Back to Work

As an employee of an academic institution, I get a little extra paid time off around the holidays, and we all know it's hard to come back after a little extra time off. It only took me a couple of hours to get caught up on e-mail and voice mail, which parallels a news flash from my boss's boss this morning. We need to get more people using this library, and he's going to take time out of his busy schedule to discuss this the next time he's in Houston. I can't wait.

Then I can tell him all the obstacles that stand in the way of getting people to use this library, which he really already knows, but they may have slipped his mind over the long holiday. First, I don't have a budget, and since I don't have a budget, I don't have any current resources. What? You don't have the December 2005 issue of AAPG Bulletin? That's right, I don't!!! And I don't have the December 2004 issue either. In fact, I don't have anything later than December 2003, IN ANY TITLE!!! That could definitely be a good reason why people aren't knocking down the door. Second, it's that budget thing again, but this has do with paying professional dues. How could that get people in door you ask? If I joined the Geoscience Information Society, I could network with other librarians that would in turn tell their users of another great resource for geoscience information, albeit dated information, but valuable nonetheless. Alas, my institution refuses to pay professional dues, and I took a huge pay cut when I accepted this position (for more personal reasons than the money, or lack thereof), so I can't afford to pay them on my own.

I'll leave it at those two for now, but I also want to say that serving eleven users in a month where I only worked sixteen days looks pretty good to me. Oh, and half of those days were spent babysitting visitors to our fine conference facilities, which is a huge part of my job (listed prominently on my job description) and does interfere with my work in the library. As I mentioned earlier, it's hard to come back, but sometimes are more difficult than others.