Librarian by Day » library day in the life

Library Day in the Life Round 5, libday5

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:04:00 +0000

This post is part of the Library Day in the Life Project. For those of you who don’t know me I’m a Digital Branch Manager at the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries in Columbus Georgia. I have been here just over a year.

6:00 wake up and get to work. I drink coffee while checking my email and Twitter and Facebook. Facebook includes checking my Librarian by Day page, Libraries and Transliteracy page, and Day in the Life Group since FB doesn’t send email notifications for activity on these I try to check them a couple of times a day. I also walk my dogs and get ready for work.

8:15 arrive in the office. I have a Twitter class for staff at 9:00 so I go over my handouts and material and make some last-minute changes.

9:00 Twitter class for staff. Great overview and introduction including how to use twitter without having an account. The class went really well. I asked the Twitterati to say “hi” to the class. I got over 60 responses from all over the world so I plugged them into a google map, check it out.

View Hi’s from Twitter to Class in a larger map

10:00 After the class is over I stop by the office of the Head of Teen Services. We were both at ALA and are still waiting to get our reimbursement checks. She tells me they’ve promised it will be deposited tomorrow.

10:15 Back to my office, there is a contact from one of the vendors in my mail box. I’ve been waiting for approval so I could sign and fax it back. Approval received hurrah! We are undergoing some restructuring so while we figure out who does what it is taking some extra time for decisions to be made.

10:20 Time to check my email. Some days I get home and can’t figure out what I’ve done all day. Thanks to keeping notes for libday5 I have figured out that most of it is reading and responding to email.

10:30 I look at Twitter. libday5 is going strong. Its cool and sad to see that is had gotten so large I can not keep up with it.

10:40 more email. One of the downsides of being a manager now is there is less about my day I can share on Library Day in the Life.

10:50 I need to return some phone calls, including calling the Treasury department to inquire about my reimbursement. while on hold I go through more emails.

11:20 I start dealing with the issue of the library’s URL. right now it is chattahoocheevalleylibraries.org. Cool cuz that’s our name, bad because it is looooonnnnngg. Especially if you’re typing it in a phone there is a lot of potential for errors. We have agreed we need a shorter option the obvious choice being cvl.org. Unfortunately that belongs to a group of Buddhist who want $10,000 for it. ha! We look at other options.

11:35 Back to email (notice a theme here yet?)

11:45 Visit the Marketing office to help with the website. Until the Digital Branch goes live (September) Marketing is handling the old website, I offer technical support as needed.

12:00 I check Facebook and Twitter. Yes I can see what my friends are doing, I also find news and library related issues from things they post and from organizations I’m a fan of like American Libraries Magazine, American Library Association, ALA OITP, Federal Communications Commission, LJ/SLJ Ebook Summit, Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, Library & Information Technology Association (LITA), Learning Round Table of the American Library Association, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation just to name a few. Same with Twitter, most of the people I follow aren’t tweeting about their breakfast. :-)

12:15 I start looking through my Google Reader folder for the library. I come across a mention of our library in an event notification from a group that is charging admission for the event. This is a violation of our policy. All events during library hours must be free and open to anyone. I send an email to a couple of staff who deal with this sort of thing and spend sometime discussing the problem. Back to the RSS feeds, I respond to some tweets about the library.

1:25 Back to Twitter and email.

1:30 I walk downstairs to our cafe and get a hot dog for lunch to eat at my desk. I don’t do this often, I wish our cafe had healthier and yummier choices. Back at my desk I look at my email, Twitter and Facebook again.

2:15 I look at some usability studies and make some notes.

3:00 Time for a test run of my Tech Talk with Michael Sauers on Wednesday. All goes smoothly and we are ready for the webinar!

3:30 back to emails which takes up the rest of my time until I leave at 5:15.

Usually in the evenings I get on the computer and do some work and I need to be getting ready for my upcoming workshop in Missouri, but I decided I need a night away from the internet so I clean and read a book.Similar Posts:

Library Day in the Life Week in Review #libday4

Bobbi Newman — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:35:32 +0000

Great post from erin dorney at library scenester on why students, librarians, administrators should be paying attention to the Library Day in the Life Project, I couldn’t have said it better.

One of my favorite post is from Andy Woodworth Library Day in the Life Round 4 (The Love Note) I haven’t read all the posts yet but I intend to!

You can view the Twitter transcripts from What the Hashtag

Some stats from What the Hashtag as of 11:30 am Eastern time 1/30/2010

2,333 tweets
366 contributors
333.3 tweets per day

Other stats

172 people signed up on the wiki you can still add your info through next week

Photos from the Flickr Pool, 45 members, 167 items – Add yours!

Thank you again to everyone who participated. I hope to see you all next time (if there is a next time!)Similar Posts:

Day 2 in the Life of a Librarian #libday4

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:54:19 +0000

View from the stage at Kiwanis

I took these notes today as part of The Day in the Life project, if you would like to read more please see the wiki, if you’re interested in how it all got started read this post

My title is Digital Branch Manager, I work for system that serves 4 counties with 8 branches (9 counting mine).
7:00 overslept despite having my alarm on. I check it, yes on, no idea why it didn’t go off. This throws my whole day off because I have no time to
8:15 review Kiwanis presentation
9:45 attempt to track down a kindle to take with me for Kiwanis presentation
10:00 make note to redo library’s overdrive page
10:15 panic when I think I lost my library card
10:16 find my library card
10:30 provide new cellphone recommendation for my mom – work is making her upgrade her blackberry
11:15 print handouts for Kiwanis
11:30 Meet head of Popular materials in the lobby to ride with her
1:45 back to the library
2:00 downstairs to get a demo library card
2:15 talk with director about midwinter
3:00 attempting to record instructions of loading Overdrive ebooks on to Nook & Sony eReader,
4:00 run into issues with Nook and begin researching, problem (more later)
4:45 chat briefly with coworker about plans for staff day
5:00 Back to Nook issues
6:00 downstairs to drop off magazines and chat with Head of Reference on my way out.
7:00 exit building
8:00 home, make dinner, walk dogs, watch Castle

Also done but time(s) not noted – remove spam from the Day in the Life wiki, curse jerks who are posting it & remove access, check in on Twitter, glance at facebook briefly, answer emails and update websiteSimilar Posts:

Library Day in the Life Round 4, January 2010

Bobbi Newman — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:40:48 +0000

butterfly, because its pretty

Yes it’s that time again, time to start thinking about participating in the Library Day in the Life Project. Will you blog, Twitter, take photos, or show video? or some combination of all?

For those of you not familiar with the project in a nutshell library works of all types document a day or a week of their work life. You can check out the original blog post, my explanation of why I do it, or the wiki for more info.

Due to the high number of participants in July 2009 I’ve made some changes to the wiki hopefully will create a little order for those trying to follow along. I moved the previous list off the front page to its own page. I created a new page for Round 4 January 2010 and added a number column to the table.

I also made some changes to the format based on my observations from the last round.

Include your job title & type of library in your blog post or video to help readers
For the Twitters a hash tag for #libday4 (if you have a better one let me know, speak now or forever hold your peace).

Round 4 of the Library Day in the Life Project will begin on January 25th 2010. Any one who works in a library can participate. You may share your day (or week) on your blog, Twitter, Flickr and/or YouTube (or any other way you choose. If you have none of these don’t worry, just create a new page in the wiki and post your day there. Once you decided on your format(s)

Create a PB Wiki account (it’s free)!
Add your name, your job title (so we can see what you do at a glance) and a link to your blog, Twitter, Flickr and/or YouTube account to the wiki.
Start capturing your day.
1. Include your job title and the type of library you work in at the beginning of your post.
2. Include a link back to the wiki
Bloggers, Flickr & YouTube users tag your posts with librarydayinthelife. Twitters use the #libday4
After your first post come back and edit this page to change your blog link to a link to your tagged posts. please link directly to your day in the life post(s) and not to your blog in general.
Add your Flickr photos or videos to the Group on Flickr

Check out posts from some of the previous participants

Similar Posts:

Why did you particpate in the Library Day in the Life Project?

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:03:16 +0000

Was is self promoting narcissism? Desire to share the most boring mundane details of your life with others (wake up, make coffee)? Or something else.

Sarah Faye Cohen shares why she didn’t participate and she’s wondering why others did. A legitimate question, actually one I’m curious about myself. The first two rounds of Library Day in the Life were small, I think less than 30 people total, then somehow this one took off, I’m not sure if it was David’s post or the mention on LISnews or what, but all of a sudden there were loads of people I’d never interacted with doing it (over 200 last count). Whoa. Awesome. Scary. Exciting.

I can’t speak to why everyone did it but I can speak for myself.

“who we are writing these memes for.”

Well, the whole thing started because I look at my blog stats and the search terms used to bring people there, the most popular ones were: librarian’s day, what it like to be librarian, what’s it like to work as a librarian, you get the idea. I assumed, because how could I know, that these were searches done by people considering librarianship or just curious. So I thought I should blog my days, give the people what they want right? But there are so many of us doing so many things, my days wouldn’t be a good representation, so I tried to start the meme. I didn’t give it a lot thought, I just picked some people doing new and interesting things and linked to them. I hoped people would share what they did and give insight into all different aspects of libraryland and they did!

So I wrote this meme for the people who wonder what a librarian’s day is like. Who are those people? I don’t know, I generally don’t ask patrons why they want information, I just give it to them.

I wrote the meme for myself too. I wanted to know what other librarians were doing, there are so many new exciting positions out there, I wanted to know how are they spending their time? I’m selfish like that.

After the first round I got a lot of email from professors, librarians and lots of other people saying what a great resource it is. Lets face it if you’re considering being a librarian today there aren’t a lot of resources for you, the last book is from 2003 and my job didn’t even exist in 2003. I’ll admit some of the blog posts are more informative than others and I’ll be suggesting a better format if there is another round. But over all it accomplishes what I’d hoped for; a wide range of library people, not just MLS holding librarians you don’t have to have an MLS to work in a library, writing about their average day.

She next says:

But this meme leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth in part because I don’t see the meme itself having a role in our relevance, or our creativity, or out sociality (is that a word?!).

Who says that was the point? There are a lot of people working hard on our relevance, creativity and our sociality, I like to think I’m one of them. But the purpose of the meme was to share what our average days were like, with each other, with students, with potential library workers everywhere. It did that. Doing this meme didn’t stop me from working on our relevance, creativity or sociality, and in face it might have helped me do those things better. I understand Sarah and Amanda’s point, but you can be talking about something AND doing it at the same time, the acts are not mutually exclusive, but that’s another blog post.

I could go on and on but in I think Meredith Farkas has written a reply that covers most of what I’d say and I’m sure she’s written it better than I could.

But at the end of the day, in a nut shell, why did I do? Because its my blog and I could.Similar Posts:

Day in the Life of a Librairan Day 3

Bobbi Newman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:09:59 +0000

I took these notes today as part of The Day in the Life project, if you would like to read more please see the wiki, if you’re interested in how it all got started read this post

Stayed up way too late reading the night before (I guess you never grow out of this!), so really need the coffee this morning!

First thing in the morning, prepare for and attend Branch Manager meeting at our Mildred L. Terry Branch. Its our newest one, we haven’t even had the grand opening ceremony yet. This meeting took up most of the morning so go look at the pictures of the branch for something fun!

Grab something to eat on the way back my office

check email, check twitter

Teen Programs Meeting – I’m there to find out what they need/want from a Digital Branch, good information

Run downstairs between meetings to check on something for tomorrow, run into a staff member I want to be a member of Super Friends, talk with him about it, he’s in! Hurray!

Database Committee Meeting- we’re looking at what we have and what we need to add over the next year. It goes really well.

Grab peaches on the way home. I am really tired tonight and decide this should be my night away from the computer, I make myself take one once a week. Similar Posts:

A day in the Life of a Librarian – Day 1

Bobbi Newman — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:48:52 +0000

I took these notes today as part of The Day in the Life project, if you would like to read more please the wiki, if you’re interested in how it all got started read this post

First some background info: I’m the Digital Branch Manager at the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries in Columbus Georgia. This is a brand new position that started when I did, May 18th. I’d share my job description but it’s changing everyday. Basically its my job to move the library from a website to a digital branch mentality. There is a lot more involved with that than just planning a new site. We have 8 branches (mine will be the 9th when it goes live) in 4 counties. That is a huge community to serve and a lot of people to introduce to the ideas behind a digital branch. So here is a look at my average week, I have absolutely no doubt it will be very different in 6 months and very different 6 months after that.

6:00 – get up make coffee, check email for emergencies, check Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook for anything that needs a response now. Check vanity feed.

Today was my first day with the rolling briefcase, my back loves it, my sense of style not so much

8:00 arrived at work, check voicemail, one from a vendor about an invoice. Emails, too many to count really, answer priority ones including an update to the website. How do I decide what’s a priority, no I dont’ read them all, I have a touch one time rule for email. I look at the subject line (these are important people! non descriptive subject lines are a pet peeve of mine) and who they are from.

then start to prep for admin meeting at 9:00

9:00 admin meeting

10:00 talked with Head of Teen Services about serving on The Super Friends. Ok we’re not really calling it Super Friends, well I am, because I like it and its my committee, but the official title is FIT or Future, Innovation and Technology Committee

10:15 more email including database vendors, setting up remote access with one, looking to expand service with another, I sent 23 all together

Turned in Tech Toys Wishlist
Called Chamber of Commerce about working with the Small Business Association

11:15 checked, Twitter & Friendfeed and the Day in the Life, after seeing at Tweet from a friend about the Day in the Life Project taking off (woulda linked but his account is private)

11:40 back to emails, seriously what is with the emails today?

11:50 Finshed up the question for an upcoming patron survey about the website and sent questions to Director & Deputy Direct for approval

12:30 email again, including answering a request for more info on the Tech Toys list

12:55 Start writing Digital Branch Guide, includes philosophy, vision & mission statements, goals, policies etc, its gonna be a book when its done. And yes we do need this.

1:30 take a quick look at Twitter, FriendFeed and GoogleReader

1:45 meeting with boss about The Super Friends and other issues

2:15 – lunch

2:30 back to writing the digital branch guide

4:00 leave for appointment with the optometrist, my eyes are great, hurray!
stop at the market on the way home for produce, walk the boys, workout, make dinner (BLT yum!)
talk with my sister on the phone about Wii Active, some research she needs me to do for her, yes get these requests from family all the time, this is for her work, she’s a pharmacist, and one of her friends dogs getting attack in the park by some dog not on a leash. We both freak out a little as we are both owners of smaller dogs, Big Dog is 18 lbs and Small Dog is 7 lbs. She has two beagles.
Check twitter & my blog

8:15 – sit down to write this post and read the over 100 entries on the day in the life blog

All in all this seems pretty boring as I’m writing it up, but it was hectic, Mondays always are and I knew I had to leave early.

Oh, I brought some reading home, it aint gonna happen.Similar Posts:

2nd Annual Library Day in the Life Project

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:52:25 +0000

I actually hadn’t planned to keep doing this but when I announced my new job Emily Lloyd left a comment saying she couldn’t wait to read futre day in the life posts from my new position and that planted the seed. Emily’s on hiatus right now but hopefully she’ll particpate again.

So I’m back from ALA and it seems like the time is right, so next week July 27th 2009 will start the Second Annual Library Day in the Life Project.

What is the Library Day in the Life Project? well it started with this post suggesting that we blog what we do all day at work. Libraries are changing so rapidly and we all know no ones is reading books, despite what the public may think The idea being that you’re sharing an average day, so many of us don’t have an average day though so a lot of people did a week, me included. I maybe just do a day this time though, we’ll see.

So how you particpate?

Go to the wiki
Create a PB Wiki (pbworks?) account (it’s free)!
Add your name, your job title (so we can see what you do at a glance) and a link to your blog.
On the 27th start recording your day or week. It doesn’t have to be a blog post it can be photos, podcasts or videos
Tag your posts, pictures, videos, podcasts with librarydayinthelife.
After you’ve finished your first day come go back to the wiki and edit your link to link directly to your tagged blog posts, videos or photos.
Of course read along!

That’s it! Its super easy. You can see some of the past ones below or on the wiki.

Similar Posts:

Library Day in the Life – Thursday Day 6

Bobbi Newman — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:04:18 +0000

For today something a little different

I took these notes today as part of The Day in the Life project, if you would like to read more please the wiki, if you’re interested in how it all got started read this post and this one.Similar Posts: