Too much documentation

I get to work yesterday and find out that my boss sent me about 20 emails over the weekend. Each one was on some point that she wanted me to fix in my section of the accreditation self-study narrative the school is pulling together. Since I am the whole library department I am in charge of all library related queries. That's reasonable. Many of the points she wanted clarified were reasonable as well. But 20 emails, each 2 sentences long is not reasonable.

Many of the questions, too, were frustrating. The self-study asked what classification system the library uses and I answered Library of Congress. So in one of the emails she asks me what that is and why I picked it. What is it? If the accreditation committee doesn't know then they certainly shouldn't be doing this particular job. And why shouldn't I use LoC? Most academic institutions do.

In the section about library improvement I wrote that we will get subscriptions to nursing journals. She asks why haven't we, send her the information. Why? Because the emails I send about pricing information to the Director of Education fall into a black hole, that's why! I send emails out and get no response. I have no idea what they want or how much money they are willing to spend.

She wants to know why I put the late fee at 25 cents a day. Then she sends me three emails with cut and pasted library policies from other universities along with several links. She says I should research ways to get students to turn in books on time so they don't take class texts out and keep them the whole semester. If she'd bothered to ask or even looked at the catalog I've set up she'd know that they can't take textbooks currently in use by a class out of the library. Because I'm not an idiot. The overdue fine is supposed to be the incentive to return the book. If they keep the book out too long they have to pay for the cost of the book. What more can you do? I have a loan policy. I don't need someone else's. She knows I have one! She asked me to email it to her last week! I write her weekly reports!

She's trying to do my job for me. She hired a trained professional so all this would be taken care of. I understand that the accreditation process if stressful and time-consuming but she needs to let me do what I was hired for. Revising the report and answering her further emails took up half of yesterday, time I was going to spend cataloging the rest of the books I got last week and creating a second sheet of call numbers. Instead I found she bought me more books to catalog but I didn't have time to get to them all. The accreditation committee will understand why I'm using LoC. They will be less impressed if the library is not organized. I haven't even had time yet to catalog the journals that keep getting donated or the videos that are already there.

Oh, it feels good to rant. I really do understand that this is very important to her but I feel as though she has no idea what I'm doing.

Carn by Patrick McCabe; Thank all that is Holy for air-conditioning

Poor Norway! God watch over and comfort them. I just don't understand the mentality that allows people to feel as though they are justified in killing innocent, unsuspecting people. It's like a giant toddler-ish temper tantrum. "I'm upset so I'm going to hurt you." And what does it truly accomplish? Nothing good for anyone, not even the people who did it. It's just cruel lashing out.

The poor students and faculty where I work! Many of them seem to be from areas that don't get this sort of humidity. At least that's what they tell me. I'm basically stuck indoors for most of the day until 6:00 so I feel no need to complain. The air outside is smothering though; this is the only part I hate about summer. I love catching fireflies and the sound of cicadas and the green tunnel of the parkway near the river but the humidity...the humidity that fogs up my glasses as soon as I step outside and sucks the breath out of me when I get in my overheated car, that is something I could do without.

Work has mainly consisted of helping students with APA format and finding references and helping with computers and the copier/printer. Oh, and putting call numbers on books and cataloging. A lot of that. I got two orders of books in this week. I'm trying to build a slightly more diverse collection than just textbooks. The director said the acid-base, fluids, electrolytes book I asked for was too complicated for the students. I had thought that the reviews made it sounds like a good bet but even so that is why I sent the list to her and the Director of Education asking them for approval! They're the nurse and doctor! Anyway, I'll tell her to send it back and choose one of the alternatives on that subject from the list of possibilities I compiled. I also need to find good English and computer texts.

I finished City of Tiny Lights. Eh. Conspiracy theories aren't really my thing. Nor the cynical reasoning behind the "twist" at the ending of the book. Tommy was active and interesting for the first half of the book and then got pretty ineffectual and downright stupid for the second. Of course he had been hit in the head. The book was all right. I'd read another of his.

Now I'm reading Carn by Patrick McCabe and why haven't I ever heard of this author before? This book is so poetic. I bought two of his books at the library sale for fifty cents. The story is set in the small town of Carn in Ireland during the 1960s. A returning native has used the business know-how he acquired in New York to turn the place prosperous. The story is partly about the changing place as it opens up to the world and the new era of Elvis, "longhairs", bikers, and cinema. The priest who used to terrify villagers is no longer in charge and commerce reigns. The main characters are a young woman who dreams of leaving Carn for London for rockers and mod styles, a woman who escaped the stifling clutch of the nun at the orphanage at 16 and has come back home from London now that she can no longer find work, and a young man who is just discovering that the world holds more than his one small town can contain. It's beautifully written.

I am also reading Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara. It's a short novel where the protagonist, who is also ostensibly the author, comes across as incredibly emo and also quite insane. The "I wish I didn't exist" mantra would be eye-rollingly annoying if it wasn't balanced out by his paranoia.

City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate; Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic

A Ugandan-Indian Englishman private eye investigating a case for a hooker. It's a decent enough book. Tommy Akhtar does nothing but drink, smoke, and ruminate about his past and the way of post-colonial Britain and in between that he looks into the case he was hired to solve. Then he gets involved in a case he wasn't hired to solve. That sort of thing happens a lot in these sort of books, along with the obligatory run-in with stereotypical obnoxious and stupid authority, and I have to wonder how these PIs finance their escapades. The plot is almost buried in reminiscences about Tommy's life and "how the world works" tangents and the British slang and cricket references leave me in the dark more often than not but it's not bad over all. There's more of a problem with the staccato nature of the prose and the "serious" tacked on to every fifth sentence. Also, for a book with a message running through it about how even "Paki's" (as he puts it) can be real people and something other than their stereotype and which makes fun of those people who judge others based on ethnicity/nationality, the fat-necked/overly tanned/macho "Yank" with bad fashion sense and an inability to "get" English humor comes over as hilarious. And kind of jarring actually.

Tommy has sent some dumb "thug-lite" kid with a chip on his shoulder to go undercover in an organization that brainwashes just that sort of idiot. I'm sure this will end well. Tommy is an interesting character but after he solves the case he was initially paid for he really does very little.

It's a good read, but I wonder how many of my recommendations would still be nice if I was buying books rather than getting them at the library.

This next book I did buy but cheap. Amazon Marketplace is my go-to for all books not in the library. That's where I got Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic. A Czech author, this book is about a middle-aged undertaker who finds himself being led a merry chase in what he believes is a hidden camera show. He gets an invitation to a film, only when he arrives there is only one other person in the audience, a woman who's face stays hidden, and the film shows him eating his lunch. In the dark after the show ends he receives another invitation, this time to a bookstore. He decides to outwit his unseen antagonists by not being freaked out or making a fool of himself for their show. He fails if only because he's trying too hard and he's so caught up with being well-mannered that he's too rigid to easily adapt to new situations. The unnamed protagonist ends up moving from one strange situation to the next in the hopes of getting the better of the plot's organizers and of seeing the face of the mysterious woman. The ending was odd. I think I need to consider it a bit more because the whole thing seems to have something to do with life before birth/after death and nothing is ever explained. There's no dialogue either, basically. Only a short conversation with an obstetrician and a few lines exchanged with the extras in the "show".

I miss Spring; Troll by Sinisalo

The heat! 99 and humid. That's all I've got to say about that.

All staff have to work on this self-study narrative from the accreditation board so I spent yesterday writing the library part. Today I'll enhance it and turn it in. They ask awkward and weirdly worded questions. What information technology do we have? How broad do you want that? What is your definition of it, accreditation board? How many titles of the collection are business related, how many are on general education, and how many are other? Do you want an exact figure? Do you think I have them marked that way? That I've divided them up by that classification? What evidence is there that the resources are up-to-date and course related? You mean other than the library catalog? What "evidence" do you want? What are the procedures for students checking books in and out? Accreditation board, you don't actually know what librarians do, do you? Or do you mean you want to know what my loan policies are? Bah. I'll answer but it's very hard not to be sarcastic.

We had an HR training session yesterday with our new HR person. Who is actually the director of admissions so she's going to have a busy time. We had to go over the student catalog and come up with questions that might be good for a FAQ page on the website. Then we got a crossword puzzle based on the catalog as homework. I finished it pretty quickly.

Today I'll work on the narrative and put call numbers on books. Good times.

I read a book called Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo. Hah. Well, it was interesting. This photographer finds a hurt troll cub and takes it in to nurse it back to health. There are four other characters that he interacts with because of his need to help the troll. Each character's thoughts are told from their point of view so you might have a paragraph or a page with their name at the top telling their side of a scene. These alternating POV scenes are intercut with book excerpts and news clippings about trolls. The main character, nicknamed Angel, grows more and more infatuated with the little beast until his actions totally center around it. Angel is a beautiful young man who a lot of people want and he uses that and gets used in return. He didn't have much personality though. The ending was kind of abrupt. I was left with an unfinished feeling, like it cut off right when the next part of the story should have started. However, the read as a whole was whimsical and different and rather enjoyable. I'm not quite sure what the Filipina mail order bride was doing in the story. She could easily have been cut out.

And I'm back; First Drop by Zoe Sharp

Well, that was remiss of me. I should have written sooner.

Work has been interesting. The students and faculty are checking out books and asking for help with research so I guess things are headed in the right direction. I've created an access database to keep better records of the resources and Populi has upgraded their ILS feature which has made my life a little easier. I can delete resources and change cover pictures now! Very exciting stuff. My boss would be harder to deal with if we worked in the same building but fortunately we don't. She's a driven woman and I believe she's a nice enough person but her idea of management is to criticize every time she sees you. I think it's her way of letting you know she's watching. This would be very depressing if I wasn't getting a lot of positive feedback from everyone else.

My project of "put call numbers on book spines" is going nicely. The only thing I'm really having a little difficulty with is getting more support from the faculty. There are a few full-time staff that are really including me in the academics but without an order from above the rest of them have no incentive to incorporate what I can offer into their lesson plans. I've sent out emails and posted on the Populi news feed but I don't think a lot of people are paying attention. I'll work on it.

Now on to First Drop. Much like the movie Shutter Island seemed to last six hours, First Drop seemed to last about five years. This was not a good book. Now I don't say this because it was badly written or plotted. I say this because Sharp's characters are some of the most obnoxious, flat, and self-absorbed I've ever read. Charlie Fox has her first job as a bodyguard watching out for a fifteen year old Floridian boy named Trey. She got the job from her boyfriend/boss , Sean, the only character who isn't completely unlikable but this may be because he has no personality and is hardly in the book at all. Anyway, Charlie has come over from England for her first American job. The author obviously did some research or took a vacation in Florida or something so that aspect wasn't too terrible. The dialogue though wasn't particularly good and that was rather distracting. All the teenagers sounded like fake Californian valley girls and Ms. Sharp doesn't seem to realize that certain grammatical rules apply even to speech filled with "like" and "totally". The retired CIA agent Walt and his nephew were constantly calling Charlie "missy" and "little lady" which was just inappropriate under the circumstances and just in general most of the dialogue was filled with colloquial American English that would be right in certain cases but that she didn't know how to use properly. There were a few things that were obviously British in-jokes, like having a character named "Randy" and having the teenagers not understand sarcasm (or as she called it, "irony". Here's an interesting post on the difference between the way the two countries look at this topic http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2009/05/sarcasm-and-irony.html) Teenagers are generally the masters of this form of communication. The other thing that stuck out was the plot point wherein Charlie and Trey are on the beach and oh no! they are in trouble because the police are checking everybody's IDs (due to a murder committed nearly 200 miles away) and once the police get to them they'll be finished! They've got to get away! And I'm like, wait, what gives the police the right to randomly demand all beach-goers to present their IDs? Oh, and apparently Ms. Fox and Trey rode the 240 miles from Fort Lauderdale to Daytona on a motorcycle. And not on I-95 which would make sense but on a state road which would lengthen their journey to about 6 hours. They must've needed an alarm clock and smelling salts just to wake their backsides up enough to not fall flat on their faces as soon as they dismounted.

As for Charlie herself. She was utterly unprofessional: She expected the adolescent she was supposed to protect to do her job for her. He's her charge and she should expect nothing from him. She's utterly without the ability to empathize or put herself in another's shoes: When Trey gets upset and storms off during a conversation where it becomes clear that his father may have hired people to kill him she huffs and thinks to herself that she doesn't have time to deal with "a stroppy teenager". She's incompetent: When things started getting dangerous, instead of dragging a fifteen year old around with her while she tries to clear her name she should have driven to another state, dropped him off at a police station and then made her way to the British embassy. Trey would have been protected, fewer people would have died, and things would generally have been less of a mess. She's completely self-absorbed: When Trey, who has understandable trust issues, questions her commitment to protecting him after she uses him as a human meat shield, she gets angry that he would question her ability to do her job.

Charlie Fox is basically a horrible human being. When she gets upset at Trey's inability to deal with all the mayhem she tells him that people died because of him and that she herself killed a man for his sake. That is not cool. She argues the semantics of sex with him and angrily blurts out her gang-rape in the hopes that further traumatizing him might make him think twice before participating in one himself (I have no idea why she thought he might to begin with.) Her feelings are the only ones she allows to be valid. She's always in the right. She's a bad ass fighter who gains fanboys and can pass for a teenager. She's basically a really weird self-insert character.

Anyway, the majority of the characters were horrible people, the main character being the worst. I also have to remark on the female characters. There are only three other females in the book among the multitude of guys. One is a matronly female who makes pancakes. She's of no consequence. The other is a teenager who acts as support to Charlie; buying her supplies, smoothing the mood, and doing a little fangirling. The other is a hard nosed cowardly bitch who acts (badly) as a red herring and is summarily shot. Charlie is not allowed competition.

Okay, I just need to get that off my chest. I don't know why I bothered finishing the book. It was teeth grinding-ly bad. It was so bad I don't think I could make a semi-humorous post about it though I might like to try.

I'm re-charging with other books. I read Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, an alternative interpretation of the series. I don't quite like the way he portrayed Watson but for a Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper book (something that's been done to death by now) it's quite good.