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.