Monday, May 25, 2009

Spadefoots

...are a nocturnal toad. Hidden in the DDC 21!

I had an interesting time working with a lib tech to find the right spot in the Dewey for a series of DVDs on the history of NASA. She asked... do they go in Space engineering – yes, space science – yes, space exploration – yes, space flight – yes, and so on until Spadefoots. They sounded cool! So I whacked it in google (like anyone around my age or younger would do) and it turns out they are toads. Anyhow we put it in a general space type spot in the applied sciences of the 600s*. We were getting close to this decision when the Bear came up to see what we were up to and we found the spot and she agreed. This is what being a librarian is about, getting the resources in the spot that most people will be able to find them in, making them accessible. The Bear can tell you what Dewey area you want without looking it up (a surprisingly large amount of people who don’t know me in the school seem to think I can do this too – not yet) but the Shadow can’t even catalogue and won’t check the work done by the techs.

What kind of librarian do I want to be? I want to be able to do the important stuff, the things the Shadow seems incapable of. She has been a TL for 4 years, meaning modern training has made her TL without much L! At the other campus library the TL was librarian first including experience in a business library. She and the Bear are the people who think like I do, logically with an eye to the users needs, not what we think they should do. They are the librarian I want to be. Considering the current difficulties I am having with the distance ed uni course (will post again when not so red hot and angry) I am thinking of doing a local Info Tech Grad Dip, to learn the important bits of being a librarian.

It’s nearly 12. I’ve taken a day off work to do uni stuff but my mind is still roaring with unanswered questions with no response from the uni. Grrr.

*I have forgotten exactly where we decided to put it in in the end, but remember it ended in .4, So what have I done googled Dewey decimal and gone for the wiki page rather than the official DDC site. Wiki was more helpful in the end.

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