"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli
Oh you guys are such pikers ... SUCH pikers. I work on the premise that all books in my house, or within my grasp are always "in process." They've either been read, or they're being read, or about to be read, OR they're being "held-on-to" because there is probably information in them that will be useful at some point in the future. That last classification qualifies them as part of a reference library, and we know that reference is always in process.
Now, in reference (pun there!) to the Blowhards small toppling of a mere shelf of books ... I've also got the topper for that. Memory takes me back to the days when I was Periodical/Reserver/Microform Co-ordinator for a university research library ... to up the ante we were also an official repository for Government Publications as well. But, I digress. The issue here is the great toppling and that came on a day when the "stacks supervisor" was attempting to move an entire double sided bookshelf unit which contained upwards of a couple thousand volumes of bound periodicals. You know, things like twenty years worth of JAMA or fifty years worth of assorted volumnes of bound monthly/weekly periodicals of the ilk of _Life_, _Saturday Evening Post_, etc. Let me say that the floors of this library were steel beam supported, poured concrete, reinforced construction designed to hold the collective weight of all those bound volumes and then some. When the Stack Supervisor attempted to move this particular section of bookcase, the entire thing buckled under the miscalculated torque of the assembled tomes, and the resulting plunge to the floor was something I heard in my office two floors below, and one wing removed from the scene of the mishap.
You guys don't know nothin' about "books in process," or the kind of chaos that results when you drop your stacks ..
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Oh you guys are such pikers ... SUCH pikers. I work on the premise that all books in my house, or within my grasp are always "in process." They've either been read, or they're being read, or about to be read, OR they're being "held-on-to" because there is probably information in them that will be useful at some point in the future. That last classification qualifies them as part of a reference library, and we know that reference is always in process.
Now, in reference (pun there!) to the Blowhards small toppling of a mere shelf of books ... I've also got the topper for that. Memory takes me back to the days when I was Periodical/Reserver/Microform Co-ordinator for a university research library ... to up the ante we were also an official repository for Government Publications as well. But, I digress. The issue here is the great toppling and that came on a day when the "stacks supervisor" was attempting to move an entire double sided bookshelf unit which contained upwards of a couple thousand volumes of bound periodicals. You know, things like twenty years worth of JAMA or fifty years worth of assorted volumnes of bound monthly/weekly periodicals of the ilk of _Life_, _Saturday Evening Post_, etc. Let me say that the floors of this library were steel beam supported, poured concrete, reinforced construction designed to hold the collective weight of all those bound volumes and then some. When the Stack Supervisor attempted to move this particular section of bookcase, the entire thing buckled under the miscalculated torque of the assembled tomes, and the resulting plunge to the floor was something I heard in my office two floors below, and one wing removed from the scene of the mishap.
You guys don't know nothin' about "books in process," or the kind of chaos that results when you drop your stacks ..
That Lady with the Black Dogs
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