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nebroadwe... except not in sufficient detail, because I doubt she ever dreamed I'd end up cataloging rare books for a living.
After the 9 a.m. fire drill, I sat down at my desk and began cataloging The Stage and Its Stars Past and Present: A Gallery of Dramatic Illustration and Critical Biographies of Distinguished English and American Actors from the Time of Shakespeare till Today (1887). I'm still cataloging it. In the sense of creating a record for the database, I have not yet begun to catalog it. It was issued in parts, of which "each ... will contain 4 Steel Plates; each plate will be accompanied by descriptive text, and each number will contain at least 8 pages of illustrated biography of the actors and history of the Stage," as the publisher's prospectus has it. The difficulty is that each part's plates and text were at some point detached from its paper wrapper and then shoved back into a (but not necessarily its own) paper wrapper. Sadly, enough of a resemblance to the original state remains that I can't just assume it's impossible to determine what belongs where and give up. No, I have to page through the entire thing (and it stacks a good three inches high) to figure out what's there and how it relates to itself. Then I have to page through it again to put it into rational order for the user. Then I have to -- you guessed it -- page through it again to make sure I didn't make any mistakes. And then I can create the database record and be done with it, but it's starting to look like I'll still be wrestling with this beastie tomorrow. Argh!
And of course I'm wearing a nubbly green sweater that doubles as the Lint Trap from Hell, catching every shred of orange paper that crumbles off the edges of this valuable item. And today is the only day this week on which I have an evening meeting, so that I do not even have the distant vision of paradise (in the form of pork-and-apple-pie and final edits on The Weight of the Paper) to encourage me. And I've got the OP to Witch Hunter Robin stuck in my head and it's depressing as all get out. Bathos abounds.
Oh, well. At least the sun is shining and I'm having a good hair day.
After the 9 a.m. fire drill, I sat down at my desk and began cataloging The Stage and Its Stars Past and Present: A Gallery of Dramatic Illustration and Critical Biographies of Distinguished English and American Actors from the Time of Shakespeare till Today (1887). I'm still cataloging it. In the sense of creating a record for the database, I have not yet begun to catalog it. It was issued in parts, of which "each ... will contain 4 Steel Plates; each plate will be accompanied by descriptive text, and each number will contain at least 8 pages of illustrated biography of the actors and history of the Stage," as the publisher's prospectus has it. The difficulty is that each part's plates and text were at some point detached from its paper wrapper and then shoved back into a (but not necessarily its own) paper wrapper. Sadly, enough of a resemblance to the original state remains that I can't just assume it's impossible to determine what belongs where and give up. No, I have to page through the entire thing (and it stacks a good three inches high) to figure out what's there and how it relates to itself. Then I have to page through it again to put it into rational order for the user. Then I have to -- you guessed it -- page through it again to make sure I didn't make any mistakes. And then I can create the database record and be done with it, but it's starting to look like I'll still be wrestling with this beastie tomorrow. Argh!
And of course I'm wearing a nubbly green sweater that doubles as the Lint Trap from Hell, catching every shred of orange paper that crumbles off the edges of this valuable item. And today is the only day this week on which I have an evening meeting, so that I do not even have the distant vision of paradise (in the form of pork-and-apple-pie and final edits on The Weight of the Paper) to encourage me. And I've got the OP to Witch Hunter Robin stuck in my head and it's depressing as all get out. Bathos abounds.
Oh, well. At least the sun is shining and I'm having a good hair day.