The librarians, session 27: Totes sort of fun
Somehow I got to the band building really early yesterday, over 20 minutes early, like I mistimed when I should have left to get there. Oh well. There was a jazz band rehearsal, so I knew the building was open, and I happened to see Marian arriving shortly before I reached the door, so I knew she was there. I could hear her unlocking the gate as I entered the back hall…and then saw that she wasn't alone. The crotchety band librarian was there and talking with her. Oh, dear. Both their backs were to me at first, and I had one of those fight-or-flight moments, but I stuck it out. My being there sort of helped her to kind of ignore him and get to the task at hand, and he wandered away after a few minutes. He's one of those people who starts talking and doesn't stop, and he goes into way too much detail without bothering to see if you even care. Alas, I am one of those people, so you're free to tell me when I do that while speaking. Here, you're stuck with it. :P
I let Marian know my plan about sorting the bins alphabetically, and she went down to the actual band library to find paper to make labels. I didn't think to ask her to get tape until she came back up, oops, so the labels went in the bins to start, then on top of the music when we started getting full rows. We had three empty bins at the beginning, so we had ABC, DEF, and GHI initially. As we cleared bins--stacking the remaining letters elsewhere in the meantime--we added JKL, MNO, PQR, S (so many, it got its own bin), TUV, and WXYZ. If you're counting, that's six bins cleared, plus a seventh we set aside to use for overflow the next time we come, which won't be for several weeks. That's also not counting the largest bin, in which I preferred to put Karl King (we have more of his music than anything), currently in a smaller tote and a cardboard box that's overflowing, but Harold said he didn't want to move that music from where it was unless we were alphabetizing it. Fair enough.
The letters were for composers' last names. Sometimes there wasn't a composer listed, like for national anthems from, say, Cameroon or Central African Republic; those went by title. Sometimes there was more than one composer; we went with the first. And if there was an arranger, we went with the composer's name, not the arranger's. At least, that was the goal, but I caught a few that Harold did in which that was not the case. Thanks; you're so helpful. The way he was working, I'm not entirely sure, but he didn't seem to have any sort of system; Marian and I did, me especially, since it was my doing in the first place. I'd commandeered a cart that was there to help me stage the music by the alphabet groupings, which actually worked really well since this is the marching-band size stuff and you could fit six marching folders flat on the top part, no problem--that would be A through R, all told. The other three sections (S-Z) overflowed onto the cart's bottom shelf. Speaking of stages, our stage is completely cleared off right now, which is really weird to see. The risers, as expected, are on the flatbed carts. I was worried they'd be a problem back there, but in actuality they created a flat place to store some of the music while we cleared out more bins, and it was at a good standing height, so that worked really nicely, surprisingly enough. The problem ended up being the percussion equipment, which ended up getting stored in front of all the bins. Now that was a bit of a pain, moving all that out to get to the music. Oy. There's not much room back there right now--there's not a whole lot to begin with, really--so in some places it's a tight squeeze. At one point, Harold was sort of standing and resting against the bass drum, which was perpendicular to everything, leaving just a narrow space to squeeze around to get past. The other direction was locked by a gate. Both Marian and I had to go through there at one point; she joked, at least he's friendly, since it was so tight you couldn't help but brush against him. Harold, you might want to move.
The reason he was standing there was because he was talking with the assistant director, who must've been down in the library. Marian must've run into him down there, as they came back up together and the three of them started talking for a while. (I kept sorting until I had to blow my nose, which was why I had to squeeze past Harold.) Among other things, it was mentioned that the band's librarian officially tendered his retirement, effective at the end of the year as per Harold (I'd heard previously, from the librarian himself, that he was playing through the summer and that was it, though he planned to continue his library duties). Harold and the AD are looking to find replacements for him…and the names of us three bequeathment helpers came up. I was only half paying attention until I heard my name--and there are several of us with my name in the band--so I went, wait, do you mean me? They said, yes! I went, I will tell you right now, I am *not* interested. They were sort of like, are you sure? And I was standing there thinking, I didn't really want to do *this* and got roped into it; I ended up pausing for a moment and basically went, this is plenty. Marian sounds like she might be game, and Amaryllis ended up having a work conflict and couldn't be there, but we'll see what happens. What Harold and the AD are concerned about is that the current librarian won't put things away unless he has every last piece of music from everyone, which means there can be a bunch of already-played music piled up on tables in the library. (Also food. It's not uncommon to find wrappers and other things down there.) Part of why he was talking to Marian when I got there was to chastise the clarinets for not all turning in their folders after Sunday's concert. And he mentioned to me that two flute folders were missing. Well, we had four flute players who weren't at the concert; you'll need to check with them. Also, due to a special situation, there are actually two folders for the Flute 2 slot (one of those players has eye/vision issues and cannot share music); one of those folders was missing, and guess what, that player wasn't at the concert, which we already knew. So, ask her on Monday. What more can you do? I don't know; the librarian makes a bigger deal about things than is necessary, and all he'd have to do is ask the offending people for the music, or maybe we should do a mass collection of songs at the next rehearsal. There's got to be a better way. However, that is not for me to discover. I've taken my name out of that hat, darn. I realized today that by turning down being official band librarian, it means turning down a key to the building. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Due to all the bending and twisting, we were happy to call it a night, even if we did have three more totes to go. Oh well. We'll get through them before the summer season starts next month. Harold was talking about putting up permanent shelves for the marching music on a nearby wall, since we don't necessarily need it in the band library proper. That would make things easy. I guess there's an Eagle scout who put up more shelves in the percussion storage room; perhaps he could arrange to do marching music shelves. That would be cool. But Harold also gave us a scare--he mentioned that some other music person died, and his wife has seven totes of music from him, and would we like it? Marian and I looked at each other, eyes wide. It sounds like Harold is going to drive up to Wisconsin, pick up those totes, and take them home to look through it a bit. If it's worthwhile music, he might keep it; otherwise, it might go to the winter band he performs with in Florida. Yes. Please take it there. I only signed up for the stuff from Michigan…and truthfully, I was drafted; this wasn't voluntary.
I let Marian know my plan about sorting the bins alphabetically, and she went down to the actual band library to find paper to make labels. I didn't think to ask her to get tape until she came back up, oops, so the labels went in the bins to start, then on top of the music when we started getting full rows. We had three empty bins at the beginning, so we had ABC, DEF, and GHI initially. As we cleared bins--stacking the remaining letters elsewhere in the meantime--we added JKL, MNO, PQR, S (so many, it got its own bin), TUV, and WXYZ. If you're counting, that's six bins cleared, plus a seventh we set aside to use for overflow the next time we come, which won't be for several weeks. That's also not counting the largest bin, in which I preferred to put Karl King (we have more of his music than anything), currently in a smaller tote and a cardboard box that's overflowing, but Harold said he didn't want to move that music from where it was unless we were alphabetizing it. Fair enough.
The letters were for composers' last names. Sometimes there wasn't a composer listed, like for national anthems from, say, Cameroon or Central African Republic; those went by title. Sometimes there was more than one composer; we went with the first. And if there was an arranger, we went with the composer's name, not the arranger's. At least, that was the goal, but I caught a few that Harold did in which that was not the case. Thanks; you're so helpful. The way he was working, I'm not entirely sure, but he didn't seem to have any sort of system; Marian and I did, me especially, since it was my doing in the first place. I'd commandeered a cart that was there to help me stage the music by the alphabet groupings, which actually worked really well since this is the marching-band size stuff and you could fit six marching folders flat on the top part, no problem--that would be A through R, all told. The other three sections (S-Z) overflowed onto the cart's bottom shelf. Speaking of stages, our stage is completely cleared off right now, which is really weird to see. The risers, as expected, are on the flatbed carts. I was worried they'd be a problem back there, but in actuality they created a flat place to store some of the music while we cleared out more bins, and it was at a good standing height, so that worked really nicely, surprisingly enough. The problem ended up being the percussion equipment, which ended up getting stored in front of all the bins. Now that was a bit of a pain, moving all that out to get to the music. Oy. There's not much room back there right now--there's not a whole lot to begin with, really--so in some places it's a tight squeeze. At one point, Harold was sort of standing and resting against the bass drum, which was perpendicular to everything, leaving just a narrow space to squeeze around to get past. The other direction was locked by a gate. Both Marian and I had to go through there at one point; she joked, at least he's friendly, since it was so tight you couldn't help but brush against him. Harold, you might want to move.
The reason he was standing there was because he was talking with the assistant director, who must've been down in the library. Marian must've run into him down there, as they came back up together and the three of them started talking for a while. (I kept sorting until I had to blow my nose, which was why I had to squeeze past Harold.) Among other things, it was mentioned that the band's librarian officially tendered his retirement, effective at the end of the year as per Harold (I'd heard previously, from the librarian himself, that he was playing through the summer and that was it, though he planned to continue his library duties). Harold and the AD are looking to find replacements for him…and the names of us three bequeathment helpers came up. I was only half paying attention until I heard my name--and there are several of us with my name in the band--so I went, wait, do you mean me? They said, yes! I went, I will tell you right now, I am *not* interested. They were sort of like, are you sure? And I was standing there thinking, I didn't really want to do *this* and got roped into it; I ended up pausing for a moment and basically went, this is plenty. Marian sounds like she might be game, and Amaryllis ended up having a work conflict and couldn't be there, but we'll see what happens. What Harold and the AD are concerned about is that the current librarian won't put things away unless he has every last piece of music from everyone, which means there can be a bunch of already-played music piled up on tables in the library. (Also food. It's not uncommon to find wrappers and other things down there.) Part of why he was talking to Marian when I got there was to chastise the clarinets for not all turning in their folders after Sunday's concert. And he mentioned to me that two flute folders were missing. Well, we had four flute players who weren't at the concert; you'll need to check with them. Also, due to a special situation, there are actually two folders for the Flute 2 slot (one of those players has eye/vision issues and cannot share music); one of those folders was missing, and guess what, that player wasn't at the concert, which we already knew. So, ask her on Monday. What more can you do? I don't know; the librarian makes a bigger deal about things than is necessary, and all he'd have to do is ask the offending people for the music, or maybe we should do a mass collection of songs at the next rehearsal. There's got to be a better way. However, that is not for me to discover. I've taken my name out of that hat, darn. I realized today that by turning down being official band librarian, it means turning down a key to the building. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Due to all the bending and twisting, we were happy to call it a night, even if we did have three more totes to go. Oh well. We'll get through them before the summer season starts next month. Harold was talking about putting up permanent shelves for the marching music on a nearby wall, since we don't necessarily need it in the band library proper. That would make things easy. I guess there's an Eagle scout who put up more shelves in the percussion storage room; perhaps he could arrange to do marching music shelves. That would be cool. But Harold also gave us a scare--he mentioned that some other music person died, and his wife has seven totes of music from him, and would we like it? Marian and I looked at each other, eyes wide. It sounds like Harold is going to drive up to Wisconsin, pick up those totes, and take them home to look through it a bit. If it's worthwhile music, he might keep it; otherwise, it might go to the winter band he performs with in Florida. Yes. Please take it there. I only signed up for the stuff from Michigan…and truthfully, I was drafted; this wasn't voluntary.