On my shelf this week

So, I have these two shelving units at work. They basically run my life. On a normal week you can see me using my rolling step stool numerous times to shift material around and keep things organized. I sometimes find myself shifting things I have just moved into a different spot just because it's organized better that way (or because it looks better, if I have more space).

I thought it might be interesting to take a few pictures of my shelves to show how our library handles processing, and the interesting stuff I have in this week. My shelves are a little crammed lately due to procrastination on my part in sending out rural material.

When material comes in, our admin date stamps it and puts it onto my "Enter into Genie" shelf. I then sort through this material and decide where it goes next. Books get placed onto my "to catalogue" shelf and wait patiently for me to get to them. Serials (journals, looseleafs, etc.) get entered quite quickly and then move on to the library with only a date stamp.

After I catalogue an item, it gets placed in the "Catalogued (waiting for proofing)" shelf, then moves on to "Waiting for labels". Depending on how busy I or the librarians are things can stay in any one of these steps for a while. Eventually they end up in the Regina library collection or on my "Rural shipping" shelves (yes, plural). 

As I said, I have procrastinated a little in sending out rural material. The reasoning behind this is because often I process one rural book at a time and it's very cumbersome to send out only one book at a time. So I often wait until material piles up a bit to send it out.

What ended up happening this time was material started piling up then several new boxes of books arrived. Furthermore, a few other projects within the office ended up taking up more of everyone's time. Eventually my shelves will empty a little. Enough for me to make them look clean before the big "December" order arrives and the shelves become full once again!

As you can see from my pictures, some of the rural books have spilled out onto a book cart because they were taking up too much space. Hopefully they get sent out soon (I packed a box yesterday, I swear!) but our office is currently pretty busy.

Something that came in this week which I find quite interesting is old appeal case law reports from the early 1900's. They are mostly in mint condition and will replace some of the volumes in our collection. They are quite pretty to look at and we all know exactly what old books smell like (heaven to some librarians/techs). So pretty awesome add to our collection overall.

Our shiny new publication (Queen Bench Rules Annotated or Big Red Binder) is also on my "Waiting for labels" shelf so our new fourth edition will soon be in our collection! Our patrons have been waiting and calling for the QBRA for a long time and will soon be able to use our new edition.

I have to say, making this post was really annoying. I really hate how blogger manipulates pictures. They generally don't appear where you want them to and text doesn't adapt around pictures very well. /rant

Weyburn and Yorkton Law Libraries

One picture of all the material we had to throw out in Yorkton

As promised, here is a post about my recent trips to two rural law libraries that are a part of the Law Society of Saskatchewan Libraries.

This summer one of the things I got to do at my new job was visit and clean up two rural libraries in Saskatchewan. The first was in Weyburn. The Weyburn courthouse had just been through a major renovation and the library had been moved to a new location within the courthouse. Because of all these renovations the new books for Weyburn (over 90 boxes!) had all been stacked on the floor of the new room. What wasn't known was that there was some sort of water problem in the basement and all these boxes had been absorbing water for a few weeks when we arrived!

Unfortunately, we had to throw out quite a few boxes which included numerous sets of old law material. With law, the primary sources are the most important, so it was quite a big loss to have to throw out all this valuable material. What we worked on for the next day and a half was throw out all damaged books and re-shelf all the material that was still useful.

The next library I went to was in Yorkton. The Yorkton library was going to need a clean up because the users wanted to turn it into a sort of lounge area with a fireplace (around books?) and big boardroom table. So they asked the LSSL staff to come and re-arrange the books around the perimeter of the room. For a day and a half we recycled most of the old textbook collection and kept the more recent textbooks and some of the old but "pretty" leather bound books. We also worked on relabeling the textbook collection as they were still in the old moys numbers.

Visiting these two libraries was a great experience and I'm glad I was able to participate, even though we had to throw all those books away!

The next few posts will be about some of the old material in the Law Society Library of Regina, my next book club meeting + my book review of my book club selection and maybe even a post about my vacation this week! 

Also me and my library co-workers have issued each other the challenge of keeping an updated blog and so hopefully you will all see an increase in posts here!

Very excited!!

Like a lot of others, I have read the fantastic series by Suzanne Collins called "The Hunger Games".

The Hunger Games is a trilogy set in a dystopian world (a society in a repressed and controlled state, often a ruined world) where North America has fallen, now called Panem, and has been separated into 12 districts. The Hunger Games are an annual event that is put up for the enjoyment of the people living in the Capitol because of a rebellion that once occurred in one of the districts. Each year two tributes are picked from each district, trained in combat and then put together in an outdoor "arena" controlled by the Capitol to fight until  only one remains alive.

The main character, Katniss Everdeen (16), lives in district 12 and has had to put her name in once each year since her 12th birthday. Her sister, Prirose, has just turned 12 and it's her first year putting her name in. Among the thousands of names she is picked, and fearing for her life Katniss volunteers as the tribute. Along with her, Peeta Mellark is also picked and they are shipped off to the Capitol to begin training.

The series follows Katniss and Peeta on their journey of fighting and rebellion. 

This series has really set a new standard in YA fiction, as hundreds of new "dystopian" novels have popped up since claiming to be "the new Hunger Games". In a world currently obsessed with "Twilight" this is a refreshing change in reading trends for teenagers and lovers of Young Adult Literature.

The series has also been picked up by Lionsgate and their theatrical trailer came out this week! It looks amazing and from what I can see, seems to follow the book. I'm linking to the video so everyone else can enjoy!

Awesome site I stumbled upon

I wanted to find a tumblr for books that I could show to everyone, and I stumbled upon this awesome tumblr of "The Lisa Simpson Book Club"!

As we all know, Lisa Simpson is the most well read of the family, and always has a clever title around. Sometimes, other brilliants characters have moments with awesomely witty books.

My fovourite post so far and one of my favourite memories from The Simpsons: Christopher Walken reading "Goodnight Moon" to a group of terrified children.

"Don’t make me tell you, again, about, the scootching."

What I've just finished reading

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

A book I picked up from one of my fathers bookshelves when I was about 13 or 14, when I was just really getting into science-fiction / fantasy. My father is the most well-read person I know, he can read an 900 page book in less than two days, and really he's the person I have to thank for my continued interest in reading.

40 Women have been living in a cage guarded by men for over ten years. They do not remember what caused them to be captured, only that they used to have lives before the cage. The main character of this novel is referred to as "The Child" because when they were placed in the cage she was only a child who could not remember her name or her family.

The first half of this novel deals with their daily lives in the cage: how they have an unknown fear of the guards and their whips, how they strive to remember their past lives and how they long for eventual freedom or an explanation.

One morning, the guards are bringing in food and an alarm sounds making them leave as quickly as possible, but leaving the door to the cage open accidentally. The women finally have freedom, and escape from their cage as swiftly as possible. What they discover is a land that is not familiar to any and as they start their search for answers or civilization they realize that they have just entered into a different kind of prison.

Very good book and a fast read, only 206 pages. What is so interesting about this book is that it is largely a description based book, sure there is dialogue but most of the action happens in the main characters mind and how she describes things. No chapters, just a steady stream of words. 

The science-fiction part of the novel is just a suggestion that is not weaved into the story line, so could be enjoyed by lovers of general fiction.

I give this book 4 stars and highly recommend reading it.

Books!

My favorite website, reddit.com, has these things called "subreddits" that are specialized to specific subjects. (e.g.: r/funny, r/pics, r/atheism) Reddit is a website where the users control the content, very reflective of current issues and trends. Users "vote" on new submissions (upvote or downvote) and the top submissions go on their "front page". Because Reddit is an international website (and free), there is always content that someone will find interesting.

Something I have recently been paying more attention to is r/books, a subreddit community where the users can talk about : "Book reviews, recommendations, stories about books or book technology, etc." There is always an interesting post on their "front page". Right now the top post is "Your favorite sentence in any book, ever?" where users are currently posting different sentences from a vast number of books.

One glitch that this page seems to have is that you cannot sort the posts by the subjects at the top of the page (what's hot, new, controversial, top and saved), but you can add that to your URL manually. (e.g.: www.reddit.com/r/books/top)

One thing we must remember is that this is still the internet, and the content is controlled by the users, so you could potentially be "offended" by some of the links/pictures/opinions. Take your time to explore this website and figure out how to use it.

Great subreddit if you are interested in books and in seeing different opinions from around the world.

What I'm currently reading.

The novel that I am currently reading is: Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell. I'm reading this novel for my Canadian Literature class and it has been an interesting read so far.

I was a bit tentative at first about it because the whole concept of the book is that for the main character, Brian, the wind is a metaphor for God. But as I have progressed in my reading, I have become involved in the character.

As an Atheist, the metaphor in the book holds no meaning to me, but I can see how this conclusion could be made by a child or an adult of faith.

I have a hundred pages of reading left, and I am excited to read the conclusion. For the moment, I give it 3 stars.

Ninja edit: Saskatoon Public Library currently has four copies of this novel, along with copies in these formats; Book on CD, cassette and large print.