July 8

Another week is over. Today, I spent most of the day working on CD processing/cataloging. Because of interviews, I was banished from my regular afternoon computer where I have a lot of record label information saved so I spent the whole day upstairs at my cataloging desk. Since I was there and since I'm fed up with record label researching, I spent about 6.5 hours working on CD processing instead of the usual 4 I'm supposed to spend. I got quite a rhythm going. I also listened to a lot of music, including Los Lonely Boys, Three Dog Night, Jack Johnson, Christina Milian, Angie Stone, Michelle Shocked, The Fixx and Steriogram, to name some. My batteries in my CD player keep dying - go figure they don't last very long when they are being used about 8 hours a day 5 days a week.

My trainer, Tran, is on vacation until July 25th. She only came in one day this week as it was but now she will be gone for the next two weeks as well. That's fine by me; however, since she looks over all my work, it means that my work will just be piling up while she is gone.

Joe, my cataloging supervisor, asked us if we wanted to go meet with Barbara Tillett, whose title is something like Chief, Cataloging Policy. Not that I knew this until I asked fellow intern Thom, though. So that will happen Monday. Anything to get me away from my computer for any amount of time is something I'm all about...

July 7

Workwise, I again don't have anything new to report. We did get a bit of a break from the usual schedule because we interns had a little orientation meeting/tour with the Acquisitions & Bibliographic Access Directorate. We learned a little about how acquisitions are made at the Library and a little about how cataloging is done. The cataloging information was really not new to me at all since I work in cataloging every morning, but I did get somewhat of an understanding how the divisions are broken down (by subject or by language). As for acquisitions, there are four ways that the Library gets material: from the Copyright office, through exchanges, from gifts and from actual purchases. By and large, the majority of items come from the Copyright deposits. We got a tour of the mail room then, which was kind of interesting. Most of the mail room houses all the books that the Library does NOT keep - either those being sent to "pulp" or those being set up for exchanges. They have more books eligible for the exchange program than I've seen in many smaller public library branches. I'm not kidding. There were SO many books there. If I ever start a library, now I know where to go for books! We also got a tour of the fifth floor cataloging division - which is where I work in the morning so it wasn't that interesting. Honestly, I don't think anyone found it that interesting because it's just walking around cubicles. We did not go in the SpecMat department where I work specifically, but the entire fifth floor consists of Cataloging units and they all seem to look the same.

The other events of the day were those in London, with the public transportation terrorism that occured there. I happened to turn on the TV while I was getting ready in the morning and was aware of the extra security that would be facing me as I rode public transportation, but I didn't really sense a whole lot of it in the morning. I did see someone in a uniform with a dog, so I assumed it was a bomb-sniffing dog, but that was about it in the morning and everything went off without a hitch. By the afternoon, things seemed to have gotten more secure - probably due to the raising of the threat level to orange. We noticed at lunchtime that the outside garbage cans had been taken away, so we had to bring our garbage back into the building with us. I assume they were trying to prevent garbage can bombs? And, on my way home, I passed a man armed with a HUGE machine gun. It was gigantic and really kind of scary. I've never been inches away from or actually even seen a weapon like that before. Wow. But, again, no problems.

July 6

Just another day. I can't think of a single thing that was unique or interesting that happened at the Library today so I will share an oddity of the Library. In the bathrooms (which are literally every few feet - no one should ever have to worry about waiting in line for the bathroom here), there are all these signs that explain the proper way to wash one's hands. It's like a ten-step process and I'm not exaggerating. It also tells WHEN one should wash their hands. As if people didn't know. According to these rules, there are like 25 situations in which someone should wash their hands. Besides those notes, which were printed out on paper and posted in the bathroom, there are also these actual plastic signs (therefore, money was spent on them!) that hang in every bathroom warning people not to drink the water from the bathroom. Now, I kind of doubt I would think to pull out a glass and head to the bathroom sink to fill it up - however, I do wash my hands there, as they demand I do, and if there is something wrong with the water that makes it un-consumable, do I want that water on my hands, which are inevitably going to be touching my food or touching my mouth? I don't know. I've seen more than one person brushing their teeth in the bathroom, too; surely some water gets ingested in the teeth-brushing process. Anyway, just something I think about every day I'm in the bathroom. Fascinating, I know.

In totally unrelated D.C. news, I became an aunt today at 12:38pm. I now have a nephew! Congrats to my brother and sister-in-law!!

July 5

Back to the grind... I admit that I felt like I didn't do much today but I suppose that is not that abnormal for a day back after a long weekend.
I spent a great deal of time in the morning talking to one of my co-workers. She is Thom's mentor and I kind of wish she was mine. I like her. Then later, Mary, the woman who works here who is always eager to show us Jr. Fellows new things, explained how they do an inventory of the backlog in the department each quarter. It was due today so she showed us where all the different items are kept - brand new items, older hard-to-catalog items, etc... New items come in and basically sit on a shelf for 30 days before they are transferred to a different area of the office. Mary doesn't like to have to transfer items and prefers that the stuff gets done before those 30 days are up. Most of the items that are transferred are items in foreign languages. Actually, a lot of the cataloging that gets done here seems to be items in foreign languages because a lot of the English language stuff is already cataloged by like OCLC or RLIN. Mary thinks it is a major waste of time for a staffmember to try to do original cataloging for any sort of item that might be found elsewhere. Apparently, not everyone agrees with her. Unfortunately for them, Mary has a lot of power and a lot of opinions about how things should be done. She's instituting change in a place that is very resistant to change. Anyhoo, it was nice to sort of get an understanding of the layout of the department after a month here.

In the afternoon (which was pretty short considering Mary didn't finish showing us around until about 1:45 and then Thom & I went to lunch at a yummy Chinese restaurant!), I seemed to have no other choice but to find a new record label that is not sending two copies of its catalog to the Copyright Office. Ho hum. I found a couple to keep me busy for the time being. I'm really hoping for a new project for the afternoon, though. Soon, I mean.

July 2, 3 & 4

I had a really nice weekend despite entertaining my psycho "friend". Did some sightseeing, went to Baltimore and checked out their Inner Harbor and an Orioles game, visited a couple Smithsonian museums and saw the big fireworks extravaganza - just like I had planned. I have pictures that I may or may not be able to post when I have legitimate Internet access.

July 4 Pictures

Here are some of the pictures I took of the fireworks that went off behind the Washington Monument.

July 3 - Baltimore Orioles Game

These are some views of the ballpark from the $15 seats we got. In the second picture, you might notice the score (upon enlargement, I'd guess, unless you have REALLY good eyesight): Cleveland 5, Baltimore 0 in the 1st inning. Heh! The Indians ended up winning 9-4.

July 3 - Baltimore Inner Harbor Pictures