Adventures in Shutdown Land; or, No MARC for you!!!

Hello, I am your host for tonight's episode of, "What has the Government Shutdown done for me?"

Are you excited yet?

Exhibit one: my television.

I know you are thinking, "So. Freakin'. What. It's just television."

You try living somewhere where you have limited cable television (we refuse to buy an obnoxious, 8 foot, 1980s style dish required for satellite here). No more network television. Just as well, since I really don't want my blood to boil any more than possible when the news turns to Congress.

Exhibit two: my work.

The backbone of what librarians do is write something called MARC (MAchine Readable Catalog) records. You have lots of fields you fill out using several different guidebooks for call numbers, subject headings, and rules of punctuation, capitalization, spacing, etc. Doesn't this look exciting?

MARC record for To Kill a Mockingbird---writing these makes me very happy. 

It's time consuming and I LOVE IT because I'm that much of a nerd. But I don't have a lot of time, so I use what most librarians use---Library of Congress.

Yes, your tax dollars for the Library of Congress are well-used. I access the records several times a week. It's the go-to guide for law librarians, school librarians, public librarians, archivists, and special collections librarians.

And this is what happened after the shut-down.




This sucks.

Also:
My parents have had a tripped planned for months to California and their first day at Yosemite, they were greeted with a CLOSED sign.

Oh, and the biggie:
I work, but I don't get paid. In theory, Congress will pass legislation to retroactively pay us for the work we are doing now (and not getting paid for doing).

Did you catch that? I get to work but I don't get paid until this mess is over. Who knows when that will be. (Nevermind that Congress gets paid now and doesn't really work). I am "excepted." Long ago, they used to use the terms "essential" and "non-essential" personnel, which hurt a lot of people's feelings because nobody wants to feel they are non-essential (and thus, not paid during a shutdown). So now instead of being essential, I am excepted. Ridiculous PC rewording, ridiculous that we are even talking about working and not getting paid for it.

We have students with both parents working as civilians on post and BOTH are furloughed. Furlough means you don't get to work AND you don't get paid.

So I will take a delayed paycheck over no paycheck any day. I say that in all sincerity. I am happy our military folks are not facing financial burdens right now---if you are military or have worked with military families, you know what a very stressful life it can be with frequent deployments and the like.  I am frustrated that this situation has occurred, but I am reminded daily by the worried faces of some of the kids at school that my life could be much worse.



Keep them in your thoughts.