All the money must be spent by the end of June, and accounted for and don't disturb the fellows over there doing it. It is a lot of work. My part of it was spending the money budgeted smoothly over the ten months I was granted (two months belong to the accountants that I must not disturb), and I am close to where I should be. Explained to me several times during the last few weeks that my dollar amount granted was only a temporary figure and it could end up higher or lower - as the accountants worried at it. I was given a day to go Purchase Order Shopping, first amount was $1089.52 but by the time I made the telephone coordination it was $1122.00. The first time I went to the book store the manager wasn't in, and it was a wasted trip, so I went back to my library and worked on stuff that had piled up. I have procrastination piles at work as well as home, but my Program Manager has told me for years that it was okay not to get everything done each day and to have something left for tomorrow - hmm, they haven't been working with a military mission that says all equipment accounted for, cleaned and refilled and ready to roll back out - or you don't get to go to bed or back home until it is done, my habits are engraved on my work expectations.
Well, the shopping went well, since I had a long wish list for older books missing from series, favorite authors that we had worn the pages out for heavy circulation, some classics and music requests - get us more music CDs! In three hours I shopped and picked up and looked over and grabbed the final copy - kind of fun spending the State's money on my fancy - but then I did get many things I won't read, but that they will. It is an almost regular library I keep and reading will set one free, if only while he dwells in the world between the pages and his mind. I was rung up, and packed out and get a ten percent discount for bulk purchases of used books. Four big boxes on a hand cart and out to my Caravan, load it up, return the handcart and drive off to the Depot loading dock. I label the boxes "Library" and talk to the freight chief, he gets them put on the first truck for the ferry in the morning and I am done for the day. I missed the last ferry that could have gotten me to work an hour, so I took two hours off after calling my supervisor, who had been holding down the library while I was shopping.
The following day I report for work, and catch up on what I hadn't done the day before and take my whole four inmate crew down to the mailroom, and there are the boxes and two days of mail bins - work awaits and we haul it all back up the stairs to Control and into the library. I unload the boxes on a bookcart and hide it away - curiosity is terrible, and knowledge is power and a commodity on the inside my clerks have real work to do and fondling new books and CDs just isn't going to be done on this day. Next week we would start processing.
So I organized the books, and searched the internet for MARC records to download, I find a hundred and fifty of the items. I get the inmates to make call numbers and add genre labels as needed, stamp, barcode, date due slip and 3M security strips. I will wait on downloading the MARC until I have a clean day and can link all the items, since I must submit a report to the State Library about all the additions to the collection. Since I can't find everything, the British and Australian publications not always covered in my search areas I have to send those items off to Acquisitions for them to process and return to me with a MARC to link to, I am still waiting on two from April but it is all part of that end of Fiscal year clean up and account for all the dollars. I am receiving other material prepared for adding to the collection as they continue to process the small additions and stuff that was stuffed in the closets until they could get around to them. Twenty-four items and eight items and I have loaded them up and the patrons are already reserving some of them - everyone wants to be first for the latest Patterson or Vachss.
Well, keeping the library open and normal operations, plus adding the extra processing and accounting makes a busy day, but on Friday I will download and link and they will scan, check one last time, putting those special books on reserve and grabbing the ones they just can't wait to read (the best part of working a library is first dibs). From only a wishlist on Thursday, to an actual item in the collection for circulation on the following Friday, and I get to ride a motorcycle with a smile for a job well done and a great week's work.
*The picture is posed from last year's movement of the library - not from receiving new books...
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