Category Archives: LibraryDayInTheLife

Library Day In The Life: Oh, dear god, Monday

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Mondays are not my favorites. I very much reset my patterns over the weekend, because I very much don’t want to live every day of my life like it’s a weekday, and so it’s difficult to get back into the swing on Monday. Today I chose to prioritize getting an extra hour of sleep, working out, and prepping meals over getting to work “on time”. Also, it’s snowing: A winter weather advisory is in place, and we’ll have 4-6 fresh inches of snow by the end of the day.

10:00: Arrive campus to see a horde of students (well, maybe 30) walking en masse from the art building toward the library across the otherwise empty and snowy quad. Fire alarm! Come to the library! We have coffee and not-snowing-on-you! This also meant spending 5 minutes talking to my friend Amy, who runs our painting program, which was lovely. Dinner plans were made for later this week. Then I tackled my email, making my day’s to-do list, and figuring out my calendar for the day and week. Also, made a cup of coffee, because though I made breakfast and drank a lot of water post-workout, I hadn’t caffeinated.

11:10: Walk across campus (still snowing!) to a meeting in which I get to grill a job candidate in our campus budget office with questions about collegiality, accuracy, collaboration, and the gray area between State rules and campus needs. Follow it up with an impromptu 45 minute conversation with the head of our Physical Plant about the state of SUNY’s construction budget (ie, as of right now, based on Cuomo’s announced budget, there isn’t one) and what that means for potential renovations to our main library. In short, campus goodwill is strong. Budgets are weak. Reality will be somewhere in the middle.

12:30: Return to my office (still snowing!) and take 40 minutes to eat my lunch and check in on the personal side of the internet. Friendfeed, Facebook, my Gmail, and making a quick purchase on Amazon.

1:15: Focus on my to-do list.

  1. Send faculty newsletter to Provost for all-faculty email approval.
  2. Go through all flagged and new emails and either Do or Record on the running to-do list. This list includes some stuff about a departmental self-study, bicentennial tasks, emails re: a mess I accidentally created in Collection Development by deleting what I thought was an extraneous gmail account of mine, a possible new internship in ILL, and communicating re: the disposition of furniture leaving librarian offices after our new furniture was delivered earlier this month. Also: saving and flagging an email with login instructions for a NYLA webinar I purchased for us to watch later this week, scheduling myself to meet our new Technology Help Desk students tomorrow evening, doing the annual Violence in the Workplace training HR mandates (the answer to all questions, FYI, is always always always “safely call University Police”), talking via email with the librarians about a Filemaker database of early periodicals that campus computing really wants us to retire, communicating about next steps on our shared cataloging project with SUNY Canton, and more.
  3. Finish the IRB application and send off. (so…. close…. maybe by 6?)
  4. Sort current to-do tasks onto days in this week, and allocate time around existing meetings. (Done!)

I paused at 3 to write this. I was going to leave at 3:30, burning half a sick day, to go to a massage scheduled for 4, but my massage therapist and I decided the weather is terrible (still snowing!) and that postponing until next week was smarter, since she lives 10 miles out of town and would want to shovel the drive before I got there, and then I’d have to drive back in freezing rain, thus undoing all the good work of the massage… So I’m still here, working until about 6 before heading home for Productivity Round 2. Tonight the plan is to pay bills, call my mom, make dinner, and work on the last details for my workshops for Australia, and maybe do some finalizing of social and vacation plans for that trip. Since, y’know, we leave IN A WEEK OMFG.

Also, to bed early if I can manage it. Going to try.

Library Day In The Life: FRIDAY

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So, last night I stayed up too late, but I did what I needed to do: exercised, worked on workshop content, and ate all the Pad Thai. In bed around midnight.

Which meant I (a woman who needs 8-10 hours of sleep to feel healthy) had a rough morning, following on several nights of not sleeping enough. I ignored all the alarms, then finally got up, showered, and got dressed. My rule is that the Director of Libraries gets to wear jeans on Fridays during the school year, so sweater/jeans/Danskos it is. Of course, no one but me really cares what I wear, or when, but I try to play my part appropriately most of the time… and I wear jeans on Fridays. Then, since neither Justin nor I have made it to the grocery store to do comprehensive shopping (beyond “we’re out of milk and bananas”) in what seems like weeks, I stopped for a bagel again. I usually do that twice a month, or so, and I’ve now done it twice in 2 days. Oops.

9:30: Arrive at my office. Hook up my laptop, get a cold Diet Coke (thank you, yesterday’s to-do list!), and sign a few invoices waiting for me. Chat with Angie about work and non-work stuff. Sit down at my desk, sort my mail, plug in my iPad to charge, and start digging through my email. Approve a few timesheets online, and update my own. Check over my calendar for today and next week to make sure I’m thinking clearly about any looming deadlines. Make a plan for my day.

10:30: Start on the to-do list for today:

  1. Post and official-ize the pilot project stuff from Wednesday.
  2. Draft a plan for and communicate to staff about our cloud storage reorganization this spring. (Our shared drives are out of control.)
  3. Eat something at lunchtime-ish.
  4. Finish everything that’s finishable on the IRB app and, if possible send it off. (got partway done. so… close…)
  5. If there is still time, work on the ACRL/NCES stats.

I got 1 and 2 done with little hassle, and then got derailed into handling some personnel details about timesheets and reappointment processes, stepping in to triage a printing problem and talk to campus IT since our in-house IT guy is out sick today, sending a few tickets to our in-house IT and web staff about two VPN problems I had last night, and beating my head against the wall trying to make sense out of our State and campus budgeting processes. All were straightened out to the best of our collective abilities in the moment, and I moved on to lunchtimeish. (Yogurt and Terra chips from the library cafe. Three cheers for the library cafe.) I also did a bunch on 4, and it’s really close to done, just waiting for some feedback. Monday, I hope? Monday is also the hope for … well, a bunch of stuff. I had a lot of (good, meaningful) interruptions this afternoon to discuss various and sundry library stuff. So not so much on the task work, but good on the “useful” front.

3:00: I am burning a few hours of vacation and getting out of here at 3ish today, because we’re driving down to Laurens, NY to visit some friends of ours for a joint birthday celebration (mine and our friend’s) and meet their infant son. And play some games. We haven’t decided yet if it’s our ongoing Burning Wheel campaign or something else, but we’ll have fun no matter what we do. Good friends work like that.

And so. I’ll be back with Monday and Tuesday on Monday and Tuesday. Happy weekend, y’all.

Library Day In The Life: Thursday, Thursday

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My virtuous plans of working for a few hours last night turned into “play FieldRunners2 on the iPad and talk to Justin about life, the universe, and everything”. I was asleep by midnight, but just barely. Ah, well. Today’s another day…

7:00: Ignore first alarm.

7:45: Reluctantly get out of bed.

9:00: Stop at the Bagelry for my standard: Everything bagel, toasted, with jalapeno cream cheese. Arrive work 9:20. Deal with my email and triage my to-do list for today. Handle the details resulting from a staff member’s unexpected two day absence today and tomorrow, share info from yesterday’s meetings with my secretary, talk through another order/invoice issue with her. Take today’s daily photo.

10:05: Go get a double cappuccino from the library cafe on the way to my 10:00 meeting with the AVP for IT. Find out that he’s double-booked, and agree to walk with him as he goes to the other thing he’s supposed to be doing. We walk and talk, and I cheerfully add my peanut gallery commentary to two discussions about IT deployment in the student union. Back to his office for our 11:00 conference call, which, we both failed to note, had been cancelled in early January, so we instead sit down and go over all of the IT goals for the campus as a way of making sure I have a solid framework understanding of our shared work — related to libraries, to faculty technology, and to shared services.

1:00: Return to my office, eat a Kind almond and coconut bar and open a warm Diet Coke because I fail at putting things in the refrigerator. Consider my to-do list. Decide on:

  1. Deal with my email, both new and flagged messages. This included calling a faculty member about using our seminar room for his Honors history survey class, replying to another email about a departmental self-study and their need for stats on library support, and a dozen or so less interesting mundane things.
  2. Finish the faculty newsletter for spring 2013. Add all the content from librarians, and photos, and then send a finished draft off to my two best proofreaders.
  3. Make more coffee, and put Diet Coke in the fridge. (All to-do lists should have a few easy items on them.)
  4. Send email to Academic Program Committee (the deans and provost office staff) re: the demographics section of the Ithaka survey.
  5. Clean off my desk. I HATE a messy desk, and I’ve let it go on too long.
  6. Use my now clean-desk to prep the NCES and ACRL stats. Pretty sure I have most of the data I need, but I need to pull it all together and begin formalizing it for the surveys, and get it entered into my own longitudinal spreadsheet for the Libraries.

In the midst of all of that, I also ate an apple, screwed around on Facebook and Twitter for 15 minutes, played Fieldrunners2 for 15 minutes, watered my office plants, and chatted with my secretary about various and sundry details of running a facility — stuff like “how do we dispose of a broken fax machine?” and “should we call the furniture guy and ask for an extension on the loan of the chairs?” and “which office needed ceiling tiles?”. And then I spent half an hour talking with the librarian who is liaison to the Art Department about yesterday’s meeting about ILL, keeping her in the loop. We also talked about the WWF (the wrestling kind). It was totally relevant.

And around 6, I headed out to pick up Thai takeout, with a plan of going home, eating all the Pad Thai ever cooked, settling in to do what I was supposed to do last night for my Australia work, and doing tonight’s 20 minutes of strength training hell. I will be mighty!

Library Day in the Life: And administrator on a Wednesday

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Bobbi Newman announced today that she’s shutting down and archiving the official wiki of “library day in the life”, as she thinks the project has reached its useful end as a centrally managed thing. To which I say I shall prove her point, because I really like doing #libday, and I’m going to do it whether there’s a thing or not. :)

So this week seems like as interesting as any… here we go.

7:00: First alarm goes off.

7:30: Second alarm goes off. Check email and attempt to wake up. Vow to exercise after work.

8:15: Wake up again, realize I’m fighting a muscle-relaxer hangover (I’m prescribed them for ongoing joint pain, and they help me sleep, but man do they keep me down some days), and force myself out of bed. Shower and dress; struggle with the challenge of wearing appropriate work clothes that make me feel confident and attractive and capable when it’s -12F outside. Opt for silk long underwear, wool dress pants, wool socks, loafers, long sleeved scoopneck shirt and suit jacket. Acceptable, if not as fun as the dress I wanted to wear. -12F, people! Eat breakfast, pack lunch, chat with Justin about our days.

9:40: Arrive work. Check in with secretary, check email, prep for 10:00 meeting.

10:00: College Libraries Coordinating Council meeting, at which librarians and library staff with responsibilities for planning discussed today’s agenda: initiating a new Pilot Project process, designed to conquer the communication and transparency needs of the staff. This is designed to handle the gray areas between “I think we should give out earplugs at the circ desk” (so go ahead, that’s just operational) and “let’s do graffiti on the walls during the arts festival” (which we should discuss, and probably move through our Bylaws-based decision process).

10:20: Back to my office. Email again, a little professional reading on blogs and the Chronicle. Start writing this. Get sucked into reading about, enrolling in, and poking around at OER 101: Locating, Creating, Licensing, and Utilizing OERs, the first of our Open SUNY MOOCs, and one librarians across SUNY have been working hard to launch. (Gah, acronyms. Kill them with fire.) (also: bias alert, I participated in a Google Hangout-turned-video that’s part of the section on Open Access.)

11:15: Prep for noon meeting, rereading the email that prompted it and making sure I have all the answers to the questions therein confidently memorized.

11:30: Lunch in my office. Cold pizza and Fieldrunners 2 on my iPad. (The game was on the iPad. Not the pizza.)

11:55: Walked across campus to meet our ILL Specialist at a noon meeting with Art Department faculty to discuss some problems they’ve encountered with students using ILL.

12:50: Back to my office. Work through some invoicing issues with the library secretary. Email email email. Pack up my office and leave campus to go to SUNY Canton to meet the Director of Library Services over there for a meeting with our dual-campus shared VP for Finance. We’re working on a cataloging project in which our staff would do their cataloging on a per-item transaction basis, and we’re doing our investigative legwork to see how that might function in our Shared Services environment. Answer: easily. Rock on.

3:00: After staying a bit longer to talk with the VP about a few financial and budget questions, drive home from Canton, and settle into my office at home around 3:30. Email email email for half an hour or so, then got down to work for the rest of the afternoon. Today’s agenda: IRB application as much as is possible, then CITI training so I can be the principal investigator on the Ithaka S+R survey I hope to run in a few weeks, and for which I need to get the IRB paperwork done ASAP.

6:30: Call it a day, change into exercise clothes, and head off into my evening. Tonight’s plan includes a light dinner, 20 minutes of strength training, and then an hour or two of work building handouts and slide decks for one of my workshops in Australia. My goal is In Bed By 10. I’ll report back tomorrow for Day 2. :)

Library Day In the Life: #libday8, Day 5

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Hi.  It’s Friday.

Now that we’re all glowing with joy…

Up at 7:30, to work by 9. Justin made me coffee, and I put on a black suit and then took off the suit jacket and replaced it with a black sweater, because, ugh, I don’t want to wear a suit today. Too tired for that much formality. Black heels, dress pants, and sweater, purple shell underneath. Nametag, today.

I am more tired than I look. Which is, I guess, good.

9:00: Hi to Angie, sign things, email, check online news, check Facebook and the Twitters and the lot.

9:30: Confirm that the Libraries’ loaner staff projector has all its cables and that my MacBook dongle works with it; test it out and set up my laptop to not show a bunch of the crap it usually does. Notice iPad is at 23%; set it up to charge. Discuss complexities of campus shipping with Angie, send a few emails.

10:00: Let’s finish the libraries’ spring newsletter, shall we? Or try, anyway.

11:00: Got to 75% on the newsletter. Make a pre-event bathroom pitstop, check hair and face and straighten clothes, then pack up my tech and go to Thatcher Hall to set up for the luncheon.

11:30: Set up my projector, laptop, and presentation, then eat quickly as catering staff set up the food and before faculty begin arriving. Chat with arriving faculty, Dean, and Provost.

12:00: Welcome our guests, begin my presentation to the departmental liaisons on our new reserve-able limited-projection seminar room, our new website, and our upcoming weeding project. Take questions and foster discussion, and most of all, listen to the feedback. My favorite question: “How long is this new website going to last? Should I begin trying to love it, or just wait?” I suggested that the bones are fixed for a while — we may re-skin here and there, but the architecture is solid. Feel free to learn to love it. :) Lots of expectable and thoughtful questions about the weeding process and how we might tweak my proposal to better suit faculty needs. Gathered some ideas, explained why we’d already rejected a few others, and generally felt as though our message was heard. We work with good folks.

1:10: Back in my office, laptop back on my desk. Oh, look, 21 emails arrived in the last 2 hours. *headdesk* Take call from furniture vendor about my incoming office furniture, talk with Keith about the loading dock, deal with some procedural budget stuff with Angie, and then head out again…

2:00 Medical appointment. Dr. Roy is technically a chiropractor, but he does full bodywork — less “crack, pop, fixed” and more “oh, you’ve got a muscle spasming here, so let’s loosen that with pressure and stretching. Ok, so now where does it hurt? Let’s see what we can do for that.” He eased the ache in my foot, my knee, my hip, my mid-back, and my shoulder. And he also reminded me, kindly but laughing at me, that I should stop crossing my legs when I sit, stop sitting with my foot tucked under me (which hyperextends my knee), and stop wearing heels. I defended today’s 3″ heels with “I had an event to host!”, though, really, he’s right.

3:00: Back to the library, pick up my ILL (Nielsen’s Reinventing Discovery) then back to my office. Oh, look, 16 emails since I left. Put on the first of my iTunes mixes I could find featuring Rilo Kiley’s Silver Lining, and get to work. Talk to Keith briefly about operations stuff.  Email.

3:30: Get to work on finishing the faculty newsletter.

4:20: Realize I am accomplishing precisely nothing, just rearranging text and staring at the Word file, and after one lass pass at the email, declare this day over. Leave by 5ish.

And so that is a week in my worklife, and a relatively typical one, though I often come in earlier than I did this week, because I had fewer meetings than usual. Including my logged Sunday hours and minus my lunch/dinner breaks, it’s about a 45 hour week on campus, plus another 5-10 hours of evening work. And that’s the low end of average for my semester schedule. It’s also very likely that I’ll be working on Sunday again this weekend, because I do need and want to finish the newsletter, clean up my orientation info for our new librarian who arrives Monday, work on the ACS-SCLD project, revise the circulation governance group draft, and make progress on the assessment documents I had hoped to finish this week (ha! Never even touched ‘em). I know that when the idea of working during the weekend makes me feel calmer rather than more tense, it’s not a terrible idea. And trust me, I’ll indulge in some relaxation, as well. Everything in moderation… Happy Weekend, everyone!