So far this week has been very productive professionally

I'm taking over the chair position of a section committee for our national organisation, and yesterday the former chair and I talked and she sent me some useful documents, explained how things worked, and has some files to bring over to me soon. But now I have the names and addresses of the committee members, an idea of what needs to be done, and materials to help me prepare for my first report in October, etc. Yay.

I've also become the state representative on the regional advisory committee of the Greater Midwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Sometime this fall we'll have a meeting in Chicago and I'm really excited to be able to go. It'll be sometime in November or December; we're in process of comparing dates. I've only been to Chicago once, and never got out of O'Hare airport, so this is great, and I'm interested in working with other librarians to help support the needs of our region's libraries.

I've also started a subscription for my hospital to the Kentucky Virtual Library, which is a great resource for databases.

Last week was very productive. This week I've divided what I wanted to get done on a day-by-day basis. Today was interlibrary loans--borrowing and delivery--and reclaiming my book cart with some materials to withdraw from the library and go into storage until I find homes for them and a shelf of old magazines (as opposed to journals, a subtle but distinct difference) that needed to go to the recycling containers out back.

Then, of course, there was the data entry. I had plenty to do and could have actually stayed over, but of course the next bus doesn't come till 8 pm and I didn't want to stay that far over. I read a little of The Help while waiting and then stopped by the library to return a CD and put a request in for Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, which contains a story, 'The Library of Babel', that came up on one of my professional lists (his anniversary of birth being celebrated as a Google doodle today). I am somewhat familiar with Borges' work (we read some of his work in the Honours Programme, and I used to know someone who was a PhD candidate in Spanish, although he was more concerned with Federico García Lorca, as I recall), and of course, Borges is always on the famous librarians lists, as he worked in that field in addition to lecturing and writing.

Okay, I have gone to the library, fixed the phone, and now a bit of blogging. I think I may go get a drink from the laundry room and read some more of The Help tonight.