#book processing

Worst Library Book Barcode Fails (Some NSFW Language)

Everyone knows that we must rigidly adhere to the agreed upon institutional standards of barcode placement. However, sometimes that means that things can go terribly wrong. So terribly, horrifically and hysterically wrong. Here are some of our favorite barcode placement fails.

Let me start by pointing out that she continually refers to her self as a "happy-clappy Jesus lover" and her children as "tinies". 

A few weeks ago I was telling a friend about my frustration on how since I now let my massive feminist flag fly, many (read: the vast majority of) converstaions that I've been in have turing a political/moral/what-have-you debate rather than a conversation about the myriad of topics I had been able to go into before. The one kind of chat that I've missed the absolute most though was the kind where they shared their lives with me, or they talked about things that they cared about and did not feel the need to tiptoe on eggshells around what they thought would offend me, especially since it is abundantly apparent that they only have a very small idea of what I would actually find offense at. After my short expulsion of frustration, my friend was able to sum it up as : I want tol ove people in the here and now, not exclusively theoretically, in the future sometime (by decreasing the negative -isms against them.) I want what I do, here, now and later, to be about Love, not about who's "right", who's "correct", in my book. The bottom line of my actions, ideas and life is Love, in both my everyday interactions with people and how I advocate against the world's oppressive systems. 

That theme of Love as the bottom is also the driving force behind this book. Sarah Bessey profoundly know the seductive dementor of the need to be "right", driving her to "[jump], Pavlovian, to right every wrong and defend every truth, refute every inflammatory blog post, pontificate about every question. Any sniff of disagreement was a dinner bell clanging to my anger:  Come and get it! Rally the troops!" (5) She is as firm on her conviction that most of the church that she's encountered has  deeply flawed view on gender, especially women, as she is firm on her belief that Jesus, and therefore Christianity is deeply feminist and sees men and women equally. Her voice is dreamy, graceful and  critically intelligent, which makes her choice to be full of light and love that much more powerful. The ending few chapters I read with a heavy and bitter heart as my bubble of love and happiness towards this book was popped by an online comment whose author might have seen the point of this book once upon a time, then swerved, hard. Ah well. The tone was a bit too dreamy for me, not firm in absolutes but theoretical, a bit too ideal. She is also Canadian! which offers a unique aspect on things who self-identifies as a, "happy-clappy starry-eyed, Jesus-loving Canadian mama." (If that isn't the boss-est thing, you can get out of my face.)

There is a running theme of quiet, defiant, stubborn, subversion throughout the book against Satan, against existing gender roles and lie-imbued cultures. 

The second chapter reminded me of my revelation during spring break. Women's roles in the bible may be limited but they are powerful. There were the usual women, Mary Magdalene, Mary Jesus' mother, the woman who touched his cloak, but did you know that there were as many women described with the verb diakoneo as men? 

I'm not a very good library cataloger. As a matter of fact, I'm kind of lazy when it comes to properly processing my books. Part of this is because the program that I'm supposed to use that automatically uploads the MARC record won't install on my own computer and I have to input everything manually. Another part is that, honestly, I'm a solo librarian and I don't have the time to be that detail oriented. Besides, I usually find that another library in the district has already typed in the necessary information and I just need to add the item to my library. Does this cause problems? Sometimes, when I discover that there are three different records for three copies of the same book. But still, not enough of a problem to make me want to re-catalog everything.

In the past six years, the students have had five different librarians. In the past six years, I'm the only one that returned (all the others had legitimate reasons for not coming back; it was just bad luck) and when we switched over the current OPAC, one librarian started changing the barcodes, which the next one continued, then the next, then the next. Unsurprisingly, there are some books which have never been re-processed and many more with outdated barcodes that aren't even in the system anymore.

I've got carts full of books that need to be processed and even though I get plenty of prep AND book processing periods, my other duties as the technology coordinator take me away from the library to deal with technology issues as they come up.

So, I may be a little bit careless about how my books end up in the system. My main concern is just getting them in the system so that students can find them.