Adventures in Libraryland

Greetings good readers,

It's been an interesting week so far here in Libraryland.

Monday
The week started when I worked Monday for the first time since I started here over two and a half years ago.  Paula, Sharon and I were in to receive in-person training prior to our library going live on Sitka Evergreen on Tuesday.  Now, the library has been here over 25 years, our hours haven't changed since I started in 2008 (I'm not sure how long they were in place before that), and we've got our hours posted on the door.

...I lost count of how many patrons tried to come into the library.  Every time one of them rattled our locked doors, I hopped down from my perch on the circulation counter, unlocked the doors, and told them "We're closed Mondays -- the only reason the lights are on is because we're receiving training today."  Their response:  "You're closed on Monday?"

It's nice to know people like us to be open, but it would also be nice if people were aware of our hours and didn't insist on trying the doors when we're closed...

Tuesday
Yesterday was the library's official "go live" day with Sitka Evergreen.  We had all hands on deck (and crowding behind the circulation counter).  After going through more training, Paula and I worked with our trainer to try to set up our library's local administrative settings.  I chose one option, saved it, and then the program quit responding to any further changes.  We had lost access to our database.

About ten minutes later, our trainer started hearing about Sitka Evergreen being down across the province.  As a result, we worked on some other things.  Later in the afternoon after Evergreen was back up, our trainer was talking to the tech support team.  I could only hear her side of the conversation, and it went like this:

"So it was us?  The setting Jacob changed did it?"

So it's official folks.  On day one, I crashed the Evergreen server.

To be perfectly honest, I'm kind of proud of the achievement.  I did a bit of a victory lap afterward and was bragging to the other staff about it.

Wednesday
When I was getting ready for work this morning, I decided to bring back a stack of my borrowed interlibrary loans.  I haven't had a chance to process the returns since I got back from the Beyond Hope conference last Thursday, so they've been piling up.  I had just carried over a stack of 20+ interlibrary loan books to my desk when Paula caught me and said "Oh Jacob, did you hear that Canada Post has locked out their employees?"

...So I put back my stack of books.  I'm hoping the situation gets resolved soon because my basket for books belonging to other libraries has a very finite space limit, and we're rapidly approaching it.


So that's what's been happening so far this week folks.  Stay tuned, because we'll be keeping busy over the next week in particular as we continue to learn how to use Evergreen and prepare for the Summer Reading Club opening ceremonies next Wednesday.