Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 11

Big excitement in Slavic cataloging! I found a book which is missing its last 14 pages. Goodness gracious! It will go back to the head Slavic librarian who orders everything, presumably it will be sent back as a defective copy, and exchanged for a complete copy. This is serious drama!

Okay, not very serious, especially compared to the trials and tribulations I hear the media ladies discussing (half of which have to do with cataloging, half of which have to do with their teenage children or aging parents). But my supervisor praised my eagle eye, and said I should get paid $20 an hour, which offer was quickly rescinded in the face of budget realities.

Budget realities, in fact, are pretty grim. I’ve also been told that incremental raises for student workers (every 150 hours you get a few extra cents!) are suspended for a year, and heard plenty of talk about how many people will be cut from library staff. No one has disappeared from the section I can keep track of, but there is lots of worried conversations about how they couldn’t possibly give up a specialist — “no one else can do the things I do” sort of thing.

**

The non-financial sad part of this job: seeing really interesting novels that I shouldn’t even bother trying to read because it would take me years to get through 510 pages of modern Russian fiction. I only read short story collections, which are infinitely more manageable, but still get submerged by school work. The best story length is under ten pages, really.