July 15

Just as I suspected, I spent all morning fixing my brief records after Gina (trainer #2) went through them. My primary mistakes were with the 511 field, which is the ‘Participant or Performer Note.’ I was told by Tran (trainer #1) to get the information off of the CD first and foremost. If there is no artist/performer information there, then go to the back of the CD case. The last resort was to read the inserted booklet. So, many times, I never even opened the little booklet that comes with the CDs since most of you know that the CD usually lists the artist's name. HOWEVER, according to Gina, I should be examining all the information provided in the booklet. I had to add all this extra information like band member names, instruments played, additional and accompanying musicians. Yeah, it kind of sucks. It really did take me about the four hours to go back through all of the 50 brief records that Gina had looked at and to correct my mistakes. I also have to add diacritics to all the Spanish-language stuff. Adding diacritics is a total pain in the ass.

At lunchtime, I went out to eat with Ali, a fellow Recorded Sound Fellow, and she told me a secret: that next week is her last week. She’s known from the beginning that she was only going to be working for 7 weeks because of a big trip to South Africa planned with her family. No one knows – well, except for me now and also for close family friend Dr. James Billington. Yes, that is the same Dr. Billington who is Librarian of Congress. So… I guess that officially answered my question as to how Ali got selected for the program. I had already known that her father had raised some hell, pulled some strings, etc… but I just hadn’t realized the extent to which he had connections. Apparently, Ali’s Dad and Dr. Billington are in the same “men’s club.” I didn’t even ask what that entailed. Anyway, getting over the general bitterness I have for people of privilege, I am actually pretty jealous that she’s leaving. I kind of feel like I’ve gotten all I can out of this experience in the six weeks I’ve been here and wish I could just get out.

In the afternoon, I worked on creating a database from the catalog of non-compliant Estrus Records. At the end of the day, we got an email inviting us to a party for the 135th anniversary of the Copyright Office’s infusion with the Library (woo hoo!) and also for our halfway point. It’s a joint party for those two reasons. Whatever. Like I’m going to complain about a party – regardless of the lame reason they are having it! I hope there is cake because I’ve been totally craving cake ever since I didn’t have any on my birthday.

Oh, which reminds me, Happy Birthday to Brian!

July 14

In the morning, I processed CDs and listened to some Jesse Malin, The Thrills, Henry Mancini and Gob. Interesting variety. I kind of liked Gob. Right as it was time to leave cataloging and just as I suspected, my temporary trainer, Gina, finished going through my tray of brief records… umm, let’s just say that I am going to be spending all of tomorrow fixing things. Oops. She kept saying that it wasn’t my fault, that Tran (my regular trainer) doesn’t know how to properly do things and that she wasn’t trained well and that it frustrates her. She says she was worried for me when she found out that Tran was going to train me and she says she has checked Tran’s work before and knows she doesn’t do things correctly. Great. It still makes me feel like a loser, having so many things wrong. I haven’t even looked at all the mistakes I have supposedly made (that’s for tomorrow morning) but Gina says that most of them are just repetitive ones of things that I was apparently not told. She also told me that once Tran gets back and has questions about how I’m doing things now, to just send Tran to her. Yeah, that will be fun. Let me get in the middle of office cat-fighting. Fun!

Totally randomly, this supervisor lady Linda, who is not really our direct supervisor but is a supervisor in the cataloging department so I imagine we work for her in some way, brought me these brochures for next week’s Montana week. I mean, it doesn’t officially have that designation but there is someone coming to talk about the “high, wide and handsome” state of Montana (handsome?) on Thursday and there is a concert of Montanan cowboy songs and poetry on Wednesday. So I guess I look like someone who would enjoy this sort of thing since there are all sorts of events on a daily basis at the Library and I’ve never been hand-delivered any of the brochures before. Like I would ever waste my time with anything Montanan!

Later, this same woman cornered us after the MBRS Goals Group meeting, asked how things were going, gave us her history and asked about things we might want to do while we are here. I mentioned I'd like to meet with someone from the Congressional Research Service and she thinks she might be able to pull that off. I would be super psyched to do that!

The MBRS Goals Group meeting was at 3pm and semi-interesting, just like the Music Division one was earlier in the week. We talked about division priorities and the upcoming move to the Culpeper facility and what that means for the catalogers and the workflow, etc… One of the items on the agenda was “Junior Fellows” (us!) but we got skipped over in the interest of time. Bummer. But we were told that a party is planned for us in SpecMat on July 28. Party! I can’t wait! And, we will probably have another party from MBRS! Finally... the benefits of job-sharing. Anyway, there was a lot of discussion of how to catalog and store various formats (like CD-Roms, etc…). I have to say I was kind of amazed that the Library of Congress doesn’t have all the answers.

I'm also having Internet issues at home, which is preventing me from easily posting pictures to this site. The gal I'm living with FINALLY got her DSL working and I bought an adapter to make my desktop wireless and it worked great when I tried it at about midnight on Weds. Tonight, though, it didn't work at all. I couldn't connect. It's really frustrating. I hope I can figure it out before the weekend is over.

July 13

A quiet day – in fact, one of my coworkers even told me I was so quiet today. As if I am ever loud… Anyway, I processed some CDs, listened to some CDs (Smashing Pumpkins, The Cribs, Miles to Dayton and some Sixties songs compilation), and did some record label database-making in the afternoon. Same old. At lunch, I finished touring the National Museum of the American Indian, which I ran out of time perusing on Sunday afternoon. Luckily, it’s the museum that is closest to my work and therefore only a 10-15 minute walk.

My trainer, Tran, is on vacation until the 25th so I was given someone new (Gina) to look over my work. I have to say that I’m a little nervous about it because it’s pretty common knowledge around the office that Tran doesn’t know what she is doing and therefore, I probably don’t know what I’m doing either. Hopefully Gina will go easy on me. She seems nice, at least.

After work, I went to the AFI Silver theater in Silver Spring, MD, which boasts some sort of state-of-the-art technologies for film-viewing. Basically, I think it specializes in showing older titles on the big screen. They have a George Lucas series going on where all his movies are being shown. The series I went to is “Science in the Cinema,” in association with the National Institute of Health. They show movies with medical-related themes for free and then follow them with discussion about the affliction shown in the movie. I saw The Notebook and heard discussion about Alzheimer’s disease. It was pretty neat – and did I mention free? The pairing of those two words - movie and free - is one of the most wonderful things in the world! Anyway, I think I might go back. They are showing Something the Lord Made in a couple weeks and I’d really like to see that. A similar free movie series is taking place at the National Building Museum with movies about architecture being featured. I might partake in that also, although it’s not in a nice movie theater but in the museum’s great hall. It also is on Wednesdays.

July 12

In the morning, we were invited to attend a "Goals Group" meeting with staff from SpecMat (the cataloging division where I work) and reference staff from the Music Division. SpecMat is in charge of cataloging all kinds of "special materials" including the CDs and sound recordings that I do (which are part of the MBRS division (Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound) but also books, scores and extra items that are about music in general so those items fall under the Music Division. Yeah, it's confusing. Anyway, once a month these meetings are held to discuss issues like backlogs and priorities. Apparently, a concerted effort has been made recently to have more discussion between Reference and Cataloging – realizing that these two groups can provide excellent feedback to the other. In other words, the catalogers can help the reference staff know how to find things in the catalog whereas the reference staff can help the catalogers know how to organize things in ways that seem clearer and easier for the end user. They have even implemented a “blended position” arrangement in which staff from the two departments go to the other department for 4 hours a week to see how the other half lives. I guess it’s a program that’s been working really well. The meeting was kind of interesting and I understood most of what was going on, despite the use of some acronyms. Acronyms are HUGE at the Library – at the government in general, I suppose.

Other than that, I did the regular CD processing for a few hours in the morning. I listened to a few musicians I’d never heard of: Emery (yuck), Sanctus Real (not bad – a cute guy in the band heightens my curiosity every time) and Paul Wright (I liked him). And, in the afternoon, I searched the Library catalog and the copyright databases for Gadfly Records releases, which I’ve found as a non-copyright complier.

Also, I talked to my supervisor Gene again and he told me that the Jr. Fellows leaders (that’s the internship program I’m in) are planning a press conference (!!) with reporters to interview us to find out all about the “treasures” we are finding. That is the ultimate goal of the project – to dig through forgotten copyright deposited materials to find hidden treasures. Mind you, this does not really apply to any of us in MBRS, where copyright protection has only been around since 1972. The 9 of us in MBRS are basically preparing the Library for its big move next year to a different site (just the MBRS collections are moving). Specifically, since we three in Recorded Sound are dealing with CDs, you know, anything we might find is at most 20 years old. Not a lot of "hidden" treasures there, I assume. Eventually we are going to be looking through the unpublished works, I guess. Or so Gene keeps promising us. He told me that they found all this stuff that Tori Amos deposited from the time she was a little kid that was declared unpublished. None of the unpublished stuff goes into the Library catalog unless it is specifically requested. I guess one of the big holdups is figuring out how to best search the various Copyright catalogs. Unless you know specifically what to look for, it's difficult to find stuff. For instance, they found the Tori Amos stuff only because they had what basically amounted to her stalker working here. He was just being curious. I guess there is a lot of information there and it is hard to search. I suggested we road trip to Landover where the materials are stored and just browse. Gene kind of laughed; but I wasn’t kidding. Field trips kick ass at any age.

On my way home, I chatted it up on the Metro with a fellow Fellow, Meghan. She complained about how boring the job is and how they don’t utilize her full skills set so it makes her want to just search the Internet and post on her Livejournal all day. I know what she means but this is, after all, an internship. We are only here for ten weeks so the fact that we are doing busy work is kind of to be expected, isn’t it? Also, we talked about how the gloss has worn off and that we’ve realized that the Library of Congress doesn’t necessarily belong on a pedestal and is just like any other workplace. Just a wee bit cynical, eh?

Oh yeah, and because he said he’s read this, Happy Birthday to Curtis :).

July 11

Today, we had a brief meeting with Barbara Tillet, who is Chief of Cataloging Policy and has been instrumental in the development and implementation of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), which is something important in the cataloging world. I'm not sure exactly what that is but I was given a FAQ-sheet so I could share that with any interested parties... Anyway, she was very nice to meet with us. My fellow intern Thom really wanted to meet her because he is, in his own words, "a cataloging geek" and had questions for her. I was just happy to get out of the office... Actually, we had to go to the Adams building for that meeting so that was my first foray into the Adams building. They actually have windows there!

Besides that, it was same old, same old. I processed CDs for about 5 hours and then worked on record label researching for the rest of the day. I talked to my official supervisor, Gene, for a while and he promised another project soon but since it didn't start today, it's not soon enough for my liking. While processing CDs, I listened to: the Allman Brothers, John Leguizamo and some Earth Wind & Fire. Blah... not my favorites but I can only listen to what comes across my desk.

One bizarre thing I've seen is the anthrax-tested CDs. Even though we are technically processing "new" CDs now, some of them are dated 2002 & 2003 so they've been sitting around somewhere for a couple of years. Well, apparently due to all the anthrax threats, every piece of mail that came into the Library for a period of time (perhaps still because we are told that mail service is REALLY slow here) was tested for anthrax and put through an oven. Therefore, we see these CDs that look like they were in a fire because the cases are all melted. The CD itself is fine but the plastic cases do not apparently stand up well in heat. It's easily repaired, though, by just putting the CDs into new cases.

In other anthrax-related news, when we went on our tour of the mail room last week, we were shown about 6 skids of rubber gloves sitting around not getting used. Apparently, for a short period of time, the mail sorters wore rubber gloves to prevent any possible anthrax contaminations. Tons of gloves were purchased... the mail sorters tired of wearing gloves... the boxes of unopened gloves still remain. Yes, that's what we call "government waste."

July 9 & 10

Exciting weekend as usual. I spent Friday evening doing laundry! I know you are all jealous of the fun things that happen in D.C.! On Saturday, I spent all day shopping, which is always fun. Well, usually fun. Most of the day I was at the Potomac Mills outlet mall. On Sunday, I toured some (many) of the Smithsonian museums: the African Art museum, the American Indian museum, the Asian art museums and the contemporary and modern art musuem and garden. For some crazy reason, I avoided the one I'd really like to see: the Air & Space museum.

I realized that my time here is quickly dwindling (only four more weekends and one of those I'm actually heading back to Cleveland for a wedding and to see my new nephew). There are still so many things I want to do while I'm here. I hope I have time to get them all done! I better step up my touring.