Day in the life of a librarian - 6

Day in the life of a librarian – 6

Wednesday 26 January 2011


Car parking space got – not in main car park but better than the long walk!

Immediate discussions on processing of donations going into special collections. Emails checked and answered, but still awaiting some replies. Twitter checked – yet another new follower!

Just checking out some detail for a meeting in early Feb. Agenda now arrived so can book train tickets. Also reading up the notes for our discovery system so I can ask some sensible questions when the supplier comes to visit later today.

More discussions on staffing for vacancies and organising our special collections area.

Off to a meeting to discuss resource discovery – could be gone a while!

Very good meeting, lots of questions and surprisingly quite a few answers! Need to keep an eye on the staff and the workflow – can’t have people stressing out about stuff.

Off for a lunchtime walk.

Sad to read whilst out at lunchtime, about the closure of local museums

Final ADR signed off, and copied for the staff files. More leave cards signed! Staff development session for a member of the team agreed and signed. Highlighted a email from UKBIBS about ISNI to read later whilst on the enquiry desk. Of course, Murphy’s law says that I will be inundated with enquiries and there will be no time to catch up on reading!

Brief foray (well, 45 minutes – I don’t know of that’s brief or not really) into the library to do some safety sampling. Thrown up some interesting things to report back to our safety co-ordinator.

Just making a cup of tea before going upstairs to do 2 hours on the enquiry desk.

Seems fairly quiet up here. Yup, just one or two enquiries, nothing too taxing. Writing up the notes from the safety sampling. Taken 45 minutes (is that just a coincidence?) Oops, can’t save it, need my USB! A quick run downstairs for my pink heart-shaped USB. Document now saved and emailed to the safety co-ordinator – and to my boss just in case he wonders what I’ve been up to!

Tricky enquiry heading this way! Oh goody, evening desk person has just arrived, so he can have this one!

Off for tea now.

Refreshed and raring to go again! Lots more updating of the cataloguers’ wiki and email to boss about making use of stuff learned at the various mashlibs there have been!

Now contemplating the merger of two of our faculties. Hoping that hole left by our senior assistant librarian (acquisitions) will be filled quickly so I don’t have to think too much about fund codes and budget allocations!

Now wondering if you can add hyperlinks to words in an email message like you can with blogs and wikis – off to have a look!

Ah ha, it seems you can, although it’s not quite so simple. Anyway, that does mean I can now stop adding all these long blue lines, and make real text into hyperlinks instead! Odd why I never seem to receive any in this format …

Final thought for the day: Am I really a cataloguer since I seem to have done no cataloguing whatsoever so far this year!