Day in the life of a librarian - 6

Week in the life of a librarian – 6

Tuesday 25 January 2010



Didn’t bother trying to park in the uni car park, so went straight to the nearest street. Thrilled to get into work on time (9.30) – well actually, a few minutes early.

Am Duty Manager on a Tuesday morning so managed to pick up the pager early from the person who has it until I get here! Have a meeting 10.30-12 so hope it doesn’t go off!

Brief discussion with boss about invoice payments. Double-checked that I really had completed all my ADRs – which I have, so I can stop worrying about it. Rather nice, reassuring email arrived from on high to say I was not on their hit-list for being tardy with ADRs.

Email in-box checked for overnight messages – mostly from peanut butter to say the librarian’s day 6 wiki had changed! There were one or two real ones that required action though.

Just checking Twitter now, before meeting at 10.30. Ah, Laurel Tarulli has just reminded me about Yammer; although I found it rather useful when it first came out, I find I rarely use it these days. Made one or two unrelated to #libday6 tweets, now thinking about imminent meeting to discuss resource discovery. Looked at this again last night before I went home. Throws up some interesting questions.

Gosh, 11.50 already! Meeting done and dusted, morphed into discussion on staffing levels etc.. Tea time now.

Sent out a few emails and replied to some others. Interested to see that CILIP is targeting me for a moving on in MARC course; if I get a chance to do any cataloguing these days it’s a miracle – either that or our backlog has returned!

Being indecisive about what to tackle next! Looking at Yahoo Pipes (been meaning to since the very first mashlib ages ago) but it looks a bit beyond me at the moment. Just investigating netvibes (yes, I know I’m behind the times!) Seems to be rather similar to iGoogle which I confess I’ve been using for many years! Do I want to create yet another place for me to look for things of interest, considering I’m already overwhelmed?!

Someone’s brought in some lovely homemade cakes for their birthday. Usually we have a lethal bread knife lying around on the processing table for the day, but today the cakes have already been sliced, so I can stop worrying about health and safety! Oh, well, actually, that’s reminded me, as safety manager for most of the lower ground floor I am supposed to start safety sampling this month. Now, where’s the checklist? Hmmmm. Check shelves are safe; check staff are lifting correctly; check fire escapes are clear of inspections; are there any trailing cables; and the list goes on … Can’t really do it now as still have the duty manager pager, and the list is so long I don’t think it’ll get done today as I finish at 2pm. One for tomorrow then, otherwise it’ll be Feb and the next one will be due!

A thought just popped into my head – gosh, it must have been lonely! I should go on a typing course; I wonder how many words I actually spell wrongly (mostly because my fingers don’t work in the right order) and my computer automatically puts them right?

Oh, my 6 book reading challenge diary has just come through the internal post! Can I read 6 books in the 5 months that have been allocated? I’m not a great reader, and certainly not a reader of the great authors, but last year’s reading average was about 3 books a month, so I should achieve this. Will have to fit it in around the big cross stitching project I have on the go for Mother’s 70th birthday, and the course I’m doing for work (although I’ve paid for that myself and am doing it in my own time)!

Another discussion, this time about the progress of the cataloguing, classification and processing of a large collection of donated material going into our newly formed special collections area. Balance between getting these done and accessible to users, and maintaining the flow of new stock coming in, as well as ensuring that colleagues who are carrying vacancies are also being helped out. What with new services to develop as well, things are quite busy here!

Oh, I just got some thoughts on http://highvisibilitycataloguing.wordpress.com/ Pity I didn’t manage to get my referencing right though! Librarian? Not A-Z? what was I thinking? Well, it was the run up to Christmas and I have to say I was absolutely shattered – too many children’s Christmas concerts, illnesses, work stresses etc.. Still, no excuse really. Humble apologies to all.

Humble apologies accompanied by rumbling tummies – off to get my lunch.

Yesterday’s stats were gratefully received by our facilities officer. We have a big move around coming in the summer, including the assimilation of a collection from a site which is closing, so figures on which class number areas are growing the most quickly could be handy to know.

Tomorrow looks like being a busy day – meeting with resource discovery supplier, enquiry desk session and loads of links to add to the cataloguers’ wiki! See you then!