I am absolutely thrilled that there is a new Icelandic mystery out by Arnaldur Indridason - Voices. I have read 2 others by him so far - the only ones in the system - and have found this author a worthy addition to the grim, dark Scandinavian style of mysteries. I am hopelessly addicted to these kinds of mysteries. It all started one day when I was desperate to find some book to read with lunch. Being a mystery fan, I was browsing that section of our collection and came across a book by Henning Mankell (a Swedish author) and gave it a try. I had ordered another title by the time my lunchtime was over. I was and remain hooked. If you haven't read one of his Kurt Wallander mysteries, try one. The characters and lives they live are so real, alternatingly tough and boring (the lives not the books), full of promise and yet without hope. No one is very happy, everyone drinks too much and everything seems grey - the weather, their lives, the world around them. Apparently, Sweden isn't all we imagine it to be. But Mankell's books are not dreary or depressing - they are fascinating, good mysteries and a great read. Try this entry in the Language Log blog for another person's take on the Wallander mysteries.
So when I ran out of Mankell, I tried out some others in the genre and came across the Icelandic mysteries. And from there I have been trying out a variety of other similar writers. I can highly recommend Karin Fossum - her mysteries take place in Norway. I also have enjoyed Mari Jungstedt's series taking place in Gotland, Sweden so much that I wish I could travel to Gotland - what a beautiful place. Of course, I regret not taking advantage of those weekend trips to Iceland that were so popular in the '80's.
I guess my fascination with Scandinavian mysteries can really be traced back to Robert Barnard's Death in a cold climate. I can remember reading this and being amazed at the thought of living somewhere that has, tops, an hour of weak daylight a day during the long winters. What kind of people could live in those conditions, would choose to live there voluntarily? I have a hard time by mid January and we have plenty of daylight in comparison.
So I am going to try to track down some Finnish and Danish mysteries - if they have been translated - I hear the Finns are a very dour folk. Should make for some great reading. I'll keep you posted.
Movie: Smilla's Sense of Snow
Book: Smilla's Sense of Snow , by Peter Hoeg. Not a traditional mystery, but mysterious and really shows a different slant on Denmark and life in Greenland.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
And the real move begins . . .
So the office was all moved and staff was settling in.
It was now time for the collection to be moved. We have a collection of some 50,000 items and the movers had loaded up rolling shelves with the first part during the prior week.
Now that the new shelving was in place, bolted to the floor (did I forget to mention the day of hearing the shelving assemblers drill bolt holes into the concrete floor for 120 stacks of shelving?) the collection could be moved over.
Of course we picked the hottest week of the summer - moving from a semi-airconditioned space to an un-airconditioned space. And it was hot, hot, hot! We moved a lot of books that Thursday and Friday. All the carts had to be carefully loaded following the way the books, etc. are shelved, carefully labelled to indicate the start of the load. The shelving in the Beaver Ave. facility had to be labelled to indicate where to shelve the various collections: fiction, paperbacks, picture books, etc. etc. Well, about halfway through Friday it was obvious that there was at least 2 more days worth of move ahead. Not a problem? Not exactly. I was going on vacation - couldn't change the plans - leaving Saturday. So the rest of the move would have to go on without my trusty supervision.
As it turned out, the move went on pretty well without me. There was only one more glitch - you knew that had to be another, right? It was one of the very last trips over with the moving van. It was that really really hot day - 98+ degrees and humidity off the charts. Something went wrong in the moving van on the trip over - the cases of books broke loose and fell over. Hundreds of books spilled out on the floor and were now totally out of order.
Luckily, a librarian at the ACLA office - Debi Ryder - was kind enough to brave the heat and the challenge and came over to get things in order. Thanks again Debi!! The move was complete. The computers were now online, and we now had the time to address the challenges of getting a place for everything.
It was tough seeing our old home base empty after all these years, but our new facility is focusing us all on the new challenges and views of the future. Something unexpected happens everyday! After all, this isn't the end, it's just the beginning . . .
Movie: Grease
Music: Abbey Road, by the Beatles
Book: Everything happens for a reason: finding the true meaning of the events in our lives, by Mira Kirshenbaum
Monday, October 1, 2007
With a little help from our friends
And that glitch was a doozie. Just a week before our move we discovered that our landlord did not have sufficient shelving for our purposes. All our carefully choreographed plans pivoted on getting the shelving installed first. Thank goodness we had determined a source of used shelving. We called Yankee Supply and ask for shelving to be delivered asap. They still had sufficient on hand and agreed to get it shipped within the week. Based on that, we talked to the movers and arranged for the office area to be moved one week and the collection the following to allow for enough time for the shelving to arrive and be assembled. By this time we were working with Dave Caparosa, a space designer recommended by our landlord. He worked out the layout of the shelving to best fit the space available in the new facility and arranged for installers for the shelving. Everything was good to go again - what else could go wrong? Well of course something could and did. We got the call from Yankee Supply - they were having more difficulty than expected rounding up the shelving from their various warehouses meaning another delay of a day or two – plus the weekend. They did promise to have the shelving delivered by Tuesday. The assembling would start Tuesday and finish up Wednesday. The collection move would start Thursday and be done on Friday. It was all still doable.
So the office space move was finally a go and went off without a hitch. Except for the other glitch - yes there had to be another, right? Our internet connection in the new facility was going to be delayed for several weeks - everything else was in place, the internal wiring, the router and other equipment, our computers, our desks - everything but the last vital link. So we would have to do our work without our usual access to our circulation system or the internet. Luckily we had the laptops that all have a wireless connection that we could use in the new facility. Hey we could handle it!
Very, very early Tuesday morning the shelving arrived from Rhode Island and Chuck, our vehicle, facility and all around can-do guy was ready with the rented forklift.
The installers came later that day and set to work. Everything was moving along great until - what's that? A glitch. Yankee Supply had sent us the shelves from a different shelving system than the frames they sent. After a call to them, a discussion with the installers, we moved ahead with a little rebate on the shelving and a bit of finessing of the shelving – check the picture below to see the finessing in action.
But the news was good– the shelves were ready for the movers right on time.
There couldn’t be any more glitches in our future at this point, right?
Music CD - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
Book - Don't sweat the small stuff, Richard Carlson
Book - The resilience factor: 7 keys to finding your inner strength and overcoming life's hurdles, Karen Reivich
So the office space move was finally a go and went off without a hitch. Except for the other glitch - yes there had to be another, right? Our internet connection in the new facility was going to be delayed for several weeks - everything else was in place, the internal wiring, the router and other equipment, our computers, our desks - everything but the last vital link. So we would have to do our work without our usual access to our circulation system or the internet. Luckily we had the laptops that all have a wireless connection that we could use in the new facility. Hey we could handle it!
Very, very early Tuesday morning the shelving arrived from Rhode Island and Chuck, our vehicle, facility and all around can-do guy was ready with the rented forklift.
The installers came later that day and set to work. Everything was moving along great until - what's that? A glitch. Yankee Supply had sent us the shelves from a different shelving system than the frames they sent. After a call to them, a discussion with the installers, we moved ahead with a little rebate on the shelving and a bit of finessing of the shelving – check the picture below to see the finessing in action.
But the news was good– the shelves were ready for the movers right on time.
There couldn’t be any more glitches in our future at this point, right?
Music CD - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
Book - Don't sweat the small stuff, Richard Carlson
Book - The resilience factor: 7 keys to finding your inner strength and overcoming life's hurdles, Karen Reivich
Friday, September 14, 2007
The search began . . .
About a year ago, when Mobile Library Services was asked to vacate the building we had occupied for decades. It was lucky that we had a year to find alternate digs as it was surprisingly difficult to find a location that suited our needs: room for 5 large vehicles, 12' high bay doors, warehouse space for our collection of some 40,000 items and office space for 11 people.
We did find spaces: space that was too big (like the old Sam's Club in West Mifflin), space that just had been leased (like a location near Hays), space that needed too much remodeling (like a moving company building on the North Side), space that was too challenging to move vehicles in and out of (like a space in the Strip District). And each had it's appeal. The old Sam't Club was great for me - my hour commute would be down to 10 minutes. The Hays location was on a nice quiet street that was handy to all major roads. The moving company building had a fabulous garage and funky brick interior walls in the office area. The space in the Strip District, well it was in the Strip District!
We finally hit on two choices - one in North Versailles and one on Beaver Ave. After a long period of negotiation, the Beaver Ave. location was settled on and just in time. We had only a couple of months left to execute the move. We had thought ahead so that we would be ready when our new location was selected. We had engaged a moving service, one that had moved us a couple of years ago when the Alexander St. building had been remodeled, Fife Moving and Storage down in Washington PA. They were a great group of guys to work with, were experienced with moving libraries, and had done the job well. We got an estimate from them (gulp). We also found a used shelving dealer, Yankee Supply out in Rhode Island, that had sufficient shelving for our needs and had gotten an estimate (gulp again), just in case. The landlord at Alexander St. had intimated that we would be able to get shelving to replace the units we were currently using. We were moving from a location where the shelving was built in (attached to the ceiling and floor) to a site where the shelving had to be free-standing. So the move was on. Fife was called, a date was set, the staff was mobilized to start the packing process and we hit our first glitch. As the poet said: The best laid plans . . .
Picks of the day:
Book - The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns, by Robert Burns
Book - Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Movie - Moving
Return to ACLA Mobile Library Services webpage
We did find spaces: space that was too big (like the old Sam's Club in West Mifflin), space that just had been leased (like a location near Hays), space that needed too much remodeling (like a moving company building on the North Side), space that was too challenging to move vehicles in and out of (like a space in the Strip District). And each had it's appeal. The old Sam't Club was great for me - my hour commute would be down to 10 minutes. The Hays location was on a nice quiet street that was handy to all major roads. The moving company building had a fabulous garage and funky brick interior walls in the office area. The space in the Strip District, well it was in the Strip District!
We finally hit on two choices - one in North Versailles and one on Beaver Ave. After a long period of negotiation, the Beaver Ave. location was settled on and just in time. We had only a couple of months left to execute the move. We had thought ahead so that we would be ready when our new location was selected. We had engaged a moving service, one that had moved us a couple of years ago when the Alexander St. building had been remodeled, Fife Moving and Storage down in Washington PA. They were a great group of guys to work with, were experienced with moving libraries, and had done the job well. We got an estimate from them (gulp). We also found a used shelving dealer, Yankee Supply out in Rhode Island, that had sufficient shelving for our needs and had gotten an estimate (gulp again), just in case. The landlord at Alexander St. had intimated that we would be able to get shelving to replace the units we were currently using. We were moving from a location where the shelving was built in (attached to the ceiling and floor) to a site where the shelving had to be free-standing. So the move was on. Fife was called, a date was set, the staff was mobilized to start the packing process and we hit our first glitch. As the poet said: The best laid plans . . .
Picks of the day:
Book - The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns, by Robert Burns
Book - Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Movie - Moving
Return to ACLA Mobile Library Services webpage
Monday, September 3, 2007
The journey begins . . .
Join me on this new journey I'm taking. I know where the journey is starting from - my cluttered desk at our new Mobile Library Services home on Beaver Ave.
I don't really have a destination in mind, so hopefully you will enjoy the journey. I tend to be a random thinker, so I will be jumping around alot, taking side trips, going where the spirit takes me, but in general, I will be focused on the bookmobile, libraries and the love of books, films and music. I'm going to start by sharing our moving adventure - and what an adventure it was and continues to be. I will be introducing our great bookmobile world - the folks that keep the bookmobiles on the road, the folks that work on the bookmobiles, the folks that work behind the scenes and the folks that come on board. And here and there I will be talking about books and movies. I hope to hear from you with questions, comments and suggestions (hey, be nice) and I welcome your ideas.
So, buckle your seatbelts and join me!
Picks of the day:
Book - Join Me, by Danny Wallace
Movie - All About Eve
I don't really have a destination in mind, so hopefully you will enjoy the journey. I tend to be a random thinker, so I will be jumping around alot, taking side trips, going where the spirit takes me, but in general, I will be focused on the bookmobile, libraries and the love of books, films and music. I'm going to start by sharing our moving adventure - and what an adventure it was and continues to be. I will be introducing our great bookmobile world - the folks that keep the bookmobiles on the road, the folks that work on the bookmobiles, the folks that work behind the scenes and the folks that come on board. And here and there I will be talking about books and movies. I hope to hear from you with questions, comments and suggestions (hey, be nice) and I welcome your ideas.
So, buckle your seatbelts and join me!
Picks of the day:
Book - Join Me, by Danny Wallace
Movie - All About Eve
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