Cataloging: Day 11

Today's observations:

What a wildly productive day!
Today we welcomed librarians from another Mississippi library system to help us get through the many carts of uncataloged books. Phillip (in the photo on the right) is the Director of the Lamar County Library System and Terry is Head of Technical Services for the same, and they were kind enough to make the long drive from Lamar County, which is about 2 hours to the southwest of Newton. Meredith even got in on some of the cataloging action!

I think I've hit my stride when it comes to cataloging at high speed, so I feel pretty good about being able to finish the rest of the juvenile fiction before I go. At that point I will have cataloged adult fiction, adult nonfiction, juvenile fiction, and a good chunk of young adult. Not bad for two week's work! All that will be left is juvenile nonfiction (what little remains after it's weeded) and the easy readers books.
There are a lot of factors that have contributed to the success of this project, though most of them stem from Meredith's passion for improving the libraries in her care. She did her best to show her staff that I was here to help, not to tell them how to do their jobs, and their involvement in the project has been crucial. Without Brenda and Rita's help we would still be sifting through books at Scooba, trying to decide which ones are worth cataloging. And Linda, Eliana, Maxine, and GiGi have all been encouraging and helpful. Times are tough for all libraries, especially in Mississippi, and Kemper-Newton has taken some deep cuts, but everything I've seen here confirms the survey results that I've read about in the library literature: rural librarians tend to have extremely high job satisfaction, in spite of the many frustrations they face.



Titles cataloged today: 150 (I beat Gregg!)

Titles cataloged total: 680 (plus another 148 by my cataloging comrades, bringing the final total to 828!)

Audio entertainment during the drive: Duel - Richard Matheson; Throttle - Joe Hill and Stephen King (both short stories are on the audiobook Road Rage)

New Southern discovery: I found it! The holy grail of unsweetened iced tea:

I realize that iced tea is everywhere in the South, but finding it in bulk isn't easy, and most gas stations don't make it fresh (they also rarely have bottled unsweet tea). Today Meredith brought this treasure for the cataloging marathon, and it was perfect.

Something I miss from California: Missing my friends at the Huntington, especially Jessica, Catherine, and Krystle. I hope something has come in the mail for you guys.