the whole state system?

   https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/06/30/desantis-kills-online-learning-program-amid-virus-resurgence-1296178

M.

I'm with the people who said this must be a misunderstanding because that's just absurd.  However, I can believe someone who wasn't paying attention didn't make the distinction between making a separate line item and lining out the item.

I looked for an update today. No mention of funding cuts at Www.completeflorida.org, which focuses on completing degree through online courses. I spotted a couple of articles that mention work on a plan to transition essential services, keeping them going with several million dollars of carryover funding. The most recent update seems to be a July 31 post at https://libraries.flvc.org/, which focuses on the academic library portion of CompleteFlorida. Even though the post is positively worded, it makes me very happy not to be in Florida. I recognize some of the services they mention, like EZ Proxy, which is the thing that lets me use library databases from home.

A librarian friend told me last year that people who've been out of college for years have no idea how much college libraries depend on e-resources. She was worried about an ADA case in California where judge ruled that library had to stop providing e-resources if they weren't fully accessible. Told me that would shut down all the online journal databases, because they're full of article PDFs that aren't tagged for screen readers. Sounds to me like that's what happened with CompleteFlorida; a governor who hasn't been near a college classroom or library for decades de-funded something he didn't understand.

[spork]

Because of Covid-19, I'm no longer commuting to campus and my office is close to empty. It has become part of our Mari Kondo-ing process during the pandemic. In the last week I've netted $40 by selling books from my office shelves on eBay. Other items, like VHS tapes that I will never use for teaching again, have been donated.

[Parasaurolophus]

I de-cluttered my desktop. Now all those pressing articles are in a folder I'll never open.