Thank You to Everyone Who Participated in Library Day in the Life #libday4
I rescued this email from my Spam folder last night. How awesome is it that someone made this & sent it? So to everyone who participated in anyway, every way – Thank you!
Day 2 in the Life of a Librarian #libday4
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 website
Day in the Life – Monday 1/25/2010 #libday4
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).
In the morning before work with coffee in hand I turn on my PC to check Facebook, Twitter & my gmail account.
I see a trackback to my transliteracy page so I check out the post, Sunday Night Ponderance from Andy Woodworth. I leave a comment with my 2 cents and resolve to finish the new transliteracy slideshow by the end of the week so I can post it next Monday.
I proof read my post on the echo chamber, set to publish later in the day.
First thing I do at work is review my notes from last Friday and create the day’s to-do list.
I then proceed to:
- update the website including adding job seekers page, created by staff
- hand out monkeys
- email director about borrowing her nook to make videos on using ebooks
- check on day in the life – wow! holy hash tag on twitter!
- work on Kiwanis club presentation for Tuesday. 15 minutes to talk about digital services.
- answer a lot of emails
- sketch out plans to do screen-casts of downloading Overdrive ebooks & eaudiobooks
- turn in an invoice to be paid
At 3:30 I’m driven home by terrible headache blame attempts to kick my diet pepsi habit. I rest until 6:30 then time to get back to it. I put the tea kettle on and:
- check gmail, answer & send emails
- response to blog comments
- peruse #libday4 tag on twitter, realize so many people are participating there is no way I can keep up and respond to all of them.
- looked a pool on flickr
- looked at Davids post on foursquare. Realize despite having no interest in anyone knowing exactly where I am ever, I should check it out. I sign up for an account and install it on my Pre. It can’t find my location. awesome. I give up and get back to work on my presentation for Kiwanis.
- chat with another libraryland person about the connection between place of employment and personal blogs.
- chat with a different person about upcoming interview & give what tips I can
- text back and forth with yet another person about transliteracy
At 10 I turn off the computer and phone and put in some down time before bed.
Why did you particpate in the Library Day in the Life Project?
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.
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- Feel free to quote blog posts and link back to the site. Please do not copy my entire post on your site. Thank you
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