Please make a note of and plan to attend LEAD’s September event next week …

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A WORD FROM EC MEMBER:

Hello from the Basement! A report from Clare Lattimore, CIP’s EC representative

CIP is still here and doing pretty darn well considering we have a few gaps in staffing. Gill McCombs is keeping us focused serving as interim director of the division. Curt is helping with questions about money—who better. . I am serving as "point person" attending DPG and EC meetings to represent CIP concerns. Our daily work goes on as usual regardless of staff vacancies. Many staff members are helping by taking on additional duties. Our goal of having backup for every major function is paying off. Our newest staff members Abby Dover and Jack Bullion really arrived at the right time. Jack has proved to be our real Jack of all trades taking on some of the duties in our vacant LSIV position in the acquisitions area and Abby sped through her cataloging training to keep our cataloging production moving.

We are making progress in filling our vacant positions. The LSIV position, chaired by Andy Maupin is very close to making a recommendation. CIP staff members Janet Allmon, Heather Barrett and I are serving on the search committee for the Director of CIP position. The search committee for our Music Cataloger vacancy is set and the job should be posted soon if not already. I serve as chair of the committee with the help of Janet Allmon and Alisa Rata. Despite the vacancies we are VERY pleased that some major projects are either completed or a hair’s breadth away from completion. The almost immortal project to transfer Dewey classification titles from Bridwell to CUL is actually finished. Alleluia! The Reference Z project (move, reclass, withdraw, etc.) is so close as to hardly mention. Items in the G classification project now have the correct location codes and other updates will be done before you can say Gee-whiz. Recently staff members John Milazzo and Katherine Schacht started work on what we are calling the Ephemera project for DeGolyer which is actually a project to catalog items that have been stored as ephemera but which do not meet the definition of ephemera. In addition to taking on extra duties CIP staff members are learning additional skills. Angela Jones, head of technical services at Underwood Law Library, presented a multi-session workshop on LC classification in July and August for example. This was a generous gift of her time and talent. So, in summary, we are pleased to report that we are definitely holding our own and absolutely look forward to filling these vacancies.

 

 

Happy Birthday!!!...& many more...

Janet Allmon - September 6th

John Milazzo - September 7th

Amy Turner - September 8th

Terre Heydari - September 15th

Claudia Pulte - September 15th

Chris Leamy - September 23rd

Angela Laack - September 28th

Abby Dover - September 30th

 

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The following books are recommended by Marna Morland:

Hotel Honolulu: A Novel by Paul Theroux                                                 From Library Journal
A blocked writer seeking clarity and an escape from the life of the mind accepts a job as manager of a low-rent Hawaiian hotel, and his detailing of the denizens within the hotel community illustrate the old adage "Everyone has a story." Readers who know Theroux's fiction (e.g., Kowloon Tong) may not be surprised that many of the tales deal with the mystery and obsession with sex, and the author composes a good number of sad and twisted variations on love and lust, often found fleetingly. Though there is much sordidness here, Theroux skillfully portions out doses of humor, tenderness, and humanity, often with the turn of a phrase, as in the tale of two limping waiters or of a Filipino bride's deliverance to a relatively better position in life. By the time the reader navigates through these 80 snapshots of peoples' lives, a sense of this unnamed writer's shared experience becomes real. A most impressive and compulsively readable novel; highly recommended.

 

Riding the Iron Rooster: by Train Through China,  Paul Theroux

From Publishers Weekly
Theroux (The Old Patagonian Express, The Great Railway Bazaar) spent a year exploring China by train, and his impressions about what has and has not changed in the country, as gathered in hundreds of conversations with Chinese citizens, make up a large portion of the book. The Cultural Revolution and the vandalism of the Red Guards have left scars on both the land and the people. Mao's death brought a collective sigh of relief from the population; reforms brought about under Deng Xiaoping have generally been welcomed. Still, this is not a political book. Whether describing his dealings with a rock-hard bureaucracy, musing over the Chinese flirtation with capitalism they've "turned the free market into a flea market" or commenting on the process of traveling, Theroux conducts the reader through this enormous country with wisdom, humor and a crusty warmth. Along the way are anecdotes about classic Chinese pornography (forbidden to the citizenry, but all right for "foreign friends"); 35-below-zero weather; the Chinese penchant for restructuring nature; and the omnipresent thermos of hot water for making tea. The last chapter, "The Train to Tibet," deals with the extremes to which the Chinese have gone in their attempts to subjugate the Tibetan people. Theroux develops an understanding of China through his travels, but he falls in love with Tibet. As in his previous works, he gives the reader much to relish and think about.