Pages

Thursday, July 30, 2009

A day in the life of a library (aka what a librarian might do if that librarian was me)

So there's a project over at A Day in the Life of a Library which seemed like a library-geek type of fun project to get down with. The very simple aspect sharing what my day was like. Since this project has been going on since Monday here's a quick synopsis of my week thus far up until today:

Monday-cataloged new books (Monday might have had something else more exciting happen but I simply cannot remember.)
Tuesday-cataloged new books
Wednesday cataloged new books
(The reasons for this exciting week of repetition being two-fold with a caveat 1) ordered a whole bunch of books throughout the summer and bc of 2) the semi-massive rearranging project have just now gotten to the cataloging with the caveat being that there's some prep-work for the class I'm teaching in the fall I'm supposed to be doing but am a bit nervous about and so am deflecting that nervous energy into cataloging.)
You can throw into that exciting mix answering the occasional email and checking out the occasional patron but cataloging has been my life this week.

Thursday (today)
7:10 get to the library. It rained last night so there's a good chance there's water in the basement. Surprise; there is. I spend 30 minutes wet/dry vacuuming it up.
7:45 send a couple of emails.
8:00 Head out to Ithaca, NY for a Grant Writing Workshop that starts at 9:30. This was hosted by SRLC (Southeast Regional Library Council) Lovely people-really hard-working, extremely gracious and charming!
9:15 drive past the meeting place twice.
9:20 finally get there.
9:30-12 great workshop. It was awesome! Well presented a whole-bunch of good information and resources. I'm looking forward to digging into this area and seeing what may benefit the library. (I am, however, a horrible networker. Going to need to work on that.)
1:20 stop by the apartment so Kara can drive me to work and take the car
1:30 eat a PBJ sandwich and check email some good stuff from the wallace-l list as well as some interesting stuff in RSS feeds (Possible Koha/liblime dustup??)
1:45-2:45 catalog
2:45 talk to a couple of patrons about how awesome the library looks with all the periodicals moved upstairs and the resulting new space. (So I don't a picture readily available but basically picture a cave, wood-panelled and now picture a cave, wood-panelled with floor to ceiling windows around 90% of it. That's basically how the corner of the library now looks. The periodicals moved upstairs for anyone who was worried) I do need furniture and talk to patron who is willing to donate their leather sofa (AWESOME!).
2:50 call up office furniture place that also deals in used furniture. the salesman is in the office and they are only five minutes away-I'm going over!
2:55 apparently my car battery is dead (It's been acting up-don't believe there was any tomfoolery on my part.)
2:56 Rob (the IT guy) jumps my car and away I go. (To the careful reader yes the mention of another car seems convoluted esp. as to the note about the switch but there's a whole other side story that doesn't quite have room to be explained here.Email me if you're really interested.)
3:00-4:00 meet with furniture salesman. Realize my budget is hosed for what I want to do this year especially since even the nice used furniture is not really in my budget and since it is used there's typically not enough of the stuff anyway. Salesman is quite nice. Take furniture catalogue and some weighty thoughts and go back to the office to consider other possibilities
4:00-5:30 look at more furniture/library furniture catalogs then I would care to mention while creating an excel spreadsheet to track possibilites and prices, etc. Consider calling up Bill Gates and directly applying for a grant for furniture. It is ludicrous how much it costs for chairs. (If only I had hung onto the 50 volumes of Reader's Digest condensed novels recently disposed-I could have gotten at least one chair out of that lot, I am sure of it.)
6:00 pm turn off lights-head home on bike.

2 comments:

Heidi Sexton said...

Just wondering if 11 hour days are normal?

Jeremy McGinniss said...

No; not really. I normally try to get here by 7 so I can read for an hour before the day starts which I don't think counts as work. Usually I don't even notice the time go by and could definitely use more in the day.
At the same time while there are days like pulling teeth most of the days this doesn't feel like work.
People will stop in to chat which is good as well to have the time to do that well, esp. with students.