A day in the life

[jadesfire]

And so, ten hours after I left work, I am up again. Ugh. I didn't get finished but my brain was starting to fuzz up, and there's only so many mistakes you can make before you have to give it up. I never thought I'd be grateful for a book in German. I mean, it's nothing personal, it's just that I don't speak German, so trying to work out subject headings is tricky. I can identify words for "history" and "art" and spell 'archaeology' in most European languages, although I only 'speak' French and a smattering of Italian. Oh, and English, but some days I wonder about that.

Anyway, after cataloguing the world's most enormous museum catalogue that also happened to be in Slovenian, (too many accents!) German seemed a doddle in comparison. My Dutch reading skills are improving, as is my Portuguese. I can struggle through the Cyrillic alphabet and say 'I am exhausted' in Polish. The day I can read Bulgarian is the day I know I've really made it as a librarian. Because however pretty it is, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to read Georgian.

In other news, today is a rest day, to let my brain re-charge a little. I'm going to post to torchwood_meta; email my supervisor and play with reading lists and study timetables; do washing and ironing and maybe finally get round to watching some of S3 of House; see if I can get Rose to talk to me for one tw_exchange story and try to come up with a mystery plot for my other; and generally be domesticated. The other half's been an absolute star in taking all the chores, but it'll be nice to feel I'm helping out for a change. Given it's still dark outside, 2 hours after dawn, there's not much incentive to go out. Especially now there's thunder. I hate thunder... *hides under desk* EDIT: The thunder's loud enough to rattle the letterbox and my poor love is cycling to work through what looks like a waterfall from the sky. He's going to drown!

I will also NOT be getting the new Harry Potter when it comes out. I'm not spoiler-phobic, but I'm not going in search of them, so anyone who wants to come play over here is more than welcome :)

So, that's my day. What about yours?

Comments

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

My sister's a librarian, but she started off with rocks and fossils and now works in a medical library which sounds a doddle to what you've just done! Just thinking about it makes my head hurt. And Georgian does look pretty doesn't it? Hope your OH doesn't get too drowned, maybe he can out-pedal the rain (managed to do that the other day myself when going to work, but I did get the train back!).

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

The job's mostly fine, but it's obscure European languages that give me headaches and languages with lots of accents - I have to choose them off the list as we don't have keyboard shortcuts for them and it just takes so long.

The OH has report in to say that he is wet but safely at work. Now all we need is for it to stop looking like nighttime out there...

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

Uh, if I can in any way help with the German, just say so, k?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*grin* Thanks - it's mostly just transcription which is fine, except that we don't have keyboard shortcuts for accents which drives me insane (have to select them off a symbols menu). Also, the capital letters drive me insane - I know I'm meant to capitalise some, but if it's ALL written in capitals, I have to go flicking through the book to work it out.

About 50% of what I catalogue is in German, so I'd be keeping you busy for a very long time! I've learned to speak Babelfish, use the DDB website and locate the good German dictionaries online. I also now have a fairly good specialist vocabulary - I'm not sure it would get me very far in real life, but put me on an archaeological site and I'd be fine :D

[smtfhw.livejournal.com]

I can also help you with German if you're stuck...

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Thanks - maybe when I get really stuck I'll put up a "Help!" post, but it's surprising how quickly you pick things up. Words for 'history' 'art' and 'archaeology' as well as for places and periods come up all the time, and I'm starting to pick up some grammar points as well. But I'll ask if I need it, thanks!

Looks like the long-term obsession with languages is finally paying off... actually, I wonder how many languages my flist covers... *ponders*

[smtfhw.livejournal.com]

ell, I speak and read French and German, and have a reasonable working knowledge of Latin. That means that I can understand enough Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese to get by... Oh, and a little Finnish, and a smattering of Swedish.

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

Everything in capitals? Damn. There are some helpful rules considerung which words are written with captial letters, words ending with -ung/-heit/-keit/-nist/-tum/-schaft e.g. are always in captials... IIRC ^^

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's quite handy, thanks Printers have no consideration for us poor non-[insert language] speaking cataloguers ;)

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

It's hard to learn the rules without the language, I guess ;)

[smtfhw.livejournal.com]

All nouns are capitalised. As for the accents, an umlaut over a letter a, o or u can be substituted more than adequately with an additional e, for example, ae, oe, or ue...

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

The rule's fine - it's identifying nouns that's hard! I manage okay with practice, Latin, Ancient Greek and deduction. Pictures help too :) We're not allowed to use the oe/ae/ue option any more - it's got to be an exact transcription of what's on the book so if the book's got it then the catalogue has to have it.

Causes no end of problems for people who don't know the rule, though, as "Oesterreich" is one of the most common words we come across on invoices and suchlike. It makes it impossible to find the book until you know that the 'e' isn't necessarily there...

[unfeathered]

You can create keyboard shortcuts for any of the symbols - just select the symbol you want, then click on the button at the bottom labelled "shortcut key", and press what you want as the key, then "close".

Of course, you then have to remember what you allocated as the shortcut key, or write a list, but it's very useful for symbols you use a lot.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's a handy tip - I'll have to use that in Word. Unfortunately, we use a special cataloguing application that doesn't let us do anything like that. It's a royal pain in the neck - F12 to bring up the window, then select the accents menu, then the accent we want, then the alphabet menu, then the letter we want it to go over. It's three or four mouse clicks for something I could do with two keys in Word *grrrrr* You do wonder if the people who designed these systems had ever done any actual cataloguing, because they make them damn hard to use. :S

[unfeathered]

Ah, sorry, of course you won't be cataloguing in Word!

I know how you feel. I am a typist and we do all our work in a database system which brings up Word documents and saves them into it. So the documents themselves are fine (except all the templates were created by people who don't do the typing and we're always need to ask them for corrections) but the database is really annoying because you're always having to double-click and there are practically no keyboard shortcuts. Very frustrating!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind so much, but at least our main catalogue (not the cataloguing programme itself - it's a bit confusing...) is a telnet system - I type pretty quickly and when you know the codes, you can through the screens as quickly as you can type.

They're replacing it with a windows based system and I'm dreading it - it'd better have some damn good shortcuts built in, or the whole of the technical services department is going to go down with RSI within a month...

[miss-zedem.livejournal.com]

German's lovely. A lot of people think it sounds harsh, but I really like it. Capitalisation's easy - they capitalise all nouns, not just proper nouns. Of course, then you need to be able to recognise the nouns... :D

I don't speak any language other than English fluently (and some would say not even that...), but I too have an interest in languages, so I know a smattering of several, including French, German, Swedish, Welsh, Russian and, randomly, Cornish. Italian and Spanish I know the odd word, same with Polish, Greek and Finnish. At some point I want to learn one or more of them properly...

Hope you manage to get Rose to talk to you :D

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

One of my close RL friends is tri-lingual in German, French and English, as well as speaking pretty good Italian and Russian with a smattering of Flemish. *insanely jealous* I'll dig out my 'thank you' list. I got up to about 35 languages at my last count.

And I know the rule, it's just hard to spot the words! We have a German library assistant, so I tend to ask her when I get really stuck, but I like figuring these things out - keeps my brain working :)

And you'll be the first to know if Rose starts to talk... ;)

[xwingace]

There are people lots more qualified to help you with German (if only because they *are* German ;-)), but by the same token if you ever have trouble with Dutch, I could help...

All those other languages sound interesting. And pretty much unreadable...

XWA

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*grin* Bless you all, thanks! I'm never going to have to do any work at this rate! I'll ask if I get really stuck :) But it's quite fun puzzling it all out - keeps my brain working!

I'll post my 'say thank you in 35 languages list' (or start a new one) if I can find it...

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

Good grief, that sounds complicated! Although after the Slovenian, it does sound as though German would be easier :)

Let's see, languages. I learned French because I had to for GCSE, although I've forgotten quite a lot of it now. Still, I can manage in French and German, and those two help me puzzle out Dutch. I can read the Cyrillic alphabet, albeit slowly, and can pronounce Russian words even though I only know the actual meaning of a very odd handful. I know the occasional word of Japanese, and can get by in Scots. (Yes, it's a different language. Ask anyone from Scotland.) But the only one I'm at all fluent in is English.

(By the way, torchwood_meta doesn't seem to be screening comments.)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

(I think the tw_meta thing is because you're a mod - when I posted as myself, it showed the comment, but when I posted as heretoutopia it didn't. I'll go screen yours now :D)

That's not a bad sample! I used to be able to write my name in Japanese but have pretty much forgotten it now. And I can count and say a few words in Chinese, but wouldn't attempt to write it. It's the Eastern European languages that baffle me - I start thinking I know what they say, but then I look them up in a dictionary and they mean something totally different. And it's not easy finding an online dictionary for some of them... But it's a puzzle, which keeps me happy :)

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

I screened my own, don't worry. I miust admit, I never thought of the mod thing being why mine didn't get screened.

Puzzles are good :)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I found the problem - it unscreens the comment once I reply. Stupid LJ *prods with big stick* Sorted now

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

Bulgarian looks remarkably like the Cherokee (a native American) language, which I used to be able to read a few words in, but it's lost to the mists of time now. (My grandmother was half Cherokee.)

The Georgian is beautiful, but it would be like reading embroidery, I think.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

We had a whole book in Georgian, page after page of that beautiful spidery print. It's gorgeous and so much prettier than Roman letters.

I'll add [sort of] Cherokee to the 'languages on my flist' :D

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

I will also NOT be getting the new Harry Potter when it comes out.

Oh hurrah, I won't be the only one. *g* I'm looking to purchase it on Wednesday. The fallout itself will be so intense, it'll be tough keeping up with it.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I'm picking up traces of it on my flist and I don't even belong to any comms. But everyone's dropped off the internet, petrified of spoilers so it's all oddly quiet from some directions - it's slightly disconcerting!

*grin* I'm going to suggest that all of us at the library who want to read it club together and pass it round. We do that with books we own anyway, and we'll all get there eventually. I coped with reading the last one after being spoiled - I'll probably survive this time too.

I also heard that Childline (http://www.childline.org.uk/) are laying on extra staff for any youngsters traumatised by whatever-the-hell is going to happen. *blinks* Is it me, or are there perspective issues here....?

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

I also heard that Childline are laying on extra staff for any youngsters traumatised by whatever-the-hell is going to happen. *blinks* Is it me, or are there perspective issues here....?

0.o ?

Wow. Though I think the biggest trauma will be felt by the Potter fen, and/or those who grew up with the books. We are witnessing the end of an era. HP fandom will change after this book, to be sure.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*expresses ignorance* the Potter fen? not one I've heard I'm afraid. As I say, although I have lots of friends who are big Potter fans, I don't belong to any comms - Torchwood/Doctor Who keeps me supplied with regular doses of drama...

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

Ah. Sorry. Potter fen = Potter fandom. Fen, for some reason, is used in fandom as the plural for fan.

Oh, the drama of the Potterdammerung will be strong. And loud. Why yes, I am cynical, how did you guess? *g*