The librarians, session 14: The elf on the shelf
I thought about titling this "The leprechaun on the shelf," given yesterday's date, but I preferred it to rhyme.
Yesterday was a two-person deal: Me and Harold. I had known several of the others couldn't come; the only one we didn't know about was Amaryllis. I had gotten there a little early, and found Harold sorting through a random march, so we decided to wait a little bit in case she showed. I sorted one march, but we ended up talking more than working. One of the songs we received this week during rehearsal was a composition he'd done in honor of a band member's mother. He's been working on that for a few months now, and had gathered some of us after band a few times to play through it, so he could hear it and tweak it. We had discovered a few errors during the run-throughs, but when we played it with the full band on Monday, there were still a few issues. Oh well. I think it was just with one set of parts, so it should be an easy fix. However, he'd mentioned that this likely was the last commission he'd do. He's written a number of pieces over the years, but after a few decades, it's nice not to have to do it, I suppose. Anyway, I'd been meaning to ask him for a while now if he'd be willing to read through something a band member wrote--I'd love to have the band play through my camp song, especially since I've never heard it with the changes I made around the 25th anniversary. Can you believe the song is almost 10 years old? Crazy. He said to bring it on in. Great. Better get on that! But nothing like telling someone about something like that to get a person motivated. I've been wanting to get Finale for years but have been sitting on it--it's not like I have nothing else to do, you know? But I know he's not getting any younger, and I'd love to have it ready for the 30th anniversary of camp, which conveniently is *next* year (funny how that worked out), so this would be great to bring it back and whatnot.
As for the actual task at hand, we were going to get all the large Sousa music onto the famous shelves in the library last night. This was what I was looking forward to doing, because I am such an alphabetizing nerd. I even have a system, which I think I explained in the last library post. Since it was just the two of us, we decided to only work until 8:30. Fine by me. We get downstairs, and mind you, I have not been there since the shelves got put up; I had no idea what to expect. There were just two units--a third will be put together in the future--and they only had four shelves each, though it looks like a fifth could be added. They're just open shelves, sort of industrial-looking, with something like plywood running around the edges to help keep the music on it. The wood also was part of the shelves themselves, which I know because my hand kept catching on it, which got annoying. I was worried I'd get a splinter. All the Sousa large-format songs were piled on these boxes we have on a dolly, which could be moved to get into the file cabinets where our actual music is stored. It...didn't actually seem like all that much. All told, it didn't even take up two full shelves. And each shelf is, I don't know, less than three feet across.
Harold approached the piles and at first was only going to look for pieces that started with A or B. This is when I pulled out The System. We had an entire set of shelves at our disposal, so on the top shelf, I made piles of A-E, then F-J, K-O, and the bottom one ended up being everything else, with the letters after T forming just one pile because I was out of room. Otherwise each letter got its own pile. The Cs were the tallest, interestingly enough. There weren't any Qs. However, that was all the music from when we'd pulled all the Sousa stuff specifically; we'd already sorted a number of songs prior to pulling them, so we had two other piles to go through--one on a table next to one of the new shelving units (the reason the third set of shelves isn't put up yet--we have to clear and move that table first), and another pile on top of some of the filing cabinets. The table had about a half-dozen stacks on it; the cabinets had stacks three deep, several of them. Phew. But we got all the Sousa stuff, sorted it, and shelved it. It also turns out that Harold's wife had worked at the library for many years and also is into sorting things alphabetically; he kept saying, you two would really get along! Well, good to know. She seems like a nice lady regardless.
We were able to get all this done before 8:30, and discussed a little of how to proceed. We figure the march-size Sousa music should go on the rest of the one shelving unit, so it'll be entirely Sousa. Then, we have large piles of music by Victor Herbert and Karl King, so we think they'll be next to sort through. From there...I don't know, but perhaps the others will have ideas. All I know is that, because Easter is next week and we're having a special work function on Good Friday, when I'd normally be off or only work a partial day, I'm going to need the prep time, so even if others will be there, I might skip it. But we'll see. Also, I neglected to wear my mask last night, because we weren't behind the band setup for very long, but I didn't feel that great when I left, so I guess I'm still going to have to wear it even if I'm down in the library. This also does not bode well for the library itself. I might want to bring a can of Lysol or something to help things out. Hmm.
Yesterday was a two-person deal: Me and Harold. I had known several of the others couldn't come; the only one we didn't know about was Amaryllis. I had gotten there a little early, and found Harold sorting through a random march, so we decided to wait a little bit in case she showed. I sorted one march, but we ended up talking more than working. One of the songs we received this week during rehearsal was a composition he'd done in honor of a band member's mother. He's been working on that for a few months now, and had gathered some of us after band a few times to play through it, so he could hear it and tweak it. We had discovered a few errors during the run-throughs, but when we played it with the full band on Monday, there were still a few issues. Oh well. I think it was just with one set of parts, so it should be an easy fix. However, he'd mentioned that this likely was the last commission he'd do. He's written a number of pieces over the years, but after a few decades, it's nice not to have to do it, I suppose. Anyway, I'd been meaning to ask him for a while now if he'd be willing to read through something a band member wrote--I'd love to have the band play through my camp song, especially since I've never heard it with the changes I made around the 25th anniversary. Can you believe the song is almost 10 years old? Crazy. He said to bring it on in. Great. Better get on that! But nothing like telling someone about something like that to get a person motivated. I've been wanting to get Finale for years but have been sitting on it--it's not like I have nothing else to do, you know? But I know he's not getting any younger, and I'd love to have it ready for the 30th anniversary of camp, which conveniently is *next* year (funny how that worked out), so this would be great to bring it back and whatnot.
As for the actual task at hand, we were going to get all the large Sousa music onto the famous shelves in the library last night. This was what I was looking forward to doing, because I am such an alphabetizing nerd. I even have a system, which I think I explained in the last library post. Since it was just the two of us, we decided to only work until 8:30. Fine by me. We get downstairs, and mind you, I have not been there since the shelves got put up; I had no idea what to expect. There were just two units--a third will be put together in the future--and they only had four shelves each, though it looks like a fifth could be added. They're just open shelves, sort of industrial-looking, with something like plywood running around the edges to help keep the music on it. The wood also was part of the shelves themselves, which I know because my hand kept catching on it, which got annoying. I was worried I'd get a splinter. All the Sousa large-format songs were piled on these boxes we have on a dolly, which could be moved to get into the file cabinets where our actual music is stored. It...didn't actually seem like all that much. All told, it didn't even take up two full shelves. And each shelf is, I don't know, less than three feet across.
Harold approached the piles and at first was only going to look for pieces that started with A or B. This is when I pulled out The System. We had an entire set of shelves at our disposal, so on the top shelf, I made piles of A-E, then F-J, K-O, and the bottom one ended up being everything else, with the letters after T forming just one pile because I was out of room. Otherwise each letter got its own pile. The Cs were the tallest, interestingly enough. There weren't any Qs. However, that was all the music from when we'd pulled all the Sousa stuff specifically; we'd already sorted a number of songs prior to pulling them, so we had two other piles to go through--one on a table next to one of the new shelving units (the reason the third set of shelves isn't put up yet--we have to clear and move that table first), and another pile on top of some of the filing cabinets. The table had about a half-dozen stacks on it; the cabinets had stacks three deep, several of them. Phew. But we got all the Sousa stuff, sorted it, and shelved it. It also turns out that Harold's wife had worked at the library for many years and also is into sorting things alphabetically; he kept saying, you two would really get along! Well, good to know. She seems like a nice lady regardless.
We were able to get all this done before 8:30, and discussed a little of how to proceed. We figure the march-size Sousa music should go on the rest of the one shelving unit, so it'll be entirely Sousa. Then, we have large piles of music by Victor Herbert and Karl King, so we think they'll be next to sort through. From there...I don't know, but perhaps the others will have ideas. All I know is that, because Easter is next week and we're having a special work function on Good Friday, when I'd normally be off or only work a partial day, I'm going to need the prep time, so even if others will be there, I might skip it. But we'll see. Also, I neglected to wear my mask last night, because we weren't behind the band setup for very long, but I didn't feel that great when I left, so I guess I'm still going to have to wear it even if I'm down in the library. This also does not bode well for the library itself. I might want to bring a can of Lysol or something to help things out. Hmm.