On the recommendation of a friend, I decided to read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. I have to admit, science fiction as a genre is normally one of which I steer clear, but I felt that as one of the seminal time-travelling stories in fiction, I ought to get round to reading it. I have to admit, I wasn't particularly impressed. Whilst I loved the initial description of the Time Traveller and his companions discussing the possibilities of time travel, and indeed, the novella's closing chapters following the Time Traveller's return, I felt that as soon as the narrative turned to the Time Traveller's journey into future, it began to seem a little tedious - at times, I found myself skim-reading pages (which in my opinion, is never a good sign!)
This aside, I enjoyed and appreciated Wells's underlying social commentary, with the Morlocks (the gollum-like creatures who live underground) representative of the working class, and the Eloi representative of the more "leisured." I also found it particularly interesting that on his escape from the future, the Time Traveller provides us with a haunting vision of what civilisation will become; as the sun dims with each shift forwards through time until he returns home, the Time Traveller indicates that humanity - rather than evolving and progressing - will eventually do exactly the opposite - it will degenerate until everything has died out.
Whilst I think The Time Machine is certainly worthy of 3 out of 5 stars for its contribution to the genre of science fiction, I think my next book choice - that is, Cranford by Mrs Gaskell - shall certainly prove to be a much lighter form of entertainment!
Thoughts and opinions are welcome :)
Sunday 6 February 2011
Tuesday 1 February 2011
A day in the life...
So here it is...blog #2!
Today was more or less just like any other day at work. Work for me is a library in London, where I am a graduate trainee on a year's placement in preparation for library school in September. At the moment, I am based in Reader Services, so I work on both the "Enquiries" and "Circulation" desk, dealing with the public and their (yes, you've guessed it!) enquiries, although I do also carry out duties such as the issuing, returning, renewing and reserving of members' books. I have to say, I am really enjoying my time in RS at the moment, mostly because I find it is a very sociable department, where I can enjoy the daily interaction with people of all ages, walks of life (and, I hasten to add, celebrity status!)
I remember saying a few weeks ago in my interview to library school that one of the reasons why I wanted to become a librarian was because no day would ever be the same, and that you would always be presented with new challenges. Boy, was I right today! In all fairness, the day started off quite smoothly - my train was running on time, I found 5 missing books this morning - things were looking good. Then, this afternoon reared its ugly head. Firstly, I arrive back from lunch to be handed an enquiry from my colleague from a member who seems to have a habit of requesting the most bizarre things! Today, this particular member (who, I should probably mention, is an artist who lives abroad and is unable to come into the library) was after a picture of a budgie which was yellow on the top, and green underneath...oh, and also a picture of a bulldog. Assuming she did not want me to find a photograph of both together, I began my search in the rather interestingly named sections - S. Birds and S. Dogs. Perhaps I ought to explain here that the library in which I work, (the London Library), does not follow the Dewey Decimal system; instead, it adheres to a rather unique shelving system consisting of various shelfmarks such as S. Devil, S. Epitaph, S. Love and S. Women, where books are shelved according to category, and subsequently, alphabetically by Author (or title, if it is an edited work). You can practically think of any subject, and I can guarantee we'll have a shelfmark for it! It really is fascinating though - you can get lost for hours just stumbling across books under the most peculiar headings -S. Sex certainly holds some interesting material!!
Anyway, back to my search. Eventually, I managed to find a really old 1933 book about the care of budgerigars, which thankfully had a colour image I could send to the member. Sorted. When I thought I had successfully completed one enquiry, the phone then rang, and I was faced with a notoriously difficult member, who could only remember the author's surname was Jordan (he could not remember for the life of him what the first initial was!), and that it was probably a book on Shakespeare published about 150 years ago. You can imagine how many search results appeared when I typed in this into the catalogue. I'm sure many other librarians out there have encountered this problem many times before - what I like to call the "I'm-after-a-book, but-I-can't-remember-the-title-but-I-know-it-is-green" experience! Thankfully, I have been shown this amazing resource called COPAC: www.copac.ac.uk which enables you to search and access for free the merged online catalogues of major universities, academic institutions, specialist and national libraries in the UK (including the British Library). With some luck, I managed to track down a couple of articles that seemed to match the very limited reference I was given, and the member seemed quite content to chase things up with the British Library, (who were one of the only institutions to hold one of the 10 copies ever printed).
I have to admit though - as difficult (and strange) as these enquiries were, I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to track down the material. The rest of the afternoon went by quickly after this (aided by the sugar-boost supplied by our supply of Mini-Eggs behind the desk!)
Oh, and one last thing before I forget - I have finally received my CILIP membership (www.cilip.org.uk) confirmation! I attempted to join before my library school interview, but with our typical British weather, it must have taken aaaaaages for my application form to reach them! Hurrah it is finally sorted though! I have signed up to the Career Development and Rare Books and Special Collections groups, so hopefully I'll start receiving some more information about these areas of librarianship as well. I'm really keen to sign myself up for as many talks and training courses as soon as I can.
Right, I better sign off of here and get some sleep! I swear there are just not enough hours in the day to fit everything in!
Until next time,
London library girl xxxx
Today was more or less just like any other day at work. Work for me is a library in London, where I am a graduate trainee on a year's placement in preparation for library school in September. At the moment, I am based in Reader Services, so I work on both the "Enquiries" and "Circulation" desk, dealing with the public and their (yes, you've guessed it!) enquiries, although I do also carry out duties such as the issuing, returning, renewing and reserving of members' books. I have to say, I am really enjoying my time in RS at the moment, mostly because I find it is a very sociable department, where I can enjoy the daily interaction with people of all ages, walks of life (and, I hasten to add, celebrity status!)
I remember saying a few weeks ago in my interview to library school that one of the reasons why I wanted to become a librarian was because no day would ever be the same, and that you would always be presented with new challenges. Boy, was I right today! In all fairness, the day started off quite smoothly - my train was running on time, I found 5 missing books this morning - things were looking good. Then, this afternoon reared its ugly head. Firstly, I arrive back from lunch to be handed an enquiry from my colleague from a member who seems to have a habit of requesting the most bizarre things! Today, this particular member (who, I should probably mention, is an artist who lives abroad and is unable to come into the library) was after a picture of a budgie which was yellow on the top, and green underneath...oh, and also a picture of a bulldog. Assuming she did not want me to find a photograph of both together, I began my search in the rather interestingly named sections - S. Birds and S. Dogs. Perhaps I ought to explain here that the library in which I work, (the London Library), does not follow the Dewey Decimal system; instead, it adheres to a rather unique shelving system consisting of various shelfmarks such as S. Devil, S. Epitaph, S. Love and S. Women, where books are shelved according to category, and subsequently, alphabetically by Author (or title, if it is an edited work). You can practically think of any subject, and I can guarantee we'll have a shelfmark for it! It really is fascinating though - you can get lost for hours just stumbling across books under the most peculiar headings -S. Sex certainly holds some interesting material!!
Anyway, back to my search. Eventually, I managed to find a really old 1933 book about the care of budgerigars, which thankfully had a colour image I could send to the member. Sorted. When I thought I had successfully completed one enquiry, the phone then rang, and I was faced with a notoriously difficult member, who could only remember the author's surname was Jordan (he could not remember for the life of him what the first initial was!), and that it was probably a book on Shakespeare published about 150 years ago. You can imagine how many search results appeared when I typed in this into the catalogue. I'm sure many other librarians out there have encountered this problem many times before - what I like to call the "I'm-after-a-book, but-I-can't-remember-the-title-but-I-know-it-is-green" experience! Thankfully, I have been shown this amazing resource called COPAC: www.copac.ac.uk which enables you to search and access for free the merged online catalogues of major universities, academic institutions, specialist and national libraries in the UK (including the British Library). With some luck, I managed to track down a couple of articles that seemed to match the very limited reference I was given, and the member seemed quite content to chase things up with the British Library, (who were one of the only institutions to hold one of the 10 copies ever printed).
I have to admit though - as difficult (and strange) as these enquiries were, I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to track down the material. The rest of the afternoon went by quickly after this (aided by the sugar-boost supplied by our supply of Mini-Eggs behind the desk!)
Oh, and one last thing before I forget - I have finally received my CILIP membership (www.cilip.org.uk) confirmation! I attempted to join before my library school interview, but with our typical British weather, it must have taken aaaaaages for my application form to reach them! Hurrah it is finally sorted though! I have signed up to the Career Development and Rare Books and Special Collections groups, so hopefully I'll start receiving some more information about these areas of librarianship as well. I'm really keen to sign myself up for as many talks and training courses as soon as I can.
Right, I better sign off of here and get some sleep! I swear there are just not enough hours in the day to fit everything in!
Until next time,
London library girl xxxx
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