Apr. 21st, 2009 03:12 pm
Every tome is sacred
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muckefuckFor a bibliophile, I sure like getting rid of books. Not my own books, mind you, but the antiquated decaying volumes cluttering the office. To some degree, it's just my contrary nature. Many years ago, I went to a lecture about personality types in the context of financial management, and the speaker explained how, to at least some degree, partners create their own opposites. That is, if you put two tightwads together, there's always one that will break down first, and eventually they'll take on the "spender" role in the dyad.
It's the same with keeping shit around: No matter how much of a pack rat you are, there's always someone who's worse, and it if end up paired with them, it will force you to moderate your proclivities if you ever want to, say, keep the storeroom floor from collapsing or be able to reach the refrigerator again. Here it seems I'm surrounded with people who are worse than Nicholson Baker when it comes to parting with any printed volume, no matter how worthless. And the queen of the department--and probably the whole division--when it comes to this is none other than my boss. Ten years with her has only exacerbated my urge to purge.
What set off the latest round of weeding was a suggestion from a neighbouring department that we designate some central shelving unit to be a depot for movement of materials. At it is, there are literally more than a dozen separate places where they leave books, videos, and other stuff for us to take and process. One of their managers and I scouted around, found a unit we liked, and then began to conspire about how to convince the heads of my department to accept the change.
See, the shelves in question weren't vacant. They hold our ready reference--at least in theory. When another colleague and I started sorting through the titles, we found shelfloads of books, binders, and pamphlets which had no business in such a collection. After an hour or so, we had them sorted into "keepers", "discards", and an intermediate groups of "justify your existences". That is, there may be someone who uses them on a regular basis, we just don't know who.
Now I know if we ask our colleagues to identify the titles they never use so we can dump them, they won't, because no one wants to the accept the responsibility for deselecting something that anyone else could possibly miss. The only way we'll get rid of anything is to force a positive decision on people. I think I've talked my immediate supervisor into supporting a window of a couple days for people to pull the volumes they want to keep, but god almighty it's breaking a jaw to extract third molars.
Of course, there's something of a "Can't finish your paper? Clean the dorm room!" desperation to the whole business, since of course I'm welcoming any distraction I can find from the ugly business of my annual evaluations. But it needs doing, and if we don't make a push while there's still some momentum, it's be another decade before anyone even makes an attempt.
It's the same with keeping shit around: No matter how much of a pack rat you are, there's always someone who's worse, and it if end up paired with them, it will force you to moderate your proclivities if you ever want to, say, keep the storeroom floor from collapsing or be able to reach the refrigerator again. Here it seems I'm surrounded with people who are worse than Nicholson Baker when it comes to parting with any printed volume, no matter how worthless. And the queen of the department--and probably the whole division--when it comes to this is none other than my boss. Ten years with her has only exacerbated my urge to purge.
What set off the latest round of weeding was a suggestion from a neighbouring department that we designate some central shelving unit to be a depot for movement of materials. At it is, there are literally more than a dozen separate places where they leave books, videos, and other stuff for us to take and process. One of their managers and I scouted around, found a unit we liked, and then began to conspire about how to convince the heads of my department to accept the change.
See, the shelves in question weren't vacant. They hold our ready reference--at least in theory. When another colleague and I started sorting through the titles, we found shelfloads of books, binders, and pamphlets which had no business in such a collection. After an hour or so, we had them sorted into "keepers", "discards", and an intermediate groups of "justify your existences". That is, there may be someone who uses them on a regular basis, we just don't know who.
Now I know if we ask our colleagues to identify the titles they never use so we can dump them, they won't, because no one wants to the accept the responsibility for deselecting something that anyone else could possibly miss. The only way we'll get rid of anything is to force a positive decision on people. I think I've talked my immediate supervisor into supporting a window of a couple days for people to pull the volumes they want to keep, but god almighty it's breaking a jaw to extract third molars.
Of course, there's something of a "Can't finish your paper? Clean the dorm room!" desperation to the whole business, since of course I'm welcoming any distraction I can find from the ugly business of my annual evaluations. But it needs doing, and if we don't make a push while there's still some momentum, it's be another decade before anyone even makes an attempt.
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the seasoned procrastinator
(Actually, for me it's basically the one reason powerful and pressing enough to get me into gear. I used to bash myself for it but these days I just try to make these mechanisms work for me. :-))
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