Day in the life ... #8

It's Round #8 of the 'Day in the life of librarians' project, and I am still a solo librarian in a small academic library. It's week 3 of the semester, and fairly quiet - a chance to draw breath after the hectic preparations for and start of the semester.

- First thing - pick up the post (newspapers still haven't arrived) and do a quick walk through of the library, checking that all's as it should be. It's Wednesday, so I also need to re-set the catalogue and self-check machines, after their weekly maintenance shut down.

- check to-do list, voicemail, and email. Send a few quick emails to take care of things that can be taken care of in a few lines.

- collect and return the library items that were dropped back after I left yesterday.

- hunt down a full citation for an article that a faculty member wants added to their class e-reserve, and pass the request over to my colleagues on campus.

- Open the post, and process the one book that arrived this morning - and find where I made a mistake earlier this week. Two books with the same main title, same editor, but different sub titles, and I crossed the wires. Oops. Fortunately it's an easy enough fix, and they're both reference books that won't be needed until later in the semester, so it won't have caused anyone any problems, but still - oops. Having the subtitle field added to all the reports and screen which display title is on my wishlist, and this reminds me why!

- Phone the director of one of our summer programs to check a couple of details, and then settle down to a solid batch of preparations for that program. They won't be here until May, but the turn over is tight, and the program itself jam-packed, so being prepared is absolutely key! I emailed the faculty teaching on it earlier in the week, and most of them have got back to me with their preliminary requests. Set up budget lines to track expenditure, and compile a spreadsheet of the textbooks they'll need, to price up and decide what we can provide through our Textbook Loan program, and what students will need to buy.

- Run over to The London Library, to collect a book on behalf of a student who wants to get a head start on a research project (this is our local ILL service - they are a fabulous resource to be able to pull on, and lovely people to work with.)

- Pick up the days' newspapers, which have finally arrived, and put them out in the library - just in time for the student's lunch break.

- Discover that the two self-check stations weren't powered back up after they were PAT tested earlier. Fix.

- Answer a couple of student questions - London related rather than research related, but that's good too.

- Chat to a pair of students about their travel plans for spring break, and how they might find information and decide on an itinerary.

- Continue working on an annotated bibliography for a history class, which leads to ordering a couple of books to fill some gaps where the external libraries our students have access to don't.

- lunch time. I'm reading a novel to review for Whichbook at the moment.

- Back to the bibliography - it's fairly labour intensive, but it's a worthwhile investment as it both makes it easier for the students to find their way through our patchwork of provision, and enables me to be ahead of their needs in terms of adding to our own collection.

- Walk a student through using our self-check system. One of the nice things about my new office is that it's much easier for students to come and tell me if they're unsure about something!

- Today is the first quiet day I've had this year, so I'm taking the opportunity to blitz a couple of admin-type jobs that have got a bit behind through the busy start of semester. One was re-labelling and officially moving a stack of books from the Reference section back on to the open shelves, which reflects the changes in courses on offer. I focussed on getting the necessary books *on* to the Reference shelves before the start of semester, so it's good to finally complete the other half of the job! The other was checking up on the status of older orders, and chasing the couple of titles that should have been here by now, and updating the expected dates on a couple of others. Academic publishing schedules can be somewhat flexible ;)

- Do a final walk through of the Library - I need to re-stock the printers tomorrow - and collect up and return the day's returns (few though they are)

- Set up my to-do list for the morning (key items: some testing on an updated version of Koha, our LMS, and some detailed admin checking on information about next Fall's courses.)

- Finish on time, with almost all of today's to-do list checked off. It's close enough to the start of semester that that still feels like something of a novelty.

Day in the life ...

It's Round #6 of the 'Day in the life of librarians' project, and I am still a solo librarian in a small academic library. In many ways, today is a much more 'usual' day for me - students are here, classes in sessions, and Koha, the new LMS I mentioned in my last 'Days post, has been up and running for a full semester.

• - first thing: library set up - check on self-check (still logged in!), lights, newspapers, quick shelf tidy of the decimated London Focus and Travel collections.
• - clear the returns drop box.
• - check email on three accounts - lots of it as this weekend was the deadline for students to send me information about condition records! Skim for urgent messages, forward on those that need to be passed on to my colleagues, answer the most urgent couple.
• - Friday was the last day for students to change their class selections, so I've done a certain amount of swapping textbooks to match, and generally trying to make sure they have any resources they need to 'catch up' missed first classes.
• - process a couple of book requests for a lecturer - and take delivery of a kind donation from the same.
• - work through the emails about textbook condition notes, updating the notes in the system (this is so much easier to do in the new LMS!)
• - after speaking to a couple of students who'd missed the deadline, email all the students offering an extension. I would much rather be processing corrections now than bills later!
• - field questions about where to find specific books, where to find the local Post Office, hand out a few membership cards to our local public library, and walk several students through using our self-check station for the first time. It's radically less high-tech than the self-check stations they're used to on campus, but it does the job!
• - update online calendar, and take care of a list-serve mystery for a colleague.
• - work through the first half of a bibliography for one of our faculty members, annotating it to show where to find the resources, either here in our library or through one of our partner libraries.
• - brief meeting with one of our students who is pursuing an independent research project, followed by an email with info and links about gaining access to the archive resources they hope to use.

• - lunch hour - which involves doing a circuit to the London Library, to pick up an ILL book for a student, then to the supermarket to pick up supplies for tomorrow's Library Tea (and my lunch) before heading back to the office.
• - arrive back just in time to catch the break between class sessions, so am here to take several more rapid-fire questions, library related and not, deal with more textbook exchanging, and hand out a few more public library cards - all good.
• - wrap up the ILL administration, and notify the student that their book is available.
  
• - the next class session starts, quiet descends, and I get to eat my lunch (at my desk)
• - go back to that bibliography
• - divert for a few minutes to help someone who's come in to reception trying to find another US university's London program. Always nice to be able to help!
• - bibliography, continues, generating some book orders to balance the places where our partner libraries can't supply. Finished and sent off to lecturer
• - blog admin - posting today's entry (written by one of my colleagues, but needing illustration etc) and writing and setting up tomorrows. In an ideal world this is a job I'd do as a batch once a week, but - none of us live in an ideal world!
• - check email again, reply to a couple of students, and a mail from my boss, with an unexpected and positive proposal that inspires some brainstorming.
• - take care of the mail that's arrived over the weekend - a handful of new arrivals for the library.
• - add six new books to the catalogue, so they can go out onto the shelves. (Original cataloguing now takes longer, because the records are more detailed, but copy cataloguing in the new LMS is so much faster than in our old one the average comes out well ahead - I appreciate this fact often!)

• - welcome the return M, who's coming in to shelve.
• - take a second to check the circulation stats to confirm that yes! Items were checked out on Saturday, so the ongoing problem we've been having with the self check station timing out seems to be fixed. Email LMS support team to share the good news, and thank them for finding the fix!
• - transfer a report over to my e-reader, so I can read it on the way home ahead of a meeting tomorrow.
• - update my rolling to-do list, and prep tomorrow's 'must dos', so I can get a clean start in the morning.

A day in the life of a librarian - round 5

(The collected Days make for some interesting reading)

I'm a solo librarian in an academic library. All my students are on their summer holiday at the moment, and the library is closed, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be a quiet day!

Check email on the 3 accounts I monitor. Forward a handful of messages to colleagues, reply to the most urgent of mine, and batch together the rest by project to tackle later, or - as it turns out - tomorrow.

Clarify quotes with potential shelving and furniture suppliers, and pass them on to the rest of the people working on plans to maybe move our library within our building.

Measure up existing library furniture, and start making scale plans for some of the possible layouts that have been discussed.

Phone calls with boss, updates on the library move plans.

Pop out to pick up lunch, and caffeine supplies for the next few days. Collect armful of incoming book orders from my mailbox on the way back in.

One of our faculty members pops in for a chat about how resourcing is coming together for a new course - show him the relevant new arrivals, make some suggestions for titles that would fill the need he describes, and then order the two most likely looking ones. (Frustratingly, there's a brand new book that might be relevant but might be too technical - we can't tell from contents page, and none of our partner libraries have a copy yet. I'll call around local bookshops tomorrow to see if anyone has a copy he or I can go and page through before we order it, as it's a fairly expensive HB)

Check in on progress of another faculty member's course reader - she's finished up her part, so the ball's back in my court to double check the permissions, and send it out for a proof copy.

Call our main book supplier to try and find out why I've got an invoice, but no books - miss our rep both times I call, so - onto tomorrow's to do list with that.

More email and phone calls with suppliers and colleagues about the library move plans - forwarding quotes and requesting clarifications, and trying to make sure everyone involved has the information I've collected, ahead of our meeting later in the week.

Data cleanup - we're in the middle of transitioning to a new LMS, and the test transfer of our data threw up a number of anomalies that need me to investigate and make judgement calls. Today's area for focus was duplicate patron barcodes, and miss-matched bib and item sets. Picky and detailed, but satisfying. Really looking forward to going live on the new system.

Add 9 new dvds to the catalogue - the one thing I'm not looking forward to on the new system is media cataloguing, so I pulled these to the top of my 'to enter' pile to make sure they'll be included in the record transfer!

Stop - at half past leaving time - to look around, see what needs doing and to think about priorities. Make a few notes, and put together tomorrow's to-do list, so I can get off to a clean start tomorrow morning.

Go though reception on the way out of the building to discover a late delivery has arrived, containing those missing books, so I took a quick detour on my route home to drop into the book shop and leave a message for our rep to let her know that all is well after all.

* Photo by robjwells, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.