An uneventful week. (Aren't they all?) When things are slow at work, I like to check our holdings in a particular subject and fill in any major gaps. You might remember me doing that a while back with beatnik lit--I was shocked, shocked I say, to discover we didn't have any Keroac, Ginsberg, or Burroughs. This week I decided to do the same for our art collection. The lacunae aren't as serious as with the beats, but I found that we don't have any books devoted to Modigliani or Daumier, and in some other cases (e.g. Renoir, Bruegel) what we have is old and/or inadequate (e.g. a Time/Life "Great Masters" series from the sixties, with drab, faded reproductions). I checked Amazon for in-print books on these figures and then checked our periodicals databases for reviews of the titles. I eventually spent about $300. The nice thing about this job is that I can actually spend time reading about the books I might purchase; my impression is that many academic libraries just use approval plans. So it might not be such a tragedy if I end up stuck here.

There was a university Christmas banquet on Friday evening. A nice time, except that a woman hit on me whom I would rather not be hit on by. (Grammar?) Too bad young, pretty women don't hit on me (although I guess they have the luxury of not needing to hit on anybody).