Category: Doodles

Art, Doodles

Instant Review: Doane Idea Journal

Shelly

Doodle
gel pen on 60lb graph paper
6 x 7 inches

While looking at the photo streams of people who had added me as a contact on Flickr, I came across some notebooks made by Doane Paper. Spiral-bound notebooks containing gridded paper, to be precise. Be still my beating heart!

I have this thing about graph paper, you see. My very favorite notebooks in college were those half-sized ones with yellow paper, made by Cambridge, I think. The pages were plain lines on one side and graph paper on the other. I’ve searched and searched and haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement. The color of the paper is less important than the grid, so I thought I’d give one of the Doane notebooks a try.

I ordered their 8 x 10 inch Idea Journal on Wednesday and received it today. Not bad. I was happy to see that the packaging was all reused. Recycling is important, but I think all too often, people forget the “reduce” and “reuse” parts of the equation. The notebook itself has rigid, raw chipboard covers on front and back, with a generic sort of design on the front that really appeals to me. The paper itself is 60lb, so it’s heavier than standard notebook paper. This makes it nice for doodling, because ink doesn’t bleed through to next sheet. It’s not so heavy that it feels bulky, though. It’s a good compromise for a notebook that will be used for both writing and doodling.

They also included a free 5 x 8 inch writing pad, with grid paper. Nice touch! I’ll definitely be ordering from them again.

Art, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
gel ink and stickers in steno pad
6 3/4 x 6 inches

We had a big tech services meeting today, so I had time to doodle. I also had my annual evaluation this morning (at 7am!), which was fine. Human Resources decided to switch to a different format this year, and I guess a bunch of people are upset about it. It’s pretty standard, though. I suspect that the folks who are most upset are the ones who have worked here for 20-30 years. They don’t know what it’s like to work anywhere else, so they’re incredibly inflexible. I don’t care, as long as I get a decent evaluation. And I did!

Art, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
gel pen and ballpoint pen in steno pad
9 x 6 inches

I meant to post this last Thursday, but completely forgot. Oopsie! We had a webinar on creating provider neutral bibliographic records for e-books–not exactly a staff meeting–last week, which is where the right-hand and lower parts of the doodle were done. Riveting stuff! Actually, one item did make me sit up and take notice. We’ve begun cataloging e-books from print copy records, instead of from the item itself, something that will make a lot of catalogers’ brains explodiate. But with the move toward FRBR, wherein multiple item types will be nested under one uber-bib record, this makes a whole lotta sense. Under the provider neutral model, individual variances (e.g. one manifestation has 155 pages and another has 146) are not important. Under FRBR (which is a long way from being implemented yet), format itself will cease to matter at the bibliographic record level (e.g. a book and a DVD of a movie made from the book will fall under the same master bib record). So I see the provider neutral model as a step toward FRBR.

Interesting stuff, if you’re a cataloger, but probably not so much otherwise.

Anyway, we started creating provider neutral records a few weeks ago, so I understood the practice, but the theory–especially the point that we are to preference good records for print manifestations over the actual electronic item itself–hadn’t quite sunk in. Hence my momentary bogglement. Using records for print manifestations to flesh out the e-book record you’re creating is one thing, but to preference information in a bib record created from a manifestation you cannot physically put your hands on? Blasphemy!

Art, Crankypantsing, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
gel pen in steno pad
4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches

We are hoppin’ mad this evening! I paid my cable bill last week, and the charge has hard posted to my account, so it went through. I came home to find that cable, internet, and phone were all disconnected! So I called Comcast, and they gave me no explanation. The customer service person told me that they would put a trace on the payment, and then she asked if this was a good number to reach me at. I tried to explain that no, it wouldn’t be, if it’s disconnected, but she’d already hung up on me! Aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh! CUSTOMER SERVICE FAIL!

So they’ve apparently turned the interwebs and TV back on, but the phone is still off. I’m trying to count to a million before calling them back, because I’m afraid that will not go well if I don’t decompress first. But, I’m not going to decompress until A) this is resolved and B) I get an apology.

Art, Crankypantsing, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
ballpoint and gel pen in steno pad
9 x 6 inches

We had another long meeting today, so I had a chance to do more doodling. The new stuff is in the right-hand third of the page.

I ended up changing my work schedule around this week. The roofers are working on the middle section of the library roof, which involves jack hammering right above our heads. The noise is absolutely unbearable. The good news is that they are supposed to finish tearing out the old roof (the noisy part) by 9-10 am each morning. I can stand an hour or so of the noise, but not much more than that. I can’t just get to work after 10:00, though, because it’s impossible to find parking after around 8:30. So, to compromise, I’m working 8-4 and making up time on Saturday, when the library will be blissfully quiet.

The roof work is supposed to be over mid-month. I hope they’re right about that, because I don’t know how much jack hammering I can stand to listen to.

Art, Crankypantsing, Doodles, News & Politics

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
ballpoint and gel pen in steno pad
9 x 6 inches

We had a longer-than-usual meeting today, so I was able to add quite a bit to the last doodle. The second half of the meeting covered the aftermath of the personnel-and-budget-crisis-collide clusterfuck. The good news is, everyone will be keeping their jobs; the bad news is that positions that have been vacated will not be filled. Thank you, Mitch Daniels!

Art, Crankypantsing, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
ballpoint pen in steno pad
4 x 4 1/2 inches

We had our quarterly division meeting today. Thankfully, they’ve been scaled back to one hour long, but there was enough packed into that hour to piss me right the hell off.

First, we spent most of the meeting discussing IT crap. All stuff everyone who works here should know. All stuff there’s no excuse for anyone who works here not knowing. Like, how to properly log off workstations at the end of the day. We’re supposed to restart, not shut down, so that the machines are left on overnight. That allows LIT to install software when the network is the least busy. Duh. That’s been the official procedure since I started working here eight years ago, and I’m betting it’s been so much longer than that. And if there were people who were unclear on the subject (all of whom I bet skipped today’s meeting, because that’s how those things go) a quick, two sentence email should have been sufficient to clue them in. There was really no need to waste time on the subject.

Second, we were told that we will be required to take a series of workshops on such scintillating subjects as how to use MS Vista (because, after a year of using it, obviously we now need training? WTF?!), how to use Outlook (even more baffling, not to mention, our unit had to take a three hour long mandatory Outlook class last winter!), and something that promises to teach us “tips and tricks” for using web browsers. That last one should be especially exciting. And by exciting, I mean exasperating, because I would bet real money that it will cover Internet Explorer, a browser I do not use unless someone holds a gun to my head. The best part was that the guy in charge promised that there would be something to learn for all levels of expertise. And pigs might fly, but I’m dubious.

So basically, today’s meeting made the baby Shelly hoppin’ mad.