Library Day in the Life - Round 4, Day 5

See: http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/ for info on the project. I also participated in the last round in July 2009. You can find all my posts for this project (this round and the last round) by searching the librarydayinthelife tag.

Friday, January 29, 2010

6:30am - Up. Shower. Breakfast. Coffee. Give cat a small amount of milk again today. She tries to trip me on the way to her food bowl and then tries to knock the entire milk carton out of my hand. I'm not sure she realizes that killing me would be a bad thing...

7:30am - Leave for work. It's COLD today.

8:05am - Login to work network. Login to email, calendar, chat, other various programs. Open up Voyager cataloging and acquisitions modules and OCLC Connexion. Read email. Forward and respond to necessary messages. Catch up on news feeds, work email listservs. Scan subjects and then delete mass numbers of listserv messages. Start this post.

8:20am - Schedule meetings with each of my staff to review the questionnaire about their workspace. Send an email with the times and letting them know I remembered to bring in my tape measure if they need to borrow it.

8:45am - Review former intern's cover letter. I'm always happy to read over cover letters, review resumes, etc. and provide constructive criticism. I've read enough cover letters and looked at enough resumes to know what works and what doesn't work.

9:10am - Forward a message to multiple people about some free webinars from OCLC that are now available online.

9:20am - Begin work on a survey to be sent to various colleagues. I'm using SurveyMonkey. When did SurveyMonkey and Google become linked? I was able to set up a SurveyMonkey personal/free account by logging in via my Google account.

10:00am - Complete survey, send to colleague for review.

10:20am - Start sorting through the piles on my desk and try to complete some actual cataloging work. Don't get very far. Walk around and check in with staff.

11:00am - Meet colleague downstairs for last review of space/shelving to be used for the barcoding project. Help clear off some of the shelving and move items (collapsing extra space/interfiling them with other material).

11:30am-12:30pm - Lunch with a colleague/friend and other colleague/friend who's currently out on maternity leave. Coo over her baby for a bit.

12:35pm-12:45pm - Check email. Try to replicate a reported problem with a streaming video. Can't reproduce the error messages. Respond to email so the troubleshooting with the URL portion can be addressed in another department.

12:45pm-1:25pm - Make sign to designate shelving in storage room downstairs for barcoding project. Take field trip to tape signs up so shelves don't get filled between now and when things get started on Sunday evening/early Monday (that happens a lot - "oh look! free storage space!" and whoomp! it gets filled with stuff almost immediately). Take staff involved in barcoding project with me on my field trip to show them the space. Send follow up email repeating what we talked about and with door code for the room. Send follow up email to colleague in charge of staff that will be pulling the volumes for us that we are ready to go and the space is ready.

1:25pm - Check email. Review subjects and delete listserv messages. Walk around and check in with staff. Drafting of several emails that will be sent early next week.

2:50pm - Brief chat with friends about evening and weekend plans, coordinating times and locations, etc.

3:00pm - Another round checking in with my staff. We're currently spread out across the room, so I try to make sure I walk by several times a day.

3:20pm - Back to sorting through the piles on my desk. I have an original cataloging record to do, including NACO work, for the annual report of the Sanitarium Association of Philadelphia. There are illustrations! The things that get "discovered" hiding up in our own stacks. It was considered a "fresh-air charity" (actual LC subject heading) for people, mainly children, to escape the summer heat in Philadelphia and in addition to the hospital ward, kitchens, etc., it had outdoor swings and bathing (i.e. swimming). Sign me up, please.

4:00pm - Email. Finish up survey based on feedback from colleague. Chat with another colleague about another upcoming project. Final check of email. Schedule this post.

5:00pm - Log out and close programs. Log out of network, shut down (restart) computer. Walk home, meeting up with friend along the way for happy hour. Happy Friday, all!

Two best quotes of the week:

• "Got time for some last minute crazy?"
• "Did you kick puppies in a former life?"

My colleagues crack me up sometimes.

Library Day in the Life - Round 4, Day 4

See: http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/ for info on the project. I also participated in the last round in July 2009. You can find all my posts for this project (this round and the last round) by searching the librarydayinthelife tag.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

6:30am - Up. Shower. Breakfast. Coffee. Give cat a small amount of milk in an attempt to appease her as she's awfully demanding and mouthy this morning.

7:35am - Leave for work. Stayed up a bit late watching the President's State of the Union Address last night and the post-speech rebuttal, reports, and analysis. Tired today. Notice that my wrist hurts less. It still hurts when I write with a pen/pencil or move/rotate my hand specific ways, but I decide to not wear the brace (although I did bring it with me).

8:11am - Login to work network. Login to email, calendar, chat, other various programs. Open up Voyager cataloging and acquisitions modules and OCLC Connexion. Read email. Forward and respond to necessary messages. Catch up on news feeds, work email listservs. Scan subjects and then delete mass numbers of listserv messages. Start this post.

8:15am - Blinking light on my phone indicating a message. Check voice mail. Message from staff person that they're out sick. Note on appropriate HR spreadsheet/timesheet for reporting.

8:30am - Mail dropped on my desk. w00t! I received a copy of the issue of Serials Librarian in which my conference report from ALA Annual is published. I can now show it to my grandmother so she can commence bragging (because grandmother's do that kind of thing - honestly, no one else cares, right?).

Back to more email and reviewing my schedule for the day.

8:50am - Walk around to check in with early arriving staff. Pass out space inventory sheet (preparation and information gathering for our upcoming physical reorganization of the technical services space).

9:30am - Meeting with my boss to touch base.

10:00am-11:40am - Meeting with all the unit and department heads in technical services to review things that affect all of us.

11:45am - Email. Check in with staff. Field trip up to the stacks to see what call number we're at for barcoding the As.

12:15pm - LUNCH. Read through various news feeds, read through subjects and then delete listserv messages. See that J.D. Salinger died, read memorial on Powell's Books blog. Well that sucks.

1:00pm - Email and preparation for this afternoon's CONSER webinar. Had to find my notes from the ALA Midwinter CONSER session. Things have been so busy around here I haven't had a chance to do any ALA follow up, including reviewing my notes and converting them into reports. That needs to happen, and soon.

1:30pm-2:30pm - CONSER ALA Midwinter Web Follow-up Meeting webinar. CONSER has been using the Elluminate software for online meetings and discussions. It's working well for us. Also, of all the various webinar software I've used over the past year (or more), I like Elluminate best. Good interactive options, intuitive interface, and I have yet to experience connectivity issues or lag time during the sessions. That said, I still goofed and sent a message to all participants when I meant to send it to just one person in response to a question. Sigh. Technology: 1, Shana: 0.

Topics of the webinar included cooperative authentication by CONSER members of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), if changes from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM means a new record (generally no!), more information from Regina Reynolds on ISSN and ISSN-L, and a brief summary of the general (positive) response to the repeatable 260 implementation.

[In the middle of the webinar I notice my wrist has seriously started to ache, probably because I'm taking notes by hand rather than typing, so I put the brace back on.]

2:30pm - Email. Check in with staff I haven't spoken with because I've had back to back meetings much of the day.

3:06pm - Email our metadata specialist asking her to re-run some old reports for me ASAP. So many clean up projects, so little time (well, not really...continuing resources cataloging is pretty much continuous clean up and maintenance projects so we have all the time in the world, it's just never ending).

3:00pm-5:00pm - Retirement party for a colleague. I didn't get there until 3:30pm, but fortunately didn't miss the very nice speeches.

5:05pm-5:15pm - Return to desk. Final check of email. Schedule this post. Log out and close programs. Log out of network, shut down computer. I'm tired, and it's late and cloudy and cold, so I decide to take the bus home today.