First stop today was a meeting with the CEO, Mike. He's been CEO for 2 years now, but recalls first being involved with Caval many years ago, when he was in a Head Librarian position at University. Caval has grown a lot, and diversified many times since those days.
As a not for profit organisation, it's really about finding a balance - the member libraries don't pay for certain services, other organisations do, the foreign language cataloguing fluctuates; it is quite a niche market, and Caval is able to offer a more personal touch than a lot of companies, with particular emphasis being placed on the level of care they're able to give. For example, for sight-impaired students, they are able to offer a copying service where the student can manipulate the text in a book so they can read it (copyright exceptions are available for that). The quality level is second-to-none, it really is top-notch. There is no 'it'll do' approach here, it has to be right.
I spent the last couple of hours working with Theresa, in Inter Library Loans. Terri would have been proud! I was shown the cycle of receiving requests, processing them, sending them out & receiving them back in. There are several programmes used, depending on the organisation. Relais is the main program. Aleph is another, whilst there is currently one being used as well from Libraries Australia, but they are trying to get that customer to transfer over to Relais. Caval offer customer support for the Relais system, and there are several people working on enabling it to integrate with Bonus (another system run by several University libraries)
And the storage area is so sophisticated, when Carm1 was built, International companies came to inspect it, not surprising considering the amount of planning and technology that was involved. For long-term storage of books, there is a specific set of criteria which has to be adhered to - the boxes need to be acid-free; the temperature must be constant; the humidity has to be at a particular point that the pages don't dry out but also no micro-organisms get to work; they are stored in the dark as light also effects them. That research also applies to Carm2, but as it is more recent there were slightly different criteria, due to fire hazard restrictions, and experience!
One thing I am curious to see is how the marketing is done - how do they get new business? I understand from an academic point of view, but Caval also offers end-to-end service now, where a (public) library will want for example : 1000 French novels, 2000 Japanese fiction, 150 Japanese non-fiction, 200 Hindi fiction etc. etc. I am keen to see how this is approached. I hope I'll get to see that next week, as tomorrow I think I'm in the end-processing section all day. I think that will be similar to what I did at protect-a-book last year, for a couple of days.
I feel like I spent half the day in the car. I'm so tired. An hour there, an hour home, then 15 minutes after I got home I left to pick up the youngest, dropped off Louise, dropped off Katherine, headed straight back out to pick up Sarah, came home & had some crackers, back out again for a 5.30 appointment at the doctor - where I didn't get seen till 6. So now I know why I have so much pain. I have an official diagnosis now, of fibromyalgia. What does that mean? Here is a definition I found on the web, which pretty much explains it:
Fibromyalgia causes you to ache all over. You may have symptoms of crippling fatigue -- even on arising. Specific tender points on the body may be painful to touch. You may experience swelling, disturbances in deep-level or restful sleep, and mood disturbances or depression.
Your muscles may feel like they have been overworked or pulled. They'll feel that way even without exercise or another cause. Sometimes, your muscles twitch, burn, or have deep stabbing pain.
Some patients with fibromyalgia have pain and achiness around the joints in the neck, shoulder, back, and hips. This makes it difficult for them to sleep or exercise.
So yeah, that pretty much covers it. Everything hurts. Not just aches, stabbing pain, sometimes stopping me in my tracks and making it hard to breathe. The way my doctor explained it was that the nerves around the joints where my muscles/tendons meet shouldn't be painful. My brain is reading the signals from those nerves as pain. In order to help stop that, he's changing my low-dose anti-depressant to a different one. There are 15 of them apparently, and we'll just keep trying till we find one that helps. But I have to lose weight and do gentle exercise, all as part of the 'program' to trick my brain into stop receiving those signals as being pain. I hope it works, coz it ain't no fun!
Anyways, I'm absolutely stuffed, so off to relax for the night.
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