Down in the Weeds

Well, to start let me just say that there comes a time when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know you are ALMOST there and whereas every cell in your body could just leap for joy at the completion of a job well done, you are naturally thinking; "Oh gee, then I'll have to write a report about this."  And that just sucks the wind our of your sails a little bit.

The task I am referring to is weeding.  Tomorrow I will finish weeding the collection and we are also having an outside worker come in on that day to do some cleaning of the collection.  Boy do we need it.  I've never seen so much dust and dirt on a collection.

To be fair, it is absolutely BOILING down here sometimes, so the staff open the windows to let the breeze in.  It's a smart move and one I wholeheartedly endorse having experienced Caribbean weather at its muggiest, but the down side is that near limitless amounts of dust and particulate blow into the collection.   It's the reason we put plastic covers over our PC's, printers, photocopiers and other office equipment when they are not in use.

But back to the weeding I was just describing.  I've been going full on to the wall with weeding pretty much all day, every day since I got here, minus a few hours each day to write policy, memos, reports or read those of others.  This is NOT recommended as the more library inclined of you are well aware as after about an hour, your mind goes off into a bit of a lock-up and you start making 'questionable' decisions regarding what stays in the collection and what gets sent to the rubbish bin.  That's why I kept my weeding policy handy at my desk to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Now that the weeding is almost done and the cleaning is about to commence, I can begin downloading trial versions of the prospective ILS's I want to try.  Right now it's kind of a toss up between BookCat and LibraryWorld.  Now, both are pretty good in what they do, but I think I'm going to have to give an early nod to BookCat for the following reasons:

1.  It's cheaper overall, even with paying for upgrades - whereas LibraryWorld has an annual renewal fee of $395.  It's a developing country, so we have to husband our resources wisely so we can spend big on the things that really matter.
2.  Our UNESCO partners in other Caribbean countries already use BookCat meaning that the company is familiar with the needs of Caribbean clients who work for UNESCO and this would probably make facilitating information sharing and perhaps even ILL in the future a bit easier.
3. From what I've seen so far, I just like the training materials from BookCat more.  Nothing personal, I just find I learn more from them.

That being said, LibraryWorld is still a really good option - mostly because it's operating on the Cloud.  BookCat's big downside for me is that I have to download and configure all the software whereas with LibraryWorld it's mostly already set up for me.  That will also make training staff a bit more difficult when it comes time for my position here to close - I'd rather they not have to deal with maintaining things on our end as much as possible, mostly for convenience sake.

One of my other big problems right now is that I have a lot of duplicate periodicals I want to put into storage, but none such capacity exists at where I work right now or off-site.  Right now, I've just got a few cardboard boxes in a dark room holding undamaged, nearly pristine condition mags and journals which I know would be a good idea to keep.  Right now I'm exploring whether or not I can get some kind of alternative option because I really don't want to have to discard all this material when it could be useful for ILL or backup copies, but shelf space is an issue.

Also, here's a few photos of where I work (and also one of me enjoying a rum and coke at my house)!