A very bad poem about stock management, with apologies to real poets

Oh books, in cardboard boxes,
What hopes must you have had?
What dreams may you have dreamed
That now will never come to pass?

Of influencing minds of men
And changing history
Of scholarship and pleasure
That never now shall be

Your lonely lives have run their course
And no more will you live
No one will learn the secret things
That you were born to give

But, yet, yet, hope may shine for you
In the gloom of library land
For if you catch librarians’ eyes
You may yet withstand

The onslaught that is policy
Stock management for you and me
And books, which in their hundreds lay
Untouched on shelves until today,

Are now to be destroyed, alas
Are now to be destroyed.

A post that, despite its length, doesn't say much

Today, I was supposed to go into the city in which I work, and do several things, such as return library books, get my bag mended and take some unwanted books to the Oxfam (or similar) shop. However, I have not gone. There are a few reasons for this, shown here in no particular order:

• It's raining
• I go there every day to work
• It's a 45 minute train journey
• I am too lazy
• I know that if I go I'll do what I have to do and then mooch about aimlessly and possibly buy an item of clothing that I'll never wear

I will do the things I have to do in my lunch hour one day this week. Actually, in reality, I probably won't. The bag that needs to be mended has been loitering in the office for weeks, waiting for me to take it to the repair place. The books (or at least one of them) have been languishing in my desk drawer, also at work, waiting to be returned to the library.

I have just finished, and hence want to return to the library, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It took a while to get into, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of its 900 or so pages, but it was worth the effort, and I enjoyed it.

Mr C has gone to London to see a friend and go to a wargames shop, which might be detrimental to his bank account.

I keep dreaming about the Library of Doom: even in my sleep I cannot escape. I wasn't feeling too bad about work this week, mainly because I wasn't there very much, had more important things to think about, plus Enemy Number One was away this week. Actually her absence wasn't entirely a good thing, as something has gone wrong with the Inter-Library Loan reports and, due to the distribution of power (or lack of it) in the Library of Doom, she is the only person who can potentially sort this out. I felt very sorry for the Singing Librarian this week, as, due to the ILL problem, he spent two days re-doing work he had already done.

Anyway, as I said, I wasn't feeling too bad about work, that was until Friday night, on the train home would you believe, when I was talking to two colleagues, and of course, we 'had' to talk about work, and the dreaded permissions came up in the conversation. I am having an ongoing 'guilt' phase regarding my part in the reduction of permissions on the issue desk computers. I won't go into the whys and wherefores of why the permissions have been reduced because they're boring. In fact, this whole paragraph is boring, but I will plough on until I get to the point...

Which is that this issue is a good example of me being weak and also not thinking things through. Both of these failings are common in my life, in fact they probably occur on a daily basis. Every [working] day I do something that makes me think that I'm rubbish at my job. It doesn't have to be anything very big or very wrong, just something.

Then I think, 'why do I worry so much about my job?'. It's not life and death, I work in a library, for goodness' sake! But it's my job, and I want to do it well, and I especially don't want my failings to make everyone else's lives difficult. It does make me a bit cross, though, that it makes me feel bad. This morning I woke up thinking about work, and, as I said, I even dreamt about it last night. This is not on! I don't want to waste my time away from work thinking and worrying about it. Surely my brain could find something better to do?

I have been thinking recently about my future career, and about what I really want to do. Starting the chartership process has helped me a bit with this, as I'm supposed to be setting goals and then planning how I'm going to achieve them. Of course, the problem is that I'm not really sure what I want. I'm not particularly enjoying work at the moment, and term hasn't even started yet! But I think this is due to too much worrying. I don't know whether I want to work as a Reader Services person forever - the complaining students/staff get very irritating/depressing after a [short] while. I said to Mr C last night that if I didn't like the people I work with so much I would probably not want to do my current job. Hopefully I will feel better soon.

So, maybe I could be an academic librarian/faculty liason librarian. This was my original plan after my trainee year, and it's still something I would still like to try. It does involve budgets, which involve numbers, but hopefully I could get some training in this. Well, I will see. Sometimes I think I might like to be something other than I librarian, but I'm not sure what that is, apart from bestelling author, academic, jazz singing sensation, teacher, prime minister, ballerina, doctor, or songwriter. Only one (maybe two) of these is actually achievable within the realms of reality, however.

Reality = I will stay where I am until it becomes financially unviable/I get sacked/Michael Buble (sorry I can't do the accent on the e) asks me to be his singing partner.

I just visited the Lipstick Librarian (I was searching for other blogging librarians) and it seems I cannot be a Lipstick Librarian, as I am currently wearing an item of clothing with a duck on it. Two ducks, in fact. Perhaps I wouldn't want to be one anyway.

I apologise for the length and whingy nature of this post.

Houses

Ahh well, the long weekend begins tonight. I'm not sure what we're going to do, but it might involve me trapsing round banks and building societies making appointments with mortgage advisors, which, I'm sure you'll agree, doesn't sound entirely thrilling. We're going to speak to mortgage people to see what we can borrow, but all the signs are that we could only get about half a terraced house in the dodgy part of town, due to our low salaries. The theory is that at least if we're told this by an expert we will know where we stand, rather than relying on my dubious calculations on various banks' websites.

People keep telling us we're wasting our money renting, but I think it's unrealistic to think we can afford to get a mortgage on our salaries. Most of our friends have finally realised that this is the case since I have been doing the test things on websites, but they think we should go to speak to some advisors, just so we do know what the situation is. People have suggested things like shared ownership and part-buy, part-rent (?), which might be better, but it depends how these things work. I have absolutely no idea what all the different types of mortgage mean, which is another reason we should go and speak to a mortgage advisor, I suppose.

We live in a very expensive part of the country, which doesn't help. If we lived in the North we would be able to buy something I think, but down here in the Saath it is not so realistic a plan.

At the moment, I'm not too bothered about buying something, although it would be nice to be able to do our own thing in the house decoration-wise, and have pets, children (if appropriate) and be able to plant stuff in the garden. The house we have is nice, and in a nice-ish area near to the railway station. I don't think we would be able to get anything near as nice or convenient for the amount we could afford to borrow.

I do worry slightly about what will happen if we never earn much more than we earn now, but need to have our own house, e.g. if we have children. (This isn't even on the horizon yet, but I'm good at worrying about non-existent things!) Even if we reach the top of our pay brackets I'm not sure we would be able to afford anything nice in the area we live in.

I suppose the answer is either to move to another area or move jobs. The difficulty is that Mr C's job is his ideal job, which is very specialised, and I wouldn't want him to have to leave it. Although I like my job I can see that one day I will have to leave in order to earn enough to continue living the extravagant lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. There is more scope for me to find a new job, because there are libraries everywhere, but the thought of applying doesn't fill me with pleasure. I almost always get an interview, and almost always fail it. Anyway, that can be left for later 'discussion' in another post, perhaps.

However, there is urgent need for us to buy a house and/or move jobs at the moment, I'm just thinking out...loud? (What is the writing equivalent of that?). I think a lot of this is triggered by other people's expectations of what we should be doing. Just because they've been fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy their houses they think we should be doing the same, and don't see that it's not actually a realistic option for us. I think they find it hard to believe how little we earn! This does make me quite cross.

I hope all this doesn't sound like all I think about it money, but I do take issue with the low salaries that people in the library profession are paid. As far as I know, I earn more than the rest of the people in my team, and I do wonder how they manage if I am struggling to save. Six years after graduating I'm still earning below the average graduate starting salary, which I believe is £18,000 (?). My job asks for a professional qualification, by the way. I know, I know, I shouldn't apply for jobs if they don't pay enough, but I'm in it for the love [and the fact that this was the only job I got offered in 18 months of trying escape my last, horrible, job*], not the money (although the pay is better than my last job!).

*I, as I have said before, do like my job (most of the time), which is an added bonus. I'm not sure whether I should have shared that part about it being the only job I was offered. Oh well, too late now. There was also the fact that it was in vaguely the right location to be able to carry on my relationship with Mr C and everyone I met at the interview was very friendly. I wouldn't have taken it had I thought I wasn't going to enjoy it and like the people I would be working with.

Generally, if you're going to be a librarian, don't expect to get paid enough. Well, I suppose I do get paid enough, just not as much as I would like. But I can live comfortably enough with what I earn so really I shouldn't be complaining. Having said that, library professionals are badly paid compared to other professions, and I think it is something that has to change, especially if we want to encourage new people into the profession. Maybe this is another discussion I should leave for another post...