Getting some help

Pals, colleagues, family members who may or may not be cyber stalking me,

Two big things.

First, great news.  The orders with LibraryWorld and Gaylord were finalized after much hoop jumping here in SKN.  Yippie!  Now we're really rolling.

Second - DAMN! It is time consuming to get those records into the ILS.  What I am doing is using MARCedit to convert tab delimited spreadsheets I am making into MARC records I can upload onto LibraryWorld in large blocks because I find data entry is easier on a spreadsheet than in the LibraryWorld interface.  That's not a knock on LibraryWorld, it's just an admission of Excel's very, very simple interface, combined with MARCedit making it easy for me to upload a lot of records in one go.

Anyhoo, long story short, my boss is going to see about getting me some help for Data Entry.  I've got spreadsheet templates for Books and Serials made in excel that I can quickly convert into MARC and upload in a second to LibraryWorld, so right now my main focus is on getting the remaining unclassified material classified. I actually have about half the collection (2000 items give or take 100) classified, but only about 200 Title records fully catalogued.  With the expected two assistants I'll have filling in the 245$ 300$ 830$ 500$ (etc.) fields, all I'll have to do is get them to put the right info into the right Excel field and then I'll fill in the 650$'s and 090$'s and then I can upload them all and add the copy records.

Bing Bang Boom - It's a good plan and I think it will greatly increase our productivity.  Then, once the Gaylord Brothers order comes in, I can put the assistants on task for labelling our material.

At this point, I'll have to raise the issue of shelving and a circulation desk, getting the right kind of signage, call number ranges, etc etc.

In personal news, since my trip to Brimstone, I've been staying home on the weekends and avoiding going out to build up a little capital to do another big trip, like zip lining or something fun like that.

I've also been taking work home with me in larger amounts to get the lead out getting the records made.  I'm around 2 months and 2.5 weeks into my contract.  Nearly halfway there.  Where does the time go?