Friday, June 6, 2008

A Sad, Sad Day

My library's website kicks the proverbial posterior. In addition to searching the catalog, I can see what I have checked out, renew if necessary, place a hold on books, or make lists of books I might want to request later. And the books don't have to be checked out for me to put a hold on them. I can request a book that's just sitting on a shelf gathering dust and some saintly librarian will go fetch it off the shelf, put a slip in it with my code printed on it and put it on a special shelf for me to come pick up. Then an e-mail will get sent to me telling me that my book is there waiting for me and after a week, they'll put it back on the shelf or send it on to the next person. Really, it's quite heavenly. I have yet to wander the stacks of my library and the only place I have been is the children's room for story time. I hate wandering stacks because my children wander along behind me competing with each other to see who can pull the most books off the shelves before I freak out and start yelling. Been there, done that.

Over the last several months, I have accumulated over 200 books on my list section of my online account. I had it divided by genre and filled each category to the max. I accumulated all the titles from reading book blogs, reading newsletters from bookstores and libraries and emptying out my entire Netflix queue. This gives you a little perspective of what I have lost.

Yes, lost. When I went to my account today to ponder what to request next, my lists were gone. GONE. As my hysteria mounted, I scoured my brain trying to think of where they might have moved them. Maybe they weren't gone after all. Nope. Gone. I found an e-mail address for the web manager and sent him a note that was said something like "My lists are all gone there were so many books on them I don't know what to do help me help me HELP ME!!!!!" When I went back and looked through the directions on how to use the list manager, I saw this:

"My List is a feature that lets you create a temporary list of items from your search results. You can view the list, sort the list, add or remove items from the list, or e-mail the list. If you have set up a user account, you can also save a list of items for future reference. From a saved list, you can move items to another list, rename the list, or delete it."

I added the bold and italic type there. Why oh why didn't I see this before? Why did I invest so much time and not even bother to save or e-mail the lists? I'm sick about it. Stupid internet. Making me so lazy and dependent. I'm seriously depressed about it. I can't even begin to start over. I have the lastest "Notes from the Horn Book" newsletter sitting in my inbox and I can't even look at it. It feels like too much to start over.

Moping around for a while is in order. Please, nobody give me any kind of perspective or tell me about illiterate children in Albania or whatever. I need to lick my wounds before I muster up the strength to start over. I might have to watch some "Bones" reruns and ignore reading for a day to soothe myself. Sigh.

6 comments:

  1. I have no perspective to give, except that I used to think that I was a reader. But I stand humbly as an old apprentice that never made the grade. We love you a lot. Hope you get happy soon.

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  2. OHMYGOSH! that's HORRIBLE! I cannot imagine that all being gone. I have experienced to a very small degree of losing something because of not understanding how to save or what ever, but never on this scale. You poor sweetie. I wish our library had something like this. If it does, thanks for the warning, I will look for this, if we ever get such a neat feature.
    And yes, like Sailor says, we love you so much. And it looks like little GD1 is taking after you and her daddy.

    ~a

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  3. I stumbled upon you while looking for reviews and comments on Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. There may be a solution for your lost lists! Most institutions, like libraries operated by municipalities, do daily backups of all their computer storage devices. If you speak to someone in IT they can very likely restore your deleted files. Good luck.

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  4. Joanna, you have given me some hope! Thanks so much! I'm going to call my library right now.

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  5. Good luck Jenny. How incredibly frustrating!

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  6. I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope IT can help you.

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