One of my favorite little things at the new library was getting a “Church History Library” flash drive for $7.50 in a pinch. Both useful and a souvenir.

Well, I don’t want to disappoint…

Absolutely. At any rate, I’ll bet that the new CHL catalog *may* have been designed by some BYU grad student. My spies in Provo tell me that many of the science and engineering students are picking up capstone projects from various Church IT projects.

They’re still on the hook for not listening to the experience of the librarians/archivists who knew how many machines have long been in simultaneous use, but maybe it gives the consultants an excuse for not allowing enough space for each individual user.

Gossip says that the library/archives pros, who had not toured the new building until all the furniture and equipment was in place, were shocked to see that only six new microfilm readers had been set up. They knew from experience that that wasn’t enough, and knew they had asked for more (a request that the outside “experts” overrode because the Huntington — whose collections are vastly different from ours — only needed six), so they retained some of the old machines to tide us over until more of the new ones could be ordered and shipped.

Your wish is likely to be granted before many of the others.

I find the staff (well, about half of the staff) very helpful, and most of the other half are at least friendly.

I wish they had better microfilm readers for the not-safe-to-photocopy material. Those old, dim readers always put me right to sleep.

“A couple of weeks ago I wandered up there on my lunch hour, mostly to stretch my legs and get out of [the office]. I could not find a computer terminal to use because of all the kids playing games on them. I wandered the aisles of books and thought I’d look something up in the Journal History. Couldn’t find it. When I asked at the desk, a sweet missionary told me it was in the reserved reading room. I commented that was new and she said it had ALWAYS been in the reserved reading room and that I needed to fill out a paper to use it. Told her never mind. After a minute of wandering, I found it on the back wall. When I noticed the new copy machines I asked the young male missionary if the old cards worked in these machines (I still had some money on my old card) he seemed confused. When I showed him my card he, with all certainty, said that card was only used at the FHL. I mentioned that I had used it in March at the Church Library and he told me “you must be confused because we have never used those cards. They are for the Family History Library only.” OOOkkaaaaayy. Then I was looking for something else and must have looked confused (not hard these days) and another sweet missionary materialized out of nowhere and said she had to actually escort me to whatever it was I was looking for. When I told her I was browsing, she said I had to look up whatever I wanted on the computer and then she would “take” me to it. I thought to tell her I was looking for peace and sanity, but thought better of it. Not exactly a good start for me, but then I haven’t had time to do any real work there yet.”

I don’t know when it will make it online, but at this point I suggest that you’re better off waiting for an improved catalog than wanting this one posted.

kevinf, if you do bring a child, also bring butter. The cafeteria opens at 11:30.

Auntie Ardis, I’ll be in the CHL the week after Sunstone at least one day, so I’ll be sure to say hi, between my loud cell phone calls, solitaire on the computers, and setting up the random child for window ejection.

AND, better still, making those catalogs available on the Internet is easy and a known quantity. When will the CHL catalog make it to the Internet anyway?

FWIW, Ardis, I’ll be in Utah for the first two weeks of August – so I hope to hit the library one of those days. If you are there, I’ll offer a ride home again. If you aren’t, well, I know where you live… [grin]