A Day in the Life

This is not going to exactly be Sunday Song Lyrics but it is taken from a title to a song. I hope that is close enough to count. This is a pictorial review of my life in the Digital Library. Since January, I have been working in an academic library in the part of the library called Digital Library Services. It is in the basement of the large central academic library. The university is working on a large initiative to convert all audio visual materials to digital formats. The Library of Congress has a similar initiative on a much grander scale. This is what my work station looks like in the DLS...not fancy but it does everything I need for it to do. I do not spend much time at my station.

In the next picture, I am logged onto my favorite site which has nothing to do with my duties (OED).

These next pictures are from the Special Collections offsite storage location. Essentially, it is a climate controlled warehouse specifically built to hold library materials. I am not concerned with digitizing all of the libraries audio visual materials but only the items in Special Collections. Special Collections is largely a collection of donated materials. It is where you would go to find genealogical items. There are other items there as well such as donated record album collections and art work. The items are treasure troves. For example, there is a donated home movie from the 1950's of a personal tour of the Pope's Summer Palace. There are private photographs of President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Roosevelt just to name a few. This warehouse stores materials that have been weeded and are not yet prepared for sale to other academic libraries. It also holds materials that have recently been donated but are not yet catalogued. It would be safe to say we really do not know yet what treasures are in here. Here is where my job comes into play. Remember I said I was working on a digital initiative? It is my job to find all audio/visual materials contained here then, map it in a fashion so that it may be found again here when it is time for digitization. As I said, these items are not catalogued yet, they only have an accession number. It may not seem like hard work but it is. It is very physically demanding to climb to the tops of these stacks, pull out boxes and go through the contents. It is necessary to get on an electronic picker to reach the tops of these rows. This is not all of what I do or where I do it. I will post more about this digital initiative at a later date. The pictures at the very bottom are examples of what happens to art work that has no place to be viewed currently. Items rotate in and out of these cages as needed. There is a lot of physical work to librariaship and contrary to what you might read, librarians are not going away anytime soon.

Kneeler Update

After quite sometime, the belt frame for the kneeler got made in Austin and arrived into my possession today. I assembled it tonight. Next step, I have to baste the 7 foot long kneeler onto those two posts that have cloth on them. I have to get that dowel with the cloth attached up to the machine and sew the kneeler to each of those cloth covered dowels, then roll it up like a scroll. Most importantly, I really have to get sewing on that thing. I want to finish it by Christmas. That is only 6 months away! That sounds like a long time but not considering my skill level.

I am an official Anglican

Today was an extremely special day for me. I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. Every aspect of Anglicanism appeals to me. The Book of Common Prayer is a beautiful composite of Old and New Testament writings in the language for the common people. It is largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the Reformation. Most of the church services are centered around prayer. The glow of candles sets the atmosphere of Evensong which is a sung evening prayer giving thanks to Christ in our daily lives. There are many beautiful traditions in the Anglican church and it suits me right down to the ground.

Race for the Cure

Saturday morning, I walked 3 miles in the Race for the Cure!!! Our team raised almost $2500. To see all of the survivors, those currently undergoing chemo, and others in various stages of recovery is very emotional. However, you know while you are walking that a cure will be found soon because it MUST be found. We have lost too many beautiful women (and men too) because of this illness but soon we will never lose anyone to this disease ever again. Photo is compliments of Carol. (I forgot to take my camera.) Carol had her own Police protection. Our sweet friend, Leslie who you see on the left in the picture has friends high up in the FW Police Department. (Her Mom is the Police Chief!)

My tree

I took this picture of my redbud tree because I do not have any time to write my blog because I am too busy writing a bunch of stuff that I really do not want to write and cannot imagine anyone wanting to read all that much either. I like this tree because it came up all by itself.