And yet, I have been worried about her period coming a day or two later than it has the past couple of months. Why? Why after all of this, am I still worried about my wife’s body. My OCD-my brain-has actually tried to plant a seed of doubt in my brain that we actually DID have sex this past month, even though that is not true. In fact, It has been two months (two cycles of pills) since we last had intercourse.

I can’t comprehend why I would worry about this. Is it because my brain NEEDS to have something to worry about? That it needs to have the adrenaline pumped up by the worry I am causing myself. It is times like these, when I know I’m being ridiculous, that I feel the worst, because the answer is right there in front of me. I know I am a logical person, and yet, I allow myself to be taken over by these really irrational thoughts.

I am scared. Not just at the subject matter of the fear (Mary’s body/her period), but about a lot of other things too. I have now gotten worried walking the dog because I got poison ivy three weeks back when I walked him, which I then treated as a heat rash for a few days before treating it properly. Yesterday while walking the dog he slipped through a little fence hole in a public park in order to eat a piece of poo, or bark, or a little pine cone or something. And yet, I was more worried about whether there was a plant near him that would cause me to break out in a rash. So after retrieving him, I went back and looked at all the plant life in the area….and while I was doing that, the dog snuck through the hole and ate something else. I should have just ended it there, because I knew that there was nothing that looked like any of the poison plants (ivy, oak or sumac), but I let that same irrational fear take over. That same fear that now makes me question whether I actually did have sex with my wife in the last month when I know I did not. I ended up cutting the walk short to go home and wash my hands. I even took out the water bottle on the way home-the bottle I have brought along for the dog when he got thirsty, and sprayed my have with water “just in case” I had touched any poison plant oils. I am scared now not just because of these subjects I mention (wife’s body, dog’s health, poison plants, etc.), but the fact that I seem to be sinking further off “the deep end” with the level of irrationality of my worries.

I want this week to be over so badly. I feel like running away. Away from the city and to somewhere where it is peaceful and quiet and I don’t have all the pressures of daily life going on. The problem is, I can’t run away from my mind, and that seems to be the biggest problem of them all.

I am glad we are going back to the marriage/fertility counselor this week (after we had to break for a few weeks after Mary took on a substitute teaching assignment), because I’m really still in the frame of mind where I am paranoid about having sex with my wife, because of even the smallest possibility that she could get pregnant again and something bad (miscarriage, ectopic, emergency room, surgery, etc.) will occur.

I worry so much about my dog. I never thought I’d love him so much. I think it is a good sign that his behavior doesn’t seem abnormal. He still was running around last night and playing keep away, and was doing it a bit this morning as well.

I worried that maybe the itching was because I handled some poinsettia leaves, and the sap is supposed to be an irritant. But then I realized that I had showered and put on my underwear before I handled the leaves. I was also worried because the dog had gotten to the leaves when he was in the bedroom. There were a few leaves on the plant which were low enough for him to pick off. He’s doing okay though, and didn’t get into any sap–just leaves, and has gotten into the leaves before with no ill effect. I was worried about that though, so I went on the internet, and read that so many kinds of hybridization have taken place in poinsettia breeding that the stuff they sell you is only considered “poisonous” because the sap can be an irritant.

I’m not entirely worried about this (at least, I’m not freaking out) because I figure it’s either the natural irritation of laundry soap or shower gel or soaping up too hard in the shower. I may have even taken care of the first source of my itching, but caused additional itching by either re-cleaning myself too hard, or the fact that I partly dried myself with toilet paper, and there may be little bits of it down there acting as an irritant.

Either that, or it’s the weather.

I’ll still post about librarianship and book-related things, as that is my career. However, I think this blog would work best as a tool for me to express the dominating anxieties in my life. Basically, a tool for me to get out of my system and onto the “page” what is troubling me, perhaps as a way not to bother so many others (wife, family, friends, etc.) with the problems that I have been catastrophising.

I’ll post about the first few of these worries soon

A rare manuscript of Auld Lang Syne, written in Burns’s own hand, will be shown in New York as part of the Scotland Week celebrations.

The paper, which dates from around 1788, is normally on display in Glasgow, but will cross the Atlantic for the event.

From March 31 until April 4, it will be shown at the prestigious Grolier Club on Manhattan’s East 60th Street. Then, on April 6, it will move to New York public library.

For a more detailed overview on this particular manuscript’s history, and the precautions being taken on its trip back to the U.S., see this article in The Scotsman.

Four Queens library branches have been awarded over $1.2 million in construction funds to renovate their interiors Assemblymember Audrey Pheffer announced recently.

The grants are from a special allocation of $14 million in capital funds for public library construction provided by the New York State Legislature in the 2007-2008 State Budget.

The branches and their specific allocations are:

Bay Terrace in Bayside ($430,321), McGoldrick in Flushing ($200,000), Seaside in Rockaway Park ($200,000), and Sunnyside in Long Island City ($400,000) for a total of $1,230,321.

Even though these numbers are far short of the announced monetary plans for the New York Public Library, it’s good to hear that at least one of the outer boroughs (in fact, the borough with highest circulation numbers) is getting some upkeep funding, even in this slowed economy.

Innovative Interfaces Inc. is broadening the scope the library automation software used at the New York Public Library, the company said Wednesday…..

The library system will use the private Emeryville company’s software to unite its previously separate branch and research divisions and its online catalogs.

Good to see that this streamlining and interoperability of the catalogs is finally going to take place. I wonder if the timing of the deal has any connection to the $100 million NYPL advancement plan announced just a few days ago? Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

Frederick G. Ruthner (Gale Research) – Founder
Diminished presence of reference books-irreplaceability
Why have so few reference librarians published reference books?
Utility of the quick fix and the easy answer
Books-connections and style (literary enjoyment); organic sense of connectedness and completeness.
FORM begets function and influences behavior-responsibility of author.

Convenience of online claims-trust? Organized for utility
working with a computer might be faster, but is it better?
What one person has done, shows what a person can do.
Suppressing online credit = re-sale of information.
“Democratization” of information (eg. Wikipedia & Answers.com) “definitions depend on the definer”.
Shelf placement aids intellectual discovery: libraries and books will survive as long as they are used for this purpose.

Delivery systems more “respected” now than what is in the container. Shifting source of value: editorial strength –> digitization.
Selling convenience-what they already have in a smaller box.
How does publisher convert digital editorialism to licensing cost?
Including authors names (fragmentation); bulk-pack marketing (single purchase: sales devoted to converting buying to rental-reducing value packages and worth of creator–money is the incentive).

Cost–>time/effort-creation of new reference works-amateurs compete with professional without intermediation. Users have now supplanted the authority of the teachers. Scholarship is now a game of editing (with pseudonyms).
Books: authority and organization; no superfluous data; no software update with additional costs–ephemeral quality of electronic/digital formatting.
Content creation dates of electronic material. Reprint og earlier materials. Energy consumption: constant large electrical supply versus reading paper. What does the publisher stand for–publisher editor/ versus technologists who don’t know beyond technology.
Distortion of work: unity, author citations, fragmentation.
Updating computer systems are taking away cost effectiveness.
Electronic search capabilities = accessibility; print needed for quality of record. Both = cost (should be made available in academic locations).

This presentation focused on a collaboration between the acquisitions department, the Inter-Library Loan office, and the U of A users. When book requests came into the ILL office, acquisitions were often forwarded the requests if the books were recent publications. Then, if the materials were available for immediate purchase and shipment, Acquisitions would often get the books, queue them for immediate cataloging upon arrival, and place them on the hold shelf within a week’s time, with a standard note for the requester saying that the library had decided to purchase a copy for their collections in place of simply ILL-ing it. The purpose was to directly involve users in the acquisitions process, and establish a more positive relationship with them based on the library selecting items for purchase based on user’s material needs. Feedback has been extremely positive after the first year of this process. The following notes refer to the details of planning, carrying out, and evaluating this process.

Time period used: works published during the last 5 years (4 mistake outliers in first year in practice).
Turn around time: 3 to 5 business days, including cataloging (standards copied from Purdue University).
Turn around time average: Mean: 4.36; Median: 4 days; Mode: 3 days.
299 purchases made during the 1st year: 37 (12.4%) did not meet set turnaround requirements.
Over 300 requests forwarded from ILL did not meet the program’s requirements (mainly due to availability and/or turn-around time).
Books published in the last five years which were not purchased via the program were forwarded to library selectors to add to their lists.

16% of Orders filled by Amazon; 84% filled by Barnes & Noble
$35.99 CAN shipping/handling for Barnes & Noble express international mail versus $23.99 CAN for Amazon.com, but Amazon books had longer to travel–were less likely to arrive within the necessary time frame.
Apx. $26,000 spent on this program in the first year, with apx. 40% of monies spent on s/h costs.
Money came off the top of the budget (e.g. increase versus previous year’s), so that no one lost budget money versus the previous iteration.

12% of the books purchased were never picked up by the patron who made the original ILL request.
56% of the books purchased were checked out more than once.
Books purchased via this method were checked out on average 2.5 times during the first year of the program (there is a tagged field in the item record to show purchase reason, and thus track the book’s usage). This is compared to a usage rate of 0.5 per book for items selected via traditional means over the same year.
This also does not take into account that books purchased later in the year do not have as much time to be checked out multiple times.

Most requests came from the Humanities & Social Sciences Library
LC Classes w/most requests: (1) P-Literature; (2) H-Social Sciences; (3) R-Medicine
Acquisitions did NOT get stats from ILL re: things such as multimedia requests; Cataloging specifically targets books in the plan as priority: get them out to ILL, then hold shelf, ASAP.

Positive feedback from users: 30 items requested by “repeat customers”. 63% of requests are from their two “target groups”: Professors & Graduate Students; another 11% came from University staff.
This program is NOT promoted: they do not want to show purchasing as a substitute for ILL. Cataloging merely puts a slip in the book before it goes on the hold shelf, informing the requester that the library “has decided to purchase the book”.
The Library plans in the future to do a more in-depth comparison of usage state for these materials against selector-based purchases, including possibly subject heading which overlap in these two purchasing categories.

Two articles of importance to this kind of plan have been published in the last few years:
Anderson, K.J., et. al. (2003). “Buy, don’t borrow: bibliographers’ analysis of academic library collection development through interlibrary loan requests.” Collection Management. 27(3/4), 1-11.
Ruppel, M. (2006). “Tying collection development’s loose ends with interlibrary loan.” Collection Building. 25 (3), 72-77.