-Today, like the past few days, has been remarkably pleasant. The temperatures, which are in the teens, are great for walking and other semi-active outdoor activities. This are made even better by the fact that the sun is shining and that the skies are clear. Shockingly, the wind isn't even over powering.
The only remaining evidence of how bad thing were in May is general condition of the plant-life in the city. Some of the tulips are just now starting to bloom. And in the past few days a few of the trees have started to show signs upcoming leaf growth. Hopefully within a week or two we will be close to back on track (which is certainly a slower track, even at the best of times, than most of North America).
-Yesterday I was able to put my newly acquired cataloging skills to good use. For the first time in my working life I was able to use the LC classification schedules while cataloging for money. While I am pleased to say that I have now used them in a work environment, I must say it was a bit anticlimactic.
The positive side of this addition to my repertoire is that I can now start moving through a broader range of library materials. I am no longer restricted to only government documents. Things are starting to look up.
-Obviously, I am back at work, or at least that is the information that I would hope most would get from the above note.
For the most part I am basically doing the same things that I did in the past, but that I am now expected to do at a higher level. It seems that as I now have a library degree I can't shirk too many of the things that come my way (not that I was doing that in the past).
The only disappointment of the job is that I was reclassified from 'summer student' to 'Library technician IV.' Not surprisingly, I had really hoped that I would have been able to get a post that have more accurately reflected the fact that I now have a library degree.
-Early this morning Kirsten and I made our way over to Georgetown Bakery on our weekly bagel pilgrimage. Fortunately, as was the case last week, they weren't sold out when I placed the order. While their we ran into our former neighbour and were able to get a description of his new dog.
-On Thursday night a friend and I went to a recently opened bar just off George street for a beer. The main justification for choosing the particular bar was that his ladyfriend was working her first shift there.
As it is a relatively new bar it wasn't all that surprising to find that there weren't that many customers there when we arrived. Actually, most of the people there seemed to either be friends with the owner or in some way associated with the bar staff.
After the newly minted bartender had received her orientation she was able to come by and serve us some beer. Within about two minutes of having received these beers a guy down at the other end of the bar purchased everyone at the bar a round with some recent VLT winnings.
We eventually started talking to the younger sister of a former classmate of ours (who was to start as a bartender the next night). While talking to her the VLT winner purchased another round for the bar, this time shots of Goldschlager.
While I appreciate it when someone buys round for the bar I wonder why it can't be that I have such luck on a night when I don't have to be at work at 9:00 AM the next day.
-On Thursday I prepared 'coq au vin' for dinner. As some of you might know, this is a dish that is based on wine marinated chicken. Not surprisingly, a few additional components are thrown in during the cooking process. While the three recipes that I examined vary slightly, they are remarkably similar, with only a few side ingredients changing.
While this was a pretty flavourful dish I did have two problems. The first problem was of my own making and was related to the timing of things. Instead of preparing the coq au vin as soon as I returned from work, I instead prepared the gingerbread and didn't start work on the main dish until the dessert was in the oven. Secondly, the dish was a little bit greasier than I might have like. The next time I make it I will be sure to remove some of the bacon grease before I continue adding other ingredients.
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4 comments:
I was surprised to find that creating MARC records takes just as long in a real library as it did in practice exercises, but it is somewhat more satisfying to know that the record will actually be of use.
The experience I always enjoy is seeing that someone has used something that I have catalogued.
Because we don't use MARC, or a standard ISBD format, I can probably create a larger number of records than I would otherwise be able to.
The part that I find to be slow is using the LCC schedules to confirm or create class numbers. Even seemingly straight forward subjects/documents can take a while.
We use MARC with some unique (re-appropriated) fields and a variation on LCC that is much simpler, so assigning call numbers is mostly quick and painless. The subject heading and personal name authority files are a big mess, though, so that is the biggest challenge for me. It will also be my job to clean those up over the next few years, so I am going to very familiar with authority files.
Ah, yes, authority files. We really aren't so hot on subject and name authority files. I guess we could try to clean things up, but I can't see that happening.
One of the bigger problems that we have is that the name of the province changed a few years ago, causing endless confusion among cataloguers when it comes to deciding the correct form of the name.
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