The books are OK, but I'd have rather had the $17 mil

The avalanche of donated books arrived this morning. Right now they're stashed in an empty office and a storage room. There are definitely 20 boxes, but most of the boxes are liquor boxes, amusingly enough, so not as large as I was expecting.

I opened several today and was heartened to discover that there is some good stuff there. A lot of artist monographs, and a good number of books on subjects that our library tends to lack (any kind of non-Western art).

However, I was disheartened to discover that the majority of the books are filthy--covered in not just dust but plain old dirt and in some cases mold. The student workers who were helping me open boxes brought me a pile of plastic gloves--unasked--and are currently hunting for surgical masks. I'm not sure if workman's comp will cover my lung damage, so it's probably a good thing.

My boss gleefully reported that the donor, who is in fact dead, left behind $17 million but never ran his heat or air conditioning. The student worker who helped him retrieve the books confirmed that the apartment's fireplace looked well used.

Considering it was an apartment and not a house with a basement or a garage, I'm not really sure where said donor stored these books that would allow them to get so dirty. Unless they were not in storage and his whole place looked like that...

Now I just have to figure out a plan for sorting, cleaning, cataloging, and finding space for all of these books. And perhaps a new wardrobe plan for while I'm doing it. Wearing my customary black today was not a good move.

There IS a method to my madness!

All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

--John Perry

Looking a gift horse in the mouth

My boss notified me this morning that the library is going to be receiving a substantial donation of books in the very near future. He has been making noises about this off and on for several months, asking me to write him a memo outlining how we'd commemorate such a gift (one word: bookplates. What the hell else can I do? Build them a wing?) and hinting that said donation was comprised of photography books.

Today he called to discuss logistics. Namely, the gift will be in the form of twenty boxes of books. More specifically, twenty eighty-pound boxes of books. Primarily about painting. What did I think would be the best strategy for storing them until they were processed and ready to shelve?

To provide a little context, my entire library currently consists of 2,500 books. I've never tried to box it up, but twenty boxes would hold a sizeable portion of our collection. Said collection is also housed in a relatively tiny space, with limited shelving. In fact, I just scored a major victory in convincing him to let me get rid of the 1991 Encyclopedia Britannicas and the 1989 Time-Life Understanding Computers series (a feat three years in the making) because of the fact that we are about out of shelf space for our current collection. This conversation took place less than a week ago, and yet he was shocked and a little mystified when I told him that there was no way in hell these books were going to fit in our library.

But of course, we can't let reality stand in the way of free stuff. So he and I and a couple of student workers are driving a small truck (his, apparently) to Lincoln Park one day next week to retrieve said books. Where we will deposit them once we retrieve them, I have no idea. And how I will process them and shoehorn them onto the shelves is a mystery. But I'm sure the commemorative bookplates will be lovely.

Maybe I'm not as depressed as i thought about Tuesday's 25% voter turnout rate...

One poll of former Obama supporters who abandoned the Democrats in Massachusetts showed that 41 percent of those who opposed the health-care plan weren't sure exactly why. If elected officials are supposed to act based on the wisdom of ordinary people, they're going to need ordinary people to be wiser than that.

--Anna Quindlen