What I do with my day, part two
Sunday, 24 April 2016 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59There Are 350 Varieties Of Shark, Not Counting Loan And Pool.*
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Before I continue the riveting account of how I help keep the wheels of the library turning, I want to fine-tune some of what you already know.
The tote tags—three-by-five cards with agency stickers, used to denote where a particular box of books is going—are divvied up into five index card file boxes. I talked about how the number and order of these cards is determined by the distribution list, and the list is determined by the size and needs of the library branches. I had been fiddling with the number of cards for some time. My goal was that when I replenished the boxes it would be because they were all running low. The small branches normally only get one box a day; the medium-sized branches get one or two; the big branches get two, sometimes three, maybe even four.
When we left off, they had just changed the list again. This presented a problem. Well, two problems. The first was, they moved some of the medium-sized branches near the top of the list. The second was that two days a week, Central was not number one.
This meant that I had to rearrange the boxes, which was no big deal. It further meant that I had to make divider cards for Central, which was also no big deal. But I decided it wasn't worth the time and supplies to make divider cards for the three days Central's cards would be at the front. It seemed silly.
However, some unnamed person in our department was apparently disturbed by this lack of consistency. I can understand that; odd things disturb us all. Or maybe they really couldn't figure out that the tags marked CEN were Central tags without a divider marked CEN in front of them. I know people like that. Either way, one day I noticed that Central dividers had been created for the three days Central was number one in the rotation.
That was annoying but not actually a problem The problem was with the other two days. The first two branches were medium-sized with a medium number of cards, but because they were higher up on the list, they were getting more material. They were running out of tags faster on those two days.
Adjustments were needed.
Before I go on, let me say this. You might be thinking, well, why not just put in some more cards? How hard is that? Well, it's not hard at all, but here's the thing—the things, because there's more than one.
Back in the old days, when we ran off catalogue cards for the card files, I got to where, if I needed to run fifty cards, I could open a package of a hundred and divide it in half perfectly. I knew the feel of them. I can't do this with these cards because they're not all the same weight. A hundred orange cards doesn't feel the same as a hundred pink cards. So there's that.
Add to that that I'm just truly horrible at estimating, so knowing how many cards to put in—without counting them—is something that makes my brain hurt.
And add to that—well, let's talk about the cards.
When I took this particular chore, there weren't enough cards to fill the boxes. The system was new, it was mostly theoretical. I spent three days sorting, counting, and making cards. Fourteen thousand fifty (14,050) cards (in old numbers) are required to fill the boxes. The branches are supposed to send them back, but not all of them do. And for a while there were issues with Shipping and Receiving returning them when they ended up back there. It's a small, stupid, tedious job without which the distribution of new material screeches to a halt.
Before I can refill the boxes, I have to sort and count the cards that have come back. There are never enough to just pull out the remainders and replace them with a whole new pack. Instead I can do that with about three boxes, then take the what I've gotten from those and make up enough for the last two. Making more cards doesn't help; they don't come back.
I was still watching the way the cards were being used, trying to find a system. While I was doing this, someone in the department came along, made up cards on their own (not following the arcane code), didn't count a damn thing, and over-filled the boxes. (One reason I had immediately reduced the number of cards in the boxes was that they were filled so full, it was impossible to flip through them to take out what was needed. I was later told that the original numbers were determined by "how many cards would fit" in the box. How many fit depends how you define fitting. If we were selling boxes of cards, I'd say filling them tight is a good thing. But if your goal is making them easy to use, there has to be some give. I gave the boxes give.)
I was annoyed by this. After I straightened out the mess, I took all the supplies to my desk. Before that they'd been housed in a cubicle used for various tasks we don't do often enough to make it worthwhile for everybody to keep the supplies at their desks. I decided if someone wanted to meddle in a job that had been assigned to me, they would have to invade my cubicle to do it.
I didn't come up with a solution, but it didn't matter because they changed the distribution list again.
Stay tuned.
*L. M. Boyd
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Before I continue the riveting account of how I help keep the wheels of the library turning, I want to fine-tune some of what you already know.
The tote tags—three-by-five cards with agency stickers, used to denote where a particular box of books is going—are divvied up into five index card file boxes. I talked about how the number and order of these cards is determined by the distribution list, and the list is determined by the size and needs of the library branches. I had been fiddling with the number of cards for some time. My goal was that when I replenished the boxes it would be because they were all running low. The small branches normally only get one box a day; the medium-sized branches get one or two; the big branches get two, sometimes three, maybe even four.
When we left off, they had just changed the list again. This presented a problem. Well, two problems. The first was, they moved some of the medium-sized branches near the top of the list. The second was that two days a week, Central was not number one.
This meant that I had to rearrange the boxes, which was no big deal. It further meant that I had to make divider cards for Central, which was also no big deal. But I decided it wasn't worth the time and supplies to make divider cards for the three days Central's cards would be at the front. It seemed silly.
However, some unnamed person in our department was apparently disturbed by this lack of consistency. I can understand that; odd things disturb us all. Or maybe they really couldn't figure out that the tags marked CEN were Central tags without a divider marked CEN in front of them. I know people like that. Either way, one day I noticed that Central dividers had been created for the three days Central was number one in the rotation.
That was annoying but not actually a problem The problem was with the other two days. The first two branches were medium-sized with a medium number of cards, but because they were higher up on the list, they were getting more material. They were running out of tags faster on those two days.
Adjustments were needed.
Before I go on, let me say this. You might be thinking, well, why not just put in some more cards? How hard is that? Well, it's not hard at all, but here's the thing—the things, because there's more than one.
Back in the old days, when we ran off catalogue cards for the card files, I got to where, if I needed to run fifty cards, I could open a package of a hundred and divide it in half perfectly. I knew the feel of them. I can't do this with these cards because they're not all the same weight. A hundred orange cards doesn't feel the same as a hundred pink cards. So there's that.
Add to that that I'm just truly horrible at estimating, so knowing how many cards to put in—without counting them—is something that makes my brain hurt.
And add to that—well, let's talk about the cards.
When I took this particular chore, there weren't enough cards to fill the boxes. The system was new, it was mostly theoretical. I spent three days sorting, counting, and making cards. Fourteen thousand fifty (14,050) cards (in old numbers) are required to fill the boxes. The branches are supposed to send them back, but not all of them do. And for a while there were issues with Shipping and Receiving returning them when they ended up back there. It's a small, stupid, tedious job without which the distribution of new material screeches to a halt.
Before I can refill the boxes, I have to sort and count the cards that have come back. There are never enough to just pull out the remainders and replace them with a whole new pack. Instead I can do that with about three boxes, then take the what I've gotten from those and make up enough for the last two. Making more cards doesn't help; they don't come back.
I was still watching the way the cards were being used, trying to find a system. While I was doing this, someone in the department came along, made up cards on their own (not following the arcane code), didn't count a damn thing, and over-filled the boxes. (One reason I had immediately reduced the number of cards in the boxes was that they were filled so full, it was impossible to flip through them to take out what was needed. I was later told that the original numbers were determined by "how many cards would fit" in the box. How many fit depends how you define fitting. If we were selling boxes of cards, I'd say filling them tight is a good thing. But if your goal is making them easy to use, there has to be some give. I gave the boxes give.)
I was annoyed by this. After I straightened out the mess, I took all the supplies to my desk. Before that they'd been housed in a cubicle used for various tasks we don't do often enough to make it worthwhile for everybody to keep the supplies at their desks. I decided if someone wanted to meddle in a job that had been assigned to me, they would have to invade my cubicle to do it.
I didn't come up with a solution, but it didn't matter because they changed the distribution list again.
Stay tuned.
*L. M. Boyd