Library Day in the Life Project, Round 7: Day 5

July 29, 2011

I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life Project (now in its seventh round) this week. To quote the project wiki, “the Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.”

Today was another scattered day. It’s hard to really sit down and work on a big project when you’re only there for a couple of hours at a time and have eighty things to do. This week was also strange: I only worked thirteen hours (plus my Chicopee visit), so a lot of what I normally do in a week got left out.

12:00pm: arrive, check my mailbox, clock in, take care of notes and broken books that need to be replaced that have been left on my desk. Lauren (my boss) is not in today, so my debriefing after my visit to Chicopee yesterday will have to wait until next week. I go over my to-do list for this week to decide what unfinished tasks must be done today and what can be put off until next week.

12:15pm: email. There are 62 new emails, most of them summer reading log entries. I answer a patron’s question about the summer reading club, find out a little bit more about a potential interview, and review the minutes from yesterday’s department heads meeting.

12:30pm: start processing summer reading log entries. There are a few that require corrections and some duplicates that I need to delete.

1:30pm: I update our top ten readers list (there have been some surprising upsets) and write the weekly blog post about our summer reading stats.

1:45pm: head upstairs to the reference desk to distribute tickets and initial for prizes. While I’m up there, Laurie, our head of reference, wants to know what I’m reading so she can put it on the website (a couple other staff members have done the same already). I share our summer reading stats with her and refill the prize cart with more books.

2:15pm: take my laptop up to my outpost in the YA area (my “desk” is an old OPAC table) and finish the bookmark I started yesterday with our August programs. While I’m working on it, I help a patron who wants a Pretty Little Liars book that’s checked out. I tell her about The Lying Game (both the book and the television show) and give her and her mom our two Pretty Little Liars read-alike lists. The mom seems really happy about this, and the daughter at least isn’t rolling her eyes at me. Sometimes this is what success looks like.

2:30pm: a member of the circulation staff comes back with the truck of YA books to be reshelved. I offer to do it, since it lets me know what’s been going out. Our shelving system in the YA area seems to baffle circ staff members, and things often wind up in the wrong place, so this is also a chance to do a quick scan as I’m shelving for things that belong elsewhere.

2:45pm: I start writing up my operations report for the month. It describes what happened in Teen Servies in July: program attendance, reference transactions, book lists and homework guides I’ve created, community outreach and professional development, plus any other big projects. Looking over the report, it strikes me that this has been a strange month. Again, this summer is weird.

3:15pm: one of my summer reading superstars and manga club members comes by to chat. She has a couple questions about summer reading. I show her the “what I’m reading” post and she points out, rightly, that there should be some manga on my list, and then proceeds to make recommendations. I go home with the first volumes of Death Note, xxxHOLiC, and .hack//Legend of the Twilight. I like this opportunity to just hang out and talk.

3:30pm: finished the operations report. I have half an hour left before I go home, so I start going over the list of books I want to buy. I won’t have time to put together a cart today, but I can get started and finish it next week.

4:00pm: I drop off my reference transactions tally sheet, go downstairs, put all of my stuff away, remember that I need to do our fortnightly drawing for a $50 frozen yogurt gift card, whip through the Excel work to do that, call the winner, clock out, and go home. On my way out, I pick up a book I have on hold and check it and the manga out. Today, I am strong and drive right past the frozen yogurt place and do not stop in.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Tags: libday7, library day in the life, manga, summer reading, teen services, work