Library Notes
February 7, 2004
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
Okay, step two of automation has happened. And – I’ve already bout torn my hair out. By the time this whole entire mind-boggling technological process has taken place, Trish and I have concluded that we will be right in style, stylin’ like all the men we see running around with shaved heads. Except we’re going to pull our hair out, literally, a hand full at a time.
Step one was just learning, and trying to accept, that automation was here, and all the complications of that.
Step two was getting our shelf cards all ready to take out to UPS and ship away. To understand "shelf cards" you must be introduced to some library lingo. For every book, movie or recorded book, we must have a set of three cards, a title card and an author card for the card catalog for ya’ll to search for a book. Then the shelf card is filed in a file we keep in the back, and these are filed in the same order as the books on the shelves.
Well, those are the ones I had to mail to Sagebrush, the company doing our "Retrospective Conversion." Now, how is that for modern, up-to-date technological talking?
I did have one fine time, attempting to get those cards ready to get to UPS. This company doing the conversion charges per card. They put all of the information off each card on a disk and send that to us to load into the computer.
Incidentally, this grant, in addition to paying for the conversion, has purchased a computer, printer and all those mysterious things that go with, into, on top of or behind that computer, cables, switches and I don’t know what all. It is setting back there in the floor, as I speak, about four boxes-full, waiting on the disks to get back and then, full-charge ahead. I think I’ll go hide in the woods the day after those disks get here!
Back to the shelf cards. I had so many books and movies that people have not returned over a long period of time. Those cards had to be pulled out, so that they would not be added, and a charge made, for them.
In addition to the million and one other things that we do all day, those stinkin’ cards had to be gotten out of the files. And, we were on a time limit to get them , mailed. You know how that always helps, to have someone breathing down your neck.
I pulled and I pulled and kept coming across a few more here and a few more there, to add to my stacks. Finally, finally I got them all out, and then they had to be put into boxes to mail.
And this is where we shall leave these cards setting this week, as I have gone on so long, we are practically out of room and I must tell you about this new book by Michael Connelly, which he calls "Lost Light", and they don’t want me to write the whole newspaper this week, as they have other things they would like to put in it. So, let us take a breath and do just that…
"Only the money was real. Four years ago, LAPD detective Harry Bosch was on a movie set asking questions about the murder of a young production assistant when an armored car arrived with two million dollars cash for use in a heist scene. In a life-imitates-art firestorm, a gang of masked men converged on the delivery and robbed the armored car with guns blazing. Bosch got off a shot that struck one of the robbers as their van sped away, but the money was never recovered. And the ACyoung woman’s murder was in the stack of unsolved-case files Bosch carried home the night he left the LAPD.
Now Bosch moves full bore back into that case, determined to find justice for the young woman. Without a badge to open doors and strike fear into the guilty, he learns afresh how brutally indifferent the world can be. But something draws him on, past humiliation and harassment. It’s not just that the dead woman had no discernible link to the robbery. Nor is it his sympathy for the cops who took over the case, one of them killed on duty and the other paralyzed by a bullet in the same attack. With every conversation and every thread of evidence, Bosch senses a larger presence, an organization bigger then the movie studios and more ruthless even than the LAPD. The part of Bosch that will never back down finds as fatal an opponent as he’s every encountered – and there’s no guarantee that Bosch will survive the showdown ahead."