The Census

has been completed and submitted. I will be here on Tuesday night - at least I have every intention of being here on Tuesday night. If something untoward should happen then it really won't make a lot of difference.  I could tell someone. There are ways around these things, legitimate ways.

There are people who do not take the Census very seriously. They should. 

All my working life I have been involved in research of one sort or another. I actually did my first piece of research while I was at school. It wasn't anything special. 

There was no school librarian in our school. I was one of the "library monitors". There were four of us. Only one of the others did much to help. Our role was to do things like cover any new books with the long rolls of brown paper backed plastic, put books away and check the borrowings. 

The teacher in charge asked me one day whether I had any idea what sort of books were being borrowed the most. It was something I could guess at from what I returned to the shelves but I could also actually work it out from the borrowing cards. I told her this and she told me something like, "Well keep a list until the end of the term. It will give us some idea."

I knew that meant there might be some money about to be spent on new books. I was prepared to work for that and so was the other girl who did the most to help.  

The idea of just a list didn't seem terribly useful though so I divided it into fiction and non-fiction and then I divided those into "picture books", "easy",  "primary" and "secondary". I left it in the staff room, in the "pigeon hole" of the teacher responsible. 

The only response I got was something like, "That's very useful Cat. Thanks."  At least that is the only response I got then but some weeks later the travelling salesman from the bookshop in the city did his annual round. At lunch time that day the teacher responsible for the library called me in to the staff room and showed me some books on the table. We could get a number of these and she asked me if I had any ideas about what we should get. We might not get what I chose but she was interested. I can remember saying to her that we should get a certain book "because the little kids are always borrowing the other one by him".  

We did get that book and it was borrowed just as much as the first one had been. I knew about it because, like the Census, I knew what was wanted and needed. I had found out. It wasn't something I wanted to read myself but it was something the younger children did want to read. 

It taught me something about doing research even then. My methods were not really that methodical at all. It was just curiosity and the belief that a little bit of extra effort might be useful. It's why the Census is useful.  We rely on it for future services.